[Unknown Target]

Are these in? Or when could they be in?

[Taristin]

Alpha 1: Command! There's a wing of enemy fighter heading straight towards us! What should we do?!

Command: We're not reading any fighters, Alpha. Check your sensors.

Alpha 2: I see them too! They're flying terran craft command! What's going on?

Command: Pilots, you're talking nonsense!

Alpha 1: I'm going in! Cover me!

*CRASH*

Command: What's this? Alpha! ou've encounterred a new ship class! The SJ Mirror! Get out of there it's a trap!

Alpha 2: No! I can still see hostile craft...


And so the ignorance of the common GTVA Pilot is used against him.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
Are these in? Or when could they be in?

Specular highlighting would be a big step towards making the graphics more realistic looking...it'd be an awesome thing...not sure if its doable right now.

[Nico]

I don't think it's really complicated. after all, it's just exagerated lighting.

[Black Wolf]

Mmmm - N1 Starfighter

[Unknown Target]

Would make for a nifty semi-cloaking effect.

And good-looking cockpits froim the external view would also be a possibility.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
And good-looking cockpits froim the external view would also be a possibility.

not w/o clipping fixed.

[diamondgeezer]

Do I sense an agenda here, Venom?

[Nico]

yes, but still it's true:
a detailled cockpit means lots of details at the same place, so lost of polys in front of each other, so lot of see-through problems. simple as that.

[StratComm]

I think the idea is to make the cockpits reflective, so that they look like glass.  So there'd be no extra complexity.  However, I don't see what is wrong with the good old black ones myself.

[Nico]

well, then, it's the same with 256*256 maps, very low poly meshes, etc etc. it's just a matter of improvement.

[NecroBob]

perfect, raa

[Nuke]

two words
pixel shaders

[Taristin]

Originally posted by NecroBob
perfect, raa

[Flipside]

In that case, I would have thought the best bet is simply to Chrome effect the cockpit with the current background map? It would be a lot simpler and faster.

Flipside

[Charmande]

Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
Alpha 1: Command! There's a wing of enemy fighter heading straight towards us! What should we do?!

Command: We're not reading any fighters, Alpha. Check your sensors.

Alpha 2: I see them too! They're flying terran craft command! What's going on?

Command: Pilots, you're talking nonsense!

Alpha 1: I'm going in! Cover me!

*CRASH*

Command: What's this? Alpha! ou've encounterred a new ship class! The SJ Mirror! Get out of there it's a trap!

Alpha 2: No! I can still see hostile craft...


And so the ignorance of the common GTVA Pilot is used against him.

[Fry_Day]

True reflections are unlikely to be implemented, at best. When HT&L upgrade is done, using sphere-mapping for fake-phone would be fairly trivial (but it can't be done right now, since you need the normals for sphere mapping, but the renderer doesn't pass them right now), and a pixel shader for per-pixel lighting with shinyness maps shouldn't be too hard.

But, of course, the T&L upgrade needs to be done for all of that.

[Nuke]

cloaking effects as i understand them will be multitextured. if the coders could come up with a way to use the multitexture code on the normal ship textures, then we would have unfettered access to limitless effects.

[Fry_Day]

Fixed Function multitexturing is much more limited than a pixel shader, and you have to remember that not everything you can do with OpenGL blending functions, you can do with DirectX ones, and vice versa. Ideally, some program similar to MFCtex would be made for editing multitexturing effects.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Fry_Day
True reflections are unlikely to be implemented, at best. When HT&L upgrade is done, using sphere-mapping for fake-phone would be fairly trivial (but it can't be done right now, since you need the normals for sphere mapping, but the renderer doesn't pass them right now), and a pixel shader for per-pixel lighting with shinyness maps shouldn't be too hard.

But, of course, the T&L upgrade needs to be done for all of that.

What about the relatively simple metal shine effect that we've seen in games like StarLancer and back as far as Privateer 2 (which used a software renderer)?  Is there a technical reason why even the old DX5 version of the FreeSpace engine couldn't do that?