[Trivial Psychic]

Howdy all:

I'm presently putting the finishing touches on a model for... um, a certain member of this forum.  Anyway, I've noticed that many canon ships and others have "lights" (I'm not talking glowpoints) on them... you see them when you open up the pof editor in MODview.  I'm trying to find out if they are actually needed and if so, which spots on the model would need them.

Any Help?

[karajorma]

I've never heard any explaination whatsoever for what the lights actually do.

Wouldn't surprise me if they were just some Decent 3 thing that FS2 doesn't actually use.

[Taristin]

Oddly, though, most V ships have them wherever there's a turret, or other important feature. However, I still know nothing of what they do. Maybe the SCP guys could give a better answer.

[Grimloq]

you need lights for the POF conversion. IIRC it points out wehre the 'branches' in the heirarchy end.

[Swamp_Thing]

Are we talking real headlights here? Or hierarchy lights?

[Taristin]

Neither, actually.  Grim, understand the topic before you go crazy.

These are lights that can be placed via the pof editter built into modelview. They serve no real purpose that we know of at the moment.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Grimloq
you need lights for the POF conversion. IIRC it points out wehre the 'branches' in the heirarchy end.

You need to pay attention Grim. That's not what we're talking about.

Did you really think that someone who wrote a tutorial on making the hierarchy for turrets would have no idea what the hierarchy lights are for?

Open modelview and then load sparky_fs2.vp in. Choose a model and then press the pof editor button. Look at the Lights-green section. See?

[Roanoke]

I noticed this a while ago. All the Fan models I've disceted didn't bother with 'em so I didn't pay attention.

[Grimloq]

Originally posted by karajorma
Did you really think that someone who wrote a tutorial on making the hierarchy for turrets would have no idea what the hierarchy lights are for?

yes, thats why i went 'GAH!'  

Open modelview and then load sparky_fs2.vp in. Choose a model and then press the pof editor button. Look at the Lights-green section. See?

oh, those. i thought that controlled glowpoints (if i know what youre talking about right)

[Taristin]

Modelview and Vanilla FS don't support glowpoints.

[Trivial Psychic]

Originally posted by Grimloq
oh, those. i thought that controlled glowpoints (if i know what youre talking about right)

See my first post.  So, I guess the general concensus is that no one knows, and FS doesn't seem to care if they're there or not.

[Carl]

ask Daveb next time he stops by.

[aldo_14]

My impression was that the lights were to indicate, well, points where light sources are cast (ends of turrets, engines, etc), and that they were holdovers from an older version of the pof format.  

Type 1 lights appear to be on the ends of turrets, type 2 in the engine position.

NB: the Charybdis turret placement is completely all over the place.  Just thought I'd share that with you......oh, and the Aeolus is an absolutely horrificly done model.

[Gregster2k]

Um...this seems obvious but...

Is it not reasonable to think that [V] might once have intended for real-time dynamic lighting to be possible, a la the ship lights that illuminate the hull of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 and NCC-1701-A (and B!) in the Star Trek movie series?

In other words, I think they may have once intended spotlights to be possible, cast from certain parts of the ships. Take a VERY close look at the Bastion Cutscene and other FS1/FS2 cutscenes. You will notice that some of the ships have floodlights casting light beams across their surfaces. I believe those light beams are what those light points were for, and I bet you all that the SCP Team can probably be put to the task of getting those light points to function.

As it is, in the SCP, currently people are simulating lights through TEXTURES of lights, a la glowmaps and shinemaps. But those aren't REAL lights.

I bet that what [V] had on their ships were REAL lights, and its up to us to find the way to enable them and make them work.

Just a theory, anyway, I could be wrong. But I think any SCP project guys who are reading this might want to look into it.

[aldo_14]

They may have intended dynamic light sources, but the lights themselves only detail a position (corresponding to turret firepoint or engine glowpoint), and a type; i.e. no intensity, scale, direction, etc.

IIRC Volition did have some basic shadowing code written but disabled, didn;t they?

[Gregster2k]

Uhhh I dunno bout the shadowing but I'm looking at the Bastion Cutscene again and it looks like I'm only partially right. Although these lights are in locations where the cutscene has lights, the lights are also in areas where the green light points are not. In the Bastion cutscene the Orion is illuminated by downward light cones from small light sources that stick out from the exterior of the ship.

Oddly enough, I just noticed that [V] made no effort to have their cutscene Bastion look any different from the ingame Orion model even though we KNOW they had the capability. I am beginning to wonder about the "canonity" of the whole "FS2 HTL upgrade" stuff going on in the forums...

...Okay, I just checked the Ulysses and it also has the light thingies. Maybe I am wrong. Either that or the Ulysses was supposed to have self-lighting ingame....we may never know. I'm done speculating for now.

If that shadowing code of which you speak is still there, it probably can't be used as it was probably non-HTL rendering stuff, and we all know what happens when we use software TL in an HTL mode...major slowdown. Wouldn't be much point to finding it, except for historical or possibly research purposes.

[StratComm]

They may easily have been point lights used in building render-models that somehow got pulled in to conversion, but the archaic POF-format oddity seems like the most credible answer.  Unless they are used for some sort of targeting or pathfinding algorithm, I have no idea why they are there, only that I've never needed to use them.

[Bobboau]

you are talking about the 'BSP' lights, they seem to have been intended as a dynamic light source for thrusters and turrets, the implementation for them is commented out but not removed, but it seems like the idea was scraped early on becase they only have a position no other data (ie even if we implemented it perfictly and there was no penalty they would look like crap) thrusters might be salvageable, but we would only need to use the thruster glows for this not the BSP lights

there is a primitive ST&L shadowing system available, but as indecated it won't work in HT&L, and it is a per vertex shadowing system so it would look realy ugly anyway. (and it would only work decently on fighters and other small objects with a high dencity mesh)

[redsniper]

of course, now we have stencil shadows too

[Taristin]

Which would be nice if they were fully implemented...