[Fineus]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
I was thinking 7 - 14 whispy ambient ones per 'real' nebula.

I'm presuming it's a fairly simple modification to the code to allow for more nebulas to be added? The more options a mission creator has with the backgrounds - the better it can end up looking (as it is you have to crush an existing image and sort of force it into where you want it to be).

[KARMA]

a simple question: wh have I to do to put a nebula image as background?
I placed a neb in data/effects, and gave it the name of an existing nebula.
The problem is, that nor fred nor freespace seem to recognise it if I use 32 bit pcx or jpgs (not tryed with tga and I'd like to avoid 8 bit pcx for this kind of stuff)

[diamondgeezer]

Those are nice, Karma. The glowy globular whatsits are what FS2 was missing all along

[KARMA]

okkkkey.... I made many tests, and now I have a big headache, so I'll stop it for the mo.
here are the results:
 I solved my problems with the neb bitmaps and I was able to try both pcx8bit and jpg.

I noticed that the background nebs are rendered over a flat plane, a square.
When fs2 wasn't able to find the images (don't know why, after a reboot everything went normal:confused: ) it rendered this plane as full white:)
The square dimensions are those setted in fred.
BTW this is pretty crap in my opinion, since you can't have big images surrounding you: being the square flat, if it is too big it generate a weird fisheye effect at the borders. You don't notice with the simplistic vanilla nebs, but when the image is more complex it is weird.
On the other hand, you don't have the warpings caused by the sphere model, even when the sphere is high poly.
BTW probably those warping on skyboxes may be solved using something different than planar uvmaps, but I'm just tooo lazy to search a solution


Also I had big performance issues. When the 8bit pcx was fine, the jpg version (almost same order of kb size btw) killed the framerates. I remember RT saying that there was a bug with the system rendering twice the TGAs. Maybe it is the same problem? I'm using 1_20 version.
The highpoly (IIRC more than 500 polys) skybox with the same image + a second 1024 image was causing about half the performance hit of the background bitmap version. Since I used jpgs too, the problem could be not related to the fileformat, thought.

Also I had another bug with 1_20, which never noticed in older versions: when I move the skybox "shakes", it doesn't stay still (the cause of my headahce:p).

Stars:
Personally I think that a star image like a nebula must have an higher concentration of stars on it compared to the deep space areas.  Also, I may want for example to create a milky way, or a spiral galaxy, etc.
I tryed to remove the star layers from the images, but didn't like the result.
If I put my nebs with stars in game as background nebs, the stars aren't that good obviously. They aren't crap at all, but viewing stars without motion blur only in a specific area isn't all that good.
In a skybox instead, reducing at minimum the number of stars generated by fs2 and using a coherent starfield image tiled over all the model except the nebula area works fine in my opinion.
There still is a difference between generated stars with motion blur and stars in the textures, but I noticed it just because I was aware of it since the stars in the textures are diffused all over the skybox. Also it gives a depth effect, with the stars with motion blur looking like if they are closer than those on the textures, which could be nice or not, personally I don't dislike it at all.
A fair solutions btw would be to have as minimum star density in FRED 0% instead of 10%

[gevatter Lars]

Originally posted by Nuke
get fractal wit it

Hey that would be something interesting for an jumpanimation instead of a nebule..what do you think?

[Lightspeed]

Karma, you're wrong

FS2 pastes the scaled images onto a skybox like sphere.

I for one, like FS2's in-game stars (yes, they could be improved but hey, you can't get any decent resolution if theyre as images).

We could probably have more control over FS2's star system in the future, but right now i'm quite happy with what we have.

[KARMA]

actually I just told you what happened, no more no less;)
fs2 for some reasons didn't load the the background image in one of my tests, and I had a giant white flat square directly in front of me.
The white color is given by fs2 when it doesn't find textures, it happen with models too.
You can vary the number of sections to make the rendering plane more curvy in theory but they are too few, and big images will never be rendered correctly (images like those of eve etc of the pages above).
Also I was already using a #division>1 but still I got just a white square (but of course it could be due to just a screwed general situation more than a specific issue), and in the other tests with  the image at a big scale, I always got the fisheye effect, no matter the #division.
Background imgs are just not suited for wide backgrounds, that's it, the way to go is the skybox.
And about star images, for my tastes the the resolution wasn't really a problem, unless you pretend to map a whole skybox with a single 1024x1024. The skybox I used had 6 sections, 1 for the 1024 neb image and 5 for another 1024 image tiled.

