[CateranOverlord]

I don't think that's a problem.  I mean it's still different than what we're used to in fs2.

[Nico]

well, to me, placing buildings and stuff that will end up being invisible most of the time ingame, that's quite a pb, no?

[CateranOverlord]

I assumed that because these objects would be invisible, if you were to create them, that you would remove them.  Thus not having these objects would be considered by some to be a lose, THAT is the "no biggie."

I may not be a professor venom, but do I come across as so stupid that flying smack into a highrise sounds good to me?

[Nico]

hmm, my lack of patience means that I won't discuss this furthermore. I think I was clear enough about the why and the how a few posts ago

anyway.

I'll put an updated version up soon. will have better F22 and alien models, plus, wow!!! a missile ( sidewinder ) !!!! how cool is that?
ok, I'll shut up now

[KARMA]

venom, it will disappear even if it is another object or a subobject?

[J3Vr6]

I think what he's saying (rather clearly) is that you'll be flying so high up (relatively far) from the ground that you wouldn't see the buildings or trees.  He's explaining that the FS2 engine clips things poorly and objects don't really "fade" as you get farther away, but disapear.    And the way he has it set up is that you're flying so far from the ground that the game would'nt draw the house or tree.

Consider this:  Start a ship a few meters away from an orion and keep your eye on one of its turrets.  Now fly away from it, but keep your eye on that turret (with the use of rear view key).  You'll notice that the turret will completely disapear after you reach a certain distance b/c the game engine doesn't process it anymore (its still there, it just doesn't graphically draw it).

[StratComm]

Originally posted by J3Vr6
I think what he's saying (rather clearly) is that you'll be flying so high up (relatively far) from the ground that you wouldn't see the buildings or trees.  He's explaining that the FS2 engine clips things poorly and objects don't really "fade" as you get farther away, but disapear.    And the way he has it set up is that you're flying so far from the ground that the game would'nt draw the house or tree.

Consider this:  Start a ship a few meters away from an orion and keep your eye on one of its turrets.  Now fly away from it, but keep your eye on that turret (with the use of rear view key).  You'll notice that the turret will completely disapear after you reach a certain distance b/c the game engine doesn't process it anymore (its still there, it just doesn't graphically draw it).

Well, not exactly.  The reason turrets dissapear on ships like that when you fly away from them is that Freespace uses a primitive Level of Detail (LOD) system.  All the LOD levels besides the first have no turrets on most Freespace models, so they are not drawn.  The problem that Venom is describing is related to the reason you can sometimes see turrets through the sides of ships, Freespace can't decide which object to render on top and almost always chooses the wrong one.  At long range, the terrain, being much bigger, would swollow up, almost literally, anything you put on top of it unless you were right there on it.

[Nico]

voila, stratcomm got it.

[Raptor]

Originally posted by StratComm


Well, not exactly.  The reason turrets dissapear on ships like that when you fly away from them is that Freespace uses a primitive Level of Detail (LOD) system.  All the LOD levels besides the first have no turrets on most Freespace models, so they are not drawn.  The problem that Venom is describing is related to the reason you can sometimes see turrets through the sides of ships, Freespace can't decide which object to render on top and almost always chooses the wrong one.  At long range, the terrain, being much bigger, would swollow up, almost literally, anything you put on top of it unless you were right there on it.

Yes, I've had that happen with my beams lately.  The beams are drawn behind the ship (90% of the time) , even when the beam is, relatively, in front of the ship.  This looks realy strange with slashers indeed.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

I've only just discovered this thread.

HOLY ****! Is all I can say!

[Nico]

thx.

well, the clipping in FS2 has always been a major pain in the ass...
maybe something the SCP could work on?

[KARMA]

doh i can see what were you talking about now, btw i thought it was something happening only with "hidden" polys (the turrets below an edge,  the engine inlets..) with some conditions increasing or decreasing the effect, but i realize that at that distance from the ground the distance between the building edges and the size of those building would be so minimal that it can cause those problems, expecially on an engine not build for these things...and expecially on fs2:p
and you are right, it's pure pain in the ass (i got something like this in the last three models i worked on, and i spent a lot of time trying to reduce it) and i'd like too to see some code improovments on this things, but i think(hope) it is already scheduled, but it also sound as something little difficult to be fixed.

Maybe trying some very big/simple structures properly textured to simulate those cities? if you fly so far from ground you don't need much details

[Nico]

well I wondered... they say the FS2 engine is a derivative from the descent engne right? descent handled all that perfectly, and if I'm not mistaken the source for descent has been released too, no? maybe it's just a matter of adapting the descent zbuffer code to fs2?
...
ok I doubt it would be that simple.

about the buildings, with some work I could make those w/o the pb above ( I just remove a poly from the ground and build from there ). but that's a lot of work ( scaling, etc, I have no idea what's the scale of the thing is, I just made a model and edcided it would be 160km wide ).
and for that altitude thing, one can't stop the player from going down to check how the ground looks like seen for close view

[vyper]

Um, so who's going to model the JSF F(previously X)35?

[Nico]

definitively not me.

[Stealth[cro]]

...but this REALLY impressed me.
If anyone remembers one of my threads where I wanted movable ship parts, this is one of the reasons. The F-22 is one of the first non-prototypes to have T-V nozzles. VERYnice model, bt a bit too high-poly for the current engine.

As for the XF-35... I suppose it'd take some time, but for one you don't have to do T-Vs, as only one variant has them.

Anyhow... excellent work, a couple more planes and this could be a flashy TC.

[Setekh]

Heh, I was wondering where this thread came from. Nico did do quite an impressive job on this one... actually, now I can't remember why he dropped the whole thing. Maybe some of us should have a look at bringing it back to life.

[Nico]

I didn't "drop" it, I had no plans for it to begin with. Was just experimentation. Was cool

[Stealth[cro]]

Well, something as good as this shouldn't stop at just an experiment. If nothing, I could use that skybox and plane. *nudge*

[Nico]

well, use it if you want. There was an idea behind all that ( there always is one, with me ), with a ( quite conventional ) plot and stuff, but I never planed to turn it into anything.