[Deepblue]

Thats exactly what I have been saying.
For example, when you look at the SS anis for the Herc and Herc II they have reflection but no specularity, the bright spot you do see and might call specularity is merely a reflection of a light.

[Lightspeed]

That's exactly the reasoning behind bob's and my idea.

Using the spec map as an env map works in a lot of cases. If you have it use the alpha channel if present, you will only have to update a few textures (for example the cockpits) - You won't lose much performance, and you will be able to have seperate shine & env intensity while not losing any possibilities you have right now.

[Unknown Target]

Bob, are you going to make it so that ships will also reflect?
Cause it's sort of wierd when only the background does

[Lightspeed]

I think that's not possible that easily

[kasperl]

it's possible, it'll just destroy the framerate.

from what i understand, at least.

[Lightspeed]

a) would be very tough to implement this into FS2

b) would kill every hardware there is available.

[KARMA]

even duke nukem had it:p (joking)
no, seriously, I really don't remember exactly but there were a reflective effect on some Tachyon surfaces, but I don't remember if it worked on ships and stuff too.

[Lightspeed]

there was no reflections in Tachyon.

[Deepblue]

I cant imagine it NOT destroying the framerate, due to the fact that when I use true reflection in Max, it takes a long time to prepare the reflection maps to render.

[Nuke]

i get your point light/bob but i still dont like having to use an alpha channel. i really want to keep my effects maps down to 8 bit (grey or index). using an alpha channel forces us to use a 32 bit texture for effects. id much rather have -env and -shine in seprate 8-bit maps.

another incredibly complex and mind disrupting idea is to use a 24 bit effetts map and use only the first 6 bits te specify color data (64 shades of r, g, and, b), the remaining 2 bits specify what effects to use (up to 4 effects). that way you could apply effects on a pixel by pixel basis and possibly allow for a single pass rendition.

[Lightspeed]

why - when making it alpha-based is sooo easy?

[Nuke]

alpha channels would be far difficult on modders who do not have acess to photoshop. i use photoshop for everything and for me, alpha channels are easy. but have you ever worked with alpha in paint shop pro or other non-adobe graphics programs.

[KARMA]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
there was no reflections in Tachyon.

yes there were
the cockpits during the tunnels, althought it could be just a fake reflection made with an animated map, and I seem to remember a surface on a station, but I could be wrong in this and I should check (but I'm not going to install the game only for this)

[Nuke]

it was most definately fake, you never got the same effect in the actual game. it makes me wonder if those tunnels were pre-animated. i never liked tachy on the fringe, plotlines were silly at best and you could never free roam space like you could in privateer 2 and freelancer. i did like multiplayer though, basewars were awesome. it is said that tachyon has better physics, though you could get the same effect in fs2 by increasing damp factors.

[Carl]

Originally posted by Nuke
it was most definately fake, you never got the same effect in the actual game. it makes me wonder if those tunnels were pre-animated.

you mean like a .avi cutscene? they should have looked better, then. more like the intro cutscene.

[Bobboau]

I use paint shop pro, and I sudgested alpha chanle, the thing is keeping it in one texture, if the shinemap contains an environment channle, then a slow slow slow texture change can be avoided.

[Flipside]

Not only that, wouldn't changing the glowmaps to 8 bit mean that every single modder in the community would have to start batch converting their recently made glowmaps? That would NOT be very popular

[KARMA]

btw anyone who makes glowmaps with more than 8 bit is a lame, and you don't need more than 256 colours for shinemaps too.

All the textures are 256 colors, and the only situations where you really need more color depth are on nebulas, planets and stuff like this, with lots of colors and lots of graduation of colors. But even if it may be reasonable to go for 24bit textures, using more than 8 bits for glows and shinemaps is just a waste imo.
And this is my main concern of using alpha on shinemaps.

unless it is possible to have an alpha channel on a 16bit (8 for colors + 8 for alpha) image, which I don't know (and in this case I'll shut up and you really should go for this solution), you'll be forced to use 32bit (24 for colors and 8 for alpha) shinemaps, which sound to me like a waste.
I'd be curious to know, at this point, if adding a third 8bit image (8bit glowmap+8bit shinemap+8bit envmap) would be more performance hit than having only 2 images (8bit glowmap+ 32bit shinemap) but with one of them 32 bit (a total of 40 instead of 24 bits).
In other words, my question is if it is better to have each effect (glow, shine, env, and in future bumpmap) on an individual file with the lower number of bits possible, than having more effects on a single file with a number of bit higher that what it'd be needed.

[Sticks]

It's better to have more effects in a single file. Texture changes are a slow process on modern video cards, and should be avoided.

Yes, there is an 8 bit alpha, 8 bit color texture format, A8R3G3B2. I would disagree, though, and say that the 256 color V textures just don't cut it any longer. User created models continue to get better, but textures need to move into current standards. Even the standard V models would look fairly decent with 1024x1024 textures on them.

[aldo_14]

I think true reflectivity bsicallty requires ray tracing..... i.e. you need to calculate where every ray of light bounces of every surface before you can start to draw.