[666maslo666]

I have recently played a bit with FRED (3.6.13), and I decided to share some suggestions here.

1. This may even be a bug. The wireframe mode (only show outlines) is very slow, to the point of being almost unusable even on my new machine, and with only a few ships present. It is weird because when I enable "show ship models", it works flawlessly.
This brings me to the reason why I decided to disable show ship models - when i try to select ship with models enabled by pointing where the model is, I actually find out the ship is not there, but a bit off (when I disable "show ship models" the wireframe model shows the ships true position). In short, the model is not rendered in the ships real position, but with some offset. This is PitA especially when selecting smaller ships or fighters from a greater distance.

2. The wireframe model is always dark grey, regardless of the IFF. The old way (friendly blue or green, enemy red etc..) was much better IMHO. Dark grey always blends into the background, which is usually dark too.
The wires should also show up superimposed on the model when "show ship models" and "show outlines" is selected at the same time. Just like old times. 

3. Mission designers would certainly appreciate if weapon editor could be used to edit turrets on multiple ships at once (assuming they are the same class), just like fighter weapons can be now. Setting up for example sentry gun fields would be far more convenient this way.

Just my 2 cents  Anyway, keep up the good work! 

[Shivan Hunter]

I have recently played a bit with FRED (3.6.13), and I decided to share some suggestions here.

1. This may even be a bug. The wireframe mode (only show outlines) is very slow, to the point of being almost unusable even on my new machine, and with only a few ships present. It is weird because when I enable "show ship models", it works flawlessly.
This brings me to the reason why I decided to disable show ship models - when i try to select ship with models enabled by pointing where the model is, I actually find out the ship is not there, but a bit off (when I disable "show ship models" the wireframe model shows the ships true position). In short, the model is not rendered in the ships real position, but with some offset. This is PitA especially when selecting smaller ships or fighters from a greater distance.

Immediate Mode is a part of the Codethulhu left over from the Great Old Volition, kept alive to render jump nodes and backgrounds and to destroy the existence of all that is 1337.

Basically don't use wireframe... anything rendered in wireframe (jump nodes) uses "immediate mode" (instead of the new "HTL" rendering code) to display. This is incredibly slow and IIRC the only reason it's still around at all is because the HTL code (which is used for ships etc) doesn't render wireframes or nebula backgrounds.

2. The wireframe model is always dark grey, regardless of the IFF. The old way (friendly blue or green, enemy red etc..) was much better IMHO. Dark grey always blends into the background, which is usually dark too.
The wires should also show up superimposed on the model when "show ship models" and "show outlines" is selected at the same time. Just like old times. 

They don't show up for the reason I noted above: It uses old, bad code and is thus "broken" by most definitions of the word. Most people just don't use it anymore.

Showing up as just gray... dunno about that one. I just tried it and it displays "correctly" on my end.

3. Mission designers would certainly appreciate if weapon editor could be used to edit turrets on multiple ships at once (assuming they are the same class), just like fighter weapons can be now. Setting up for example sentry gun fields would be far more convenient this way.

Just my 2 cents  Anyway, keep up the good work! 

I would like that very much, but something tells me it's not exactly trivial. It seems like it should be, but... with some of the Mantis entries I've seen w.r.t. the editor dialogs, I doubt it.

[666maslo666]

Well, OK then. I used them because of the model rendering offset bug. Is that a known bug?

Altrough I still think wireframes are 1337  and their return with hardware rendering would be cool IMHO. They would be better for spotting dark fighters against dark backgrounds than those colored balls I use for it now (model and outlines turned off).

[Shivan Hunter]

I know about it, and I complained about it once, but I don't know how much is being done about it (it's certainly not at all trivial). If you turn on ship info you can see it in the ships' actual locations, though. The bug itself has to do with how the HTL and immediate rendering modes calculate position on screen based on FOV- I know it's much worse at higher FOVs.