[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by mikhael


Go on, then. You've got--I'll tell you what, I'll give you a whole HOUR. Get busy. I want to see a good 2d cockpit that is better than the ones Venom linked by 4:37 EST.

Better get busy.

Oh, i've got more important stuff to do ... and I was talking bout the same quality, not something better

I'll only do something if they're actually implemented.

[StratComm]

And they won't be implimented unless someone does something... guess we see where this is heading.

I'll personally say that I don't like on-screen cockpits, because the entire visable cone of the cockpit has to be displayed on a small, square screen that will at best take up 25% of your field of vision while playing.  In a fighter, like in a car, you can easily shift your head without thinking about it to see what is happening around you, or to look down at your gauges every so often.  You do not, however, stare at them in the middle of a manuver, but rather look at what is most pertanent at the time, your surroundings.  The same applies to a dogfight.  That's why fighters have such large, clear cockpits, after all, so that the pilot can see more than just right in front of him as he drives.

[mikhael]

Hey, its 8:18 EST and I'm not seeing even an INFERIOR 2d cockpit, let a superior one.

I guess its not that easy.

[KARMA]

ohh wait a sec.

I wasn't saying that a 2d cockpit is better than a 3d one.
Actually a 3d cockpit is always better than the 2d cockpit taken from its render (same quality), at least for the real time light effects.

I'm saying a different thing.
If the cockpit stay still, so if it doesn't move during maneuvres (inertia effect, wich suck in my opinion) nor you can rotate your point of view (like xwa or many flight sims), there are very minimal differences between a true 3d cockpit and a 2d one from its render, with some points both in favour and against it.

The 3d cockpit has light effects (including reflective maps, wich could be cool...), effects that are absent in the 2d one, but you need (in my opinion) a relatively high poly model to have good light effects, plus I suspect that a low poly cockpit could look crap, like in starlancer (but I'm ready to say that I'm wrong), and an high poly cockpit could be performance hit.
btw the pcount may vary a lot depending what area you want to model, if you go from the top of the cockpit to the rudder (like in the image you posted in the other thread) it is obviously different than making just the top gauges/monitors and the crossbars.

Except the lit effects there are no visual differences at all, if I'm not wrong.

It isn't THAT faster nor easyer to create a 3d cockpit than a 2d one: the 3d cockpit still need good textures, maybe taken from an higher poly version. So or you create an high poly model (and it may require knowledge of materials, plus surely a lot of time to make the models), and it is true for both for 3d and 2d cockpits, or you draw the textures, wich isn't much easyer than drawing an entire 2d cockpit.
In both cases it is a job that not everybody can do here, and even for those who have the ability, it will require time (both 2d and 3d), for something that surely will look cool, but that personally I don't feel that important (even in the games where there is a cockpit, 2d or 3d one, I always remove it if possible and play in full screen mode).

Things will change more in favour of the 3d cockpit if SCP guys will add the possibility to rotate the point of view (but IIRC there were some problems about this, it has already been suggested, or am I wrong?). And even in this case the cockpit will be just a secondary (althought pretty cool) graphic effect not affecting gameplay, not to mention that in this case you will have to create a 360° model, with higher pcount, more performance hitting, wich will require much more time.

So, as I said, I still have doubts about what is the best way to go, if implementing the 3d cockpit is worth the coders' job, and if any cockpit is worth the amount of time required to do it.

[Flipside]

Yes, rotating the head was impossible for some reason, I think it was something to do with FOV or Poly culling.
You know, theres no reason why both version couldn't be implemented if possible. I suppose one major advantage of 3D is the possibility of using multiple textures, some of them animated with 'other' stuff etc. Whereas 2D would probs have to be one big ANI file to do that, but 2D is (probably) easier to implement, though I have no proof of that, and would hit performance less, which is good for lower performance machines. If you defined the cockpit in ships.tbl you could arrange matters to suit yourself

[Nico]

Originally posted by Flipside
Yes, rotating the head was impossible for some reason, I think it was something to do with FOV or Poly culling.

Bull****, you can already do, with FS2 vanilla ( some num keypad key ), the HUD itself is disappearing, there's a red dot where the reticle was, and you can rotate the head. It's a 90° turn, but you can see the transition.
As for the time it would take, I'm confident I can pop up a cockpit ( a full cockpit, complete with the seat and all that crap ) in a single day, with all the maps, if lazyness doesn't strike half way ( it always does, granted ).

[Unknown Target]

It's all about depth perception. Which seems more "real" to you? A static 2D cockpit or a 3D one?
It just SIMPLY LOOKS BETTER.
 And you CAN pan your view around in Freespace 2, you see a little red dot where the center of your view is supposed to be. God, can't believe you didn't know that, that's in vanilla FS2.


If we were gonna do everything based on it's usefullness and minimal hits to system performance, we (being the coders, not me specifically ) would've never implemented anything except bug fixes and new SEXPs.

[KARMA]

UT, if the 3d cockpit will be static too, you will hardly see differences with a static 2d image....

The only difference in this case will be the light if I'm not wrong.
Now, if this will be enough to justify a 3d cockpit is something we can discuss about, and you may be right, but don't tell me it will be THAT different please, nor that a 2d cockpit will not seem real.

It would be obscenely cool for example to have a ship between you and light sources projecting a shadow over the cockpit, but as it is now the polys will be just bright or dark depending by the sun position.
And I'm not sure if it will be that easy to have the system count if the light sources are hidden by your own ship, elseway you could have some irrealistic effects......

