[karx11erx]

What do I have to do to play the main FS2 campaign with all the hires stuff and extras enabled FSOpen has?

I have tried the fsport+mediavps mod, but then FS2 tells I'd have to disable that mod or the main campaign wouldn't be available.

[General Battuta]

Select mediavps_3612 as the active mod, it should work fine.

If you hit any trouble just post here, we've got a pretty reliable debugging business.

Also make sure you've got all the graphics goodness turned on in the launcher (stuff like normal maps, and postprocessing if you're on a recent nightly build)

[karx11erx]

I did, but the Myrmidon fighter in the first training lesson doesn't look like an improved, hires model at all ... ?

All the graphical goodies are turned on.

Btw, is there a way to skip the training missions?

[General Battuta]

There should be a big 'skip training' button in the top right.

The Myrmidon has received only the lightest of upgrades. You can look at a comparison of it here to make sure you have the (only slightly) improved sort. Somebody should do a new highpoly version of it some day.

On the first actual combat mission you should see a big plume of fire come out of the Belisarius when it gets beamed - if you don't, your MVPs are presumably broken or installed wrong, but we can sort it out. Alternatively, go into the techroom and look at the Hercules; it should be clearly high-poly with a little man in the cockpit.

[headdie]

The Myrmidon is a bad introductory to what FS can be imho, as you say it has only been lightly worked on, but looking at it compared to the original it doesn't lend itself to easily being upgraded beyond what has been done.

[karx11erx]

Ok, thx. The Hercules II has a pilot.

I couldn't see a 3D explosion shockwave though (unless those blue circles stretching into various directions from the center of big explosions are meant by that).

[General Battuta]

There is no '3D shockwave' in the sense of a true spherical shockwave - only '3D shockwaves' which are generated at random angles, or '2D shockwaves' which are always rendered facing the player. I personally prefer the 2D shockwaves.

[karx11erx]

What are these 3D shockwaves? Do you have a screen shot? I had implemented something like that for D2X-XL recently, but haven't observed any effect like that in FS2.

[The E]

Well, first of all, you need to enable them in the Launcher. By default, FSO still uses the 2D shockwave effect. As for screenies, the wiki has this:

[karx11erx]

Ok, thx.

What program do I need to open vp files and read their contents?

[The E]

There are several to choose from, they can be found here: http://freespacemods.net/download.php?list.51
Personally, I prefer maja, because it just works. If you have the FSO source, you can find the commandline tools cfilearchiver and cfileextractor in there.

[karx11erx]

Is there still somebody coding around in FS2O?

I could offer code and help for the following features:

- 3D shockwave postprocessing filter
- Soft depth blending
- Real time glow
- Particle system for smoke trails
- Per pixel lighting/deferred lighting/shadow maps (would need to do some research and coding here, preferrably in collaboration with a skilled graphics programmer)

Stuff like fully destructible asteroids would be feasible, too.

But I wouldn't want to dig into the code myself. I would offer C++ modules and OpenGL code and help in adapting and integrating them.

[The E]

Yes, we are still working on it, and any pointers or hints you can give us would be appreciated. BTW, we already have per-pixel-lighting through our shaders (they can be found in the mediavps' root VP, data\effects\main-f and main-v.sdr).

EDIT: Argh, dammit, I forgot. The per-pixel-lighting shaders came after we shipped the .12 MediaVPs, as they rely on new hooks introduced in our svn trunk. Topic is here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71890.0

[General Battuta]

Is there still somebody coding around in FS2O?

I could offer code and help for the following features:

- 3D shockwave postprocessing filter
- Soft depth blending
- Real time glow
- Particle system for smoke trails
- Per pixel lighting/deferred lighting/shadow maps (would need to do some research and coding here, preferrably in collaboration with a skilled graphics programmer)

Stuff like fully destructible asteroids would be feasible, too.

But I wouldn't want to dig into the code myself. I would offer C++ modules and OpenGL code and help in adapting and integrating them.

As The_E said, the coding team is still quite active, and I'm sure they'd appreciate the help. Just be aware the code can be a bit...thorny. It's not very clean, not at all modularized.