[diamondgeezer]

You know when an object is way out in front you in a nebula, you can quite often see what look like sparks, well before it comes in to sensor range? I personally view this as a bug that needs fixing - yes/no/shut up*



*Delete as appropriate

[vyper]

No. Seeing the sparks is reasonable since they are brighter than the object itself. Maybe adding a dynamic light to the spark area would look cool too.

[diamondgeezer]

Furry muff

[RandomTiger]

You are probably seeing trails or weapon fire

[diamondgeezer]

No, what I mean is that if the player is heading towards an object off in the distance, he can quite often see what look like spark trails, long before he's supposed to know anything is there. The first nebula mission, for example - you can see the Manticores well before your leader tells you about them. Little sparks give their postion away. This seems to happen up to a few kilometers out.


And don't tell me it's my graphics card - this has happened with a GF2, a GF4 MX440 and now a GF4 Ti4200.

[StratComm]

Those are the nebula trails, and believe it or not the FS2 design team went to great lengths to add those things to those ships.  They are perhaps visible from too far away, but they are supposed to be in there.  Feature, not bug.

[Solatar]

It's pretty cool. You can make them come out of your engines also.

[RandomTiger]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer

And don't tell me it's my graphics card - this has happened with a GF2, a GF4 MX440 and now a GF4 Ti4200.

Sounds like trails to me, I think you'll have to post a screenshot so we can be sure.

[diamondgeezer]

*grumble*

[RandomTiger]

Dont grumble, give us a screenshot.
If its trails perhaps we could apply some fogging to it over a longer distance.

[DTP]

maybe better and faster
not draw trails in nebulas when outside wanted view-range.
in Mp, Client should determine this.

[Stryke 9]

I kinda like the "sparks" (which are just the trails, generally reduced to a pixel or two by distance). Let you know that SOMETHING is out there, but don't tell you what. And you don't really see them normally, anyway.

Proper FREDding will work around it if you're so bothered, though. Either have the ships non-warp in very close to or behind the player, or set it up so that the player can't always tell whether it's friendly or not until whatever it is is on 'im- make for some good suspence, anyway.