[Nuke]

fractals rule, unfortunately they make better spatial anomalies than nebulas.

[Lightspeed]

Karma, I could argue months with you why i'm right, but i'll let actual in-game footage speak for myself:

1.



2.



3.



See how it works and looks?

Zero slowdown, by the way.

[Rictor]

You're the man now dawg.

What? You are. Those are awesome.

But, I'de go for a bit more "ambient" colour, ala EVE. The neb still seems pretty localized. But whatever, looks great.

[Lightspeed]

It is, as it's only the main image, no whisps whatsoever.

[Liberator]

Oh, my dear sweet Lord, that is beautiful!

[Lightspeed]

So... should I work on backgrounds simultaneously to my weapon effects? Will slow them down a bit, but you'll have nice WIP nebulae to play with as well. I'll merge the two zips together so it doesn't get confusing

[StratComm]

Since we're going all out with improving the look of the game, can something be done about those little debris bits?  They look like crap compared to everything else (always have, but each of Lightspeed's upgrades brings them out more).  Particles, maybe?

[Lightspeed]

they're already customizable. I had in mind fiddling around with them, but forgot about it.

So... what about the nebulae? Should I?

[Bobboau]

why not?

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

Originally posted by Bobboau
why not?

Exactly. You'r work is superb Lightspeed. We all want to see more

Anyway, I just found out a method I can use to make really nice looking nebulas in Lightwave using real images. I'll post the results if they look good enough.

[Nuke]

sweet!

can we get rotating subobjects in our skyboxes, that way i can recreate subspace with my fractal thing.

[CP5670]

Although those new nebulas look awesome, I don't think they can replace the existing type altogether. For this post, I am going to call the original FS2 / Cannonfodder nebulas type 1 and the Lightspeed / Karma nebulas type 2. The type 1 nebula bits do not really have discernible shapes and are more just random collections of puffs, so it is up to the mission designer to make formations out of these pieces; it is hard to tell one type 1 nebula section from another at a glance, which is both good and bad. There is obviously less detail in them and no really distinctive formations (as with the type 2s) and between the individual bitmaps there is no contest as to which looks better. At the same time though, it is possible to use combinations of just a few of the type 1 bitmaps to cover up large parts of the background without having things look repetitive. You wouldn't be able to paste copies of the same type 2 bitmap around the background sphere without the player noticing the repetition and having too many of the unique, hi-res type 2 bitmaps would take more work to make and might cause the memory usage to become an issue. Then there is also the issue of how the FS2 campaign will deal with any changes here; if we heavily alter the general style of the bitmaps, the background placements in the missions will all have to redone in order for it to look right, but it might be worth it in the end.

Anyway, I personally think that the best solution is some combination of both; we can have one or two of the detailed type 2s per mission surrounded by clusters of the versatile type 1s. Also, in the meantime, the current TGA nebulas in the FSO VP should be removed, as those are by far the worst of the lot.

Regarding the stars, I think the existing ones look decent, but we need a lot more of them. Ideally, the stars slider in FRED2 should go from 0 to 20000 or so. Some variation in their colors and sizes would also be great.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
Karma, I could argue months with you why i'm right, but i'll let actual in-game footage speak for myself:

1.


[...]

You know, that looks very sweet, but somehow, it feels like this nebula is in fact just a fraction of the nebula, illuminated because of the star. would be cool to have, say, a whole part of the skybox around that nebula to have that pink, almost black, tint to it too, and no star showing through.
There's someplace like that in Eve, at first, you think you're in the middle of a rng nebula, then you realize that you're in fact iright on the edge of a giggantic hole in a nebula, half the space around you is taken by this almost black nebula that is obscuring the stars, the other being "freespace" - ). The effects was just grandiose.