About the possibility to rotate the viewpoint, I'm not a coder, I just remeber an old discussion where they was saying that it is impossible. IIRC it was something related to maths formulae necessary for angular movements, but I'm not sure, and I'm too lazy to make a search.

[Nuke]

no matter what type of cockpit is implemented it would be up to the artist (aka me) to make it work. i could and would make eighter one work. i did a new 2d cockpit for descent 2 back in the day. and i personally think it looked really cool, considering i did it in ms paint (the one that comes with windows). ive also tried to make a 3d cockpit for an animation i was working on. i dont have pics of eighter because i forgot to transfer them off of my old computer, and then sold it.

i think that we should be able to do custom huds, but rendering a 2d cockpit seems to me to be the old fashoded way. 2d cockpits were used in ms fligh sim 2000. even though the renders looked totally awesome, they seemed too dead and only served to block my view.

combat flightsim 2 and 3 had really awesome virtual cockpits, as well as the simpler 2d view. i always perfered the 3d cockpits over the panel view. cfs3 actually had moving controls that added serious cool factor. aside from being astheticly pleasing and very well modeled, they also allowed for some cool view modes, such as padlock mode. padlock mode let you always focus on our enemy in relation to your plane. it helped you obtain enough situational awareness to position your fighter for the kill in a dogfight. it also made the image active and more alive and also improved gameplay.

we should have 2 options, one would be a customizable hud. id like a non gtva hud design, such as a shivan hud, or a pirate hud. each should have scripted or animated gauges for general info (energy, ammo, targeting, ect...) and maybe mission specific sensors such as wireframe overlay for nebula missions (ships deep in the fog would be overlayed much like the subspace nodes, as an iluminated wire frame, then as they come within visible range the wireframes fade out).

if virtual 3d cockpits are used, id also like a padlock mode. the models should be a full surrounding mesh. when you switch to side, aft and top views, it should show the cockpits from those perspectaves as well. polycount shouldnt be a problem (speed in freespace has never been a problem for me, even when i used a 500mhz machine) most of the cockpit is glass so would not need to be rendered. contrary to popular belief, aircraft cockpits have very little glare from the inside (i know because i flew one once), so why bother rendering glass. i would really like to be able to use the freespace hud as a texture and then actually render a hud display on a surface in the 3d cockpit, that way youy get the best of both worlds.

i wouldnt expect too much out of 3d cockpits in terms of animation, so they would resemble cfs2 cockpits. rendering the hud withen the 3d evnvironment in the cockpit would add to the idea and would also allow for higher screen resolutions sence the hud is no longer a simple overlay.

[Unknown Target]

Originally posted by KARMA
UT, if the 3d cockpit will be static too, you will hardly see differences with a static 2d image....

The only difference in this case will be the light if I'm not wrong.
Now, if this will be enough to justify a 3d cockpit is something we can discuss about, and you may be right, but don't tell me it will be THAT different please, nor that a 2d cockpit will not seem real.

It would be obscenely cool for example to have a ship between you and light sources projecting a shadow over the cockpit, but as it is now the polys will be just bright or dark depending by the sun position.
And I'm not sure if it will be that easy to have the system count if the light sources are hidden by your own ship, elseway you could have some irrealistic effects......

About the possibility to rotate the viewpoint, I'm not a coder, I just remeber an old discussion where they was saying that it is impossible. IIRC it was something related to maths formulae necessary for angular movements, but I'm not sure, and I'm too lazy to make a search.

KARMA, you ever play Crimson Skies? Mechwarrior 3? Those cockpits were completely static: i.e, they did nothing, no buttons no moving parts. Yet they were all obscenely cool because you had DEPTH, and the fact that a few well-placed blinking lights in Mechwarrior 3, and in Crimson Skies, dynamic lighting in-cockpit (such as shadows cast by canopy spars, or muzzle flash reflecting in-cockpit). It all added to a sense of cockpit immersion not seen in current FS2.
Not to mention the fact that it would really help with telling the differences between ships, visually. The only difference now is some HUD artwork.


EDIT: And if you're really THAT concerned about polycounts, I can make a good-looking, full wrap-around cockpit with about 900 polies. That's lower than most fighteres nowadays, especially with T&L.

[Flipside]

Nico, by easier to implement, I mean by the coders, it's up to the modders how much time they spend on the effects themselves, and, as I said, I have no proof that this would be easier to code.
As for the Head turn thing, fair enough, didn't know about that. All I recall is mentioning once using the POV controller to rotate the head and someone said it was impossible, obviously, I was mistaken

Ahhhh.. You thought I meant the Front/Back/Left/Right/Top views as done by the POV hat currently, not rotating the camera smoothly, just flipping it one way or another. I meant being able to look around the cockpit smoothly

[Sticks]

Yeah, a 2D cockpit is about 3 or 4 lines of code.

After 3.6 I'm going to try for a 3D one, though, as it would seem that even though I promised to implement this if someone made me a good 2D cockpit, no one did.

That leads me to believe that only Venom has any intention of putting any effort into this feature, and he wants a 3D one. So, there ya go. 3D.

[mikhael]

Hell, I'll model 3d cockpits if someone puts it in.

[Unknown Target]

I'll also do a cockpit if someone puts it in

[Flipside]

Oh, I'd model them, I just wouldn't use 'em

[mikhael]

There you lot go. Three of us who will model cockpits. Add some damn 3d cockpits already.