[Unknown Target]

Well, I just wanted a bit more eye candy than them simply dissapearing. Maybe like grid lines go across the whole ship, then it fades away.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
Well, I just wanted a bit more eye candy than them simply dissapearing. Maybe like grid lines go across the whole ship, then it fades away.

I don't know if you can do it but animated cloaking textures should do that for you.

[phreak]

animated cloak textures arent supported yet.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Inquisitor
There may be a point at which we can't make some things better.

And as RT pointed out, some advanced tech "solves" the problem, but that will be at the expense of the system requirements, which is something people scream about when we want o make them updated as of 3-4 year old tech

Let's see some SPECIFIC screenshots and their accompanianing models, maybe there is somethign we can do about this. That does mean that you will have to provide the model so that the coders can test it, provided anyone picks up the banner.

Perhaps there should be a point where we have to say...if we want to take this project any further...having something better than a P200, 16mb video card, and 64mb of RAM is going to be required.

Everyone these days is upgrading for Half Life 2 and Doom III.  Their bare bare bare minimums are a GeForce card of some type and a Pentium III.  Now I upgrade probably once every 3-4 years...so I UNDERSTAND...but 3-4 years ago was a PIII 700 with 32mb or 64mb of video memory if you were a gamer then...the original specs for FS2 were for a computer some 6 years ago now.

Venom's earlier model for the GTF Ezechiel had heavy clipping.  That'd be a good one to work with.

[Unknown Target]

Icefire's right. We're getting to a point in the upgrade cycle that we simply have to move past the old system requirements. Otherwise, if we stay at the same minimum requirements, then we will never be able to truly implement all the stuff we want to.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by PhReAk
animated cloak textures arent supported yet.

Animated cloaking has been supported since several months before your feature, actually - just use the change-model sexp in conjunction with a model with animated textures.

[phreak]

it doesn't animate at this stage, which may be problematic, since its like its own glowmap (not effected by lighting):



not to mention that the effect doesn't get less visible with distance:

[Nico]

could you please talk about that in the thread that, afaik, already exists, and deals with that matter?
Here I want the damn clipping removed, taht's the only thing I want from the SCP, and w/o that, I won't mod anything anymore, since I want to push FS2 limits. simple equation here: bad clipping= same old models= no interest in doing anything else, to me.

[phreak]

should be fixed with HT&L

[Gloriano]

what about Fighter beam is that  ready?

[Unknown Target]

some better engine effects than the old, blocky ones, would be nice...

And aren't animated textures already implemented before the SCP? I mean, look at the engines, they have animated textures.

[KARMA]

Originally posted by PhReAk
should be fixed with HT&L

really? well this is a good news
btw, I can't believe that there isn't much to do to fix this problem w/o killing performances: considering the games of the same period, fs2 is one of the games with the most weird clippings

[diamondgeezer]

Hold on... Phreak, you mean to tell us that 'simply' by implementing HT&L you will knock the clipping thing on the head?

[Nico]

somehow I doubt it

[Fry_Day]

I don't doubt that the problems with clipping are due to the fact that the FS2 game enviroment is expansive. You can't expect a 16-bit Z-buffer to be accurate when the Z-range is between, say, 5 and 60000 units. Of course, the Z-buffer is much more accurate with near objects than with far ones (because, Z-buffer accuracy is not linear, unlike a W-buffer), but I can see plenty of problems if an object is in a medium range, yet is large enough to have details visible from that range

[phreak]

any reason why a 24-bit z-buffer wouldn't work then? (other than i don't know how to test if one exists)

[KARMA]

Fry Day, our problems with objects at medium and long distances objects are really minor compared to those at close distances.
The only problem at long distance I know of is, as reported by venom from his ground experiments, when you have huge faces with "small" details on them(causing the small details to disappear).
At closer distances you can notice it more, even if zbuffer works better, and you notice it expecially whenever there are groups of faces one behind the other at close distance, usually in convex shapes (intakes and other similar situations).  This is a big problem for modeller: you can easily avoid or reduce those problematic areas in very low poly ships, but if you want to increase the detail, and the beauty of your artwork, well this is a very big limit.
Personally I don't see too whay we should spend time creating new models for an engine, if this engine doesn't let us build models nearly comparable to actual standards.
And althought my knowledge is limited, considering the 3d games released about in the same period, well I think that fs2 is the one with more clipping/zbuffer problems I saw, so excuse me but I don't think that it is only a problem of 16bit/24bit zbuffer

[Flaser]

PhReAk has receantly made some terribly inspiring progress with his OGl builf in terms of clipping.

BTW I had an idea for the reason of the clipping when reading the transparent texture thread.
I's a wild guess, but I have a gut feeling that the order of polys being rendered is a key feature behind the weird clipping of FS.
Of course this could be old news, but I'm no coder, so please forgive me.

[phreak]

im figuring that the girders in that picture use the "pure green is transparent" method of transparency.  if a transparent pixel is in front of a non-transparent one, then it would turn clear. since the models already draw back-to-front, we may just need to implement tga maps w/ alpha channels

[Fry_Day]

The problem is not with a single model, but rather when you have several models one behind another...
About the 24-bit Z-buffer, you could request one in the pixel format descriptor in OpenGL, when running in 32-bit mode, but I don't know about DirectX... I personally think that it's the crux of the problem, therefore, should be given a try.