[Solatar]

I known type 1 glowpoints are supposed to look like headlights, but is there any way they can actually produce light.

 i.e-when you run them across a ship less than 500m away they cast a glow on the ship's surface.

or

When in a really dark nebula, they can brighten up a certain radius.

or

when ambient lighting is removed,
they add ambient lighting to anything in an area in front of the players ship.

[vyper]

Originally posted by Hades
I known type 1 glowpoints are supposed to look like headlights, but is there any way they can actually produce light.

 i.e-when you run them across a ship less than 500m away they cast a glow on the ship's surface.

or

When in a really dark nebula, they can brighten up a certain radius.

or

when ambient lighting is removed,
they add ambient lighting to anything in an area in front of the players ship.

You're looking at adding LOTS OF dynamic lighting...

[Fineus]

For the nebula - wouldn't you have to change the entire nature of the nebula to get it working? Currently it's swirling .PCX files infront of the HUD, it'd have to be volumetric to allow for dynamic illumination, right?

[Bobboau]

well with the nebula thing I have included suport for running a diferen't texture in nubula mode,
but as for dynamic lighting, no,
we (I) would have to develop an entierly new mode of lighting (FS has no spot lights) and the prosesor hit would be insain, and the effect would be monor at best, not to mention that we (I) would have to change the glow point file format meaning anyone who had glow points would have to start over

[Stealth]

lol Bobbau, sounds too complex for them (you)


uhm... it would be cool though, like Descent 2 and 3's headlights you could turn on and off, but fed off your energy

[Knight Templar]

Some how I doubt headlights would use that much energy

[Fry_Day]

The implementation of headlights, flashlights, spotlights, etc in most games is simply projecting some sort of glow texture (Usually something in the style of a simple brightness = sqrt( distace_from_texture^2)), and projecting it. you don't truly compute dynamic lighting, of course.
The only problem with that method is that the projected texture usually modifies the lightmaps, and FreeSpace 2 does not use lightmaps.

[Anaz]

what about using multitexturing for creating a light?