[kasperl]

Originally posted by Bobboau
I was thinking about useing a similar effect to this to generate a cloak

like copying the image of the other sode, but slightly distorting it?

cool, would you be able to set the distortion rate?

[Raptor]

First: Ouch!:eek2: *regarding earlier post*

Second: Finially tried this out.  I don't have anything as great as before though...


Note the brighted patch on the dark texture?  At first I thought it was lighting from the engine glow.


Under the tail, you can see a reflection of the planet (just off screen  to the left).

SCP'ers, I guess you already know about the couple of bugs with  the new thruster glows, right?
-The glow seen from the front dosn't change when afterburners fired
-sometimes ships (so far only fighters) don't display ANY glows or plumes, just the orginal modelled plume.

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Raptor
-The glow seen from the front dosn't change when afterburners fired

Yes, that's a bug i noticed too. Has been there since ages. Its the new effect.

[aldo_14]

Well, you shouldn't really be able to motice much of an effect on FS ships.... the only bits I can think of that would be relfective are the cockpits on fighters, etc, the awacs panes (Charybdis, etc), and arguably the big glass bits on the Arcadia

[Nico]

I agree with aldo wholeheartly. Could probably find a few other places, but on a whole, the reflection should be there, but so mildly you can just "feel" some shades of colourings on the hull, and that's it.

[Setekh]

Mmmm. I think it does need to be tamed. But time will draw it out - just like when we figured out how to remove ambient lighting. "Wheee, look, everything's black!" We'll get over it soon.

[Nico]

but I liked everything black with ambient lightning

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Nico
but I liked everything black with ambient lightning

[nakki]

hmm..

Those screens look exelent, but there is way to get it look better than anything out at the moment.
proper image based ambient lighting. both diffuse/specular.

specular is actualy just blurred enviroment map. (there is no difference in any calculations)

but addition of diffuse part would be awesome and sould be pretty easy.
it is MUCH blurried version of the enviroment map with texture cordinates taken directly from normals. (not view dependant.)

if you want it to look like movies (and im not kidding.)
add ambient occlusion. per vertex should be enough and very fast.
.
becouse all maps are pretty blurry there is no need for high res maps. (something like 256x256x6 is already quite overkill for specular and 32x32x6  for diffuse is plenty.)
and becouse we talk about ambient theres no need for HDR 8bits should be enough.

some links to explain what is possible.

about ibl and ambient occlusion.
http://www.andrew-whitehurst.net/amb_occlude.html
http://www.debevec.org/IBL2003/
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ltokheim/ambenv/

exelent tool for creating maps and for blurriness reference if you want to do maps runtime.
http://www.debevec.org/HDRShop/

[Setekh]

Hey, nakki! Welcome to HLP. Most of what you said just sailed over my head, but it sounds like the SCP coders would want to hear what you're talking about. I suggest you post your suggestions in this thread in the Source Code Project forum, where they'll be discussing coding possibilities more, rather than just ogling at the results.

[Setekh]

Or, I could just move the thread over for y'all.

[Bobboau]

again, why?
have you gone mad with power... again?

[Setekh]

No, seriously, it's not my fault!

If you actually want them moved back to FS Modding, no prob, but this was by request.

[Bobboau]

oh, ok
hell might as well delete them for all the truble they've gotten me into

[Lightspeed]

Not with me Bob

Have a go at the thruster bug, if you manage to fix it they'll all be grateful

[Bobboau]

you mean the one were user selected ship's thruster glows don't show up?

try this build

[Gregster2k]

Let's say for cloaking one fades the properties of the ship gradually to 100 percent of the surrounding environment.

Would it be possible to have a ship's environment map be "reversed" so that well...lets say a ship is cloaked and parallel between two backgrounds: a purple nebula and a planet.
                                                               
planet blah blah & left observer --- Cloaked Ship ----- purple nebula & right observer                                

well my idea is, say some ship from the left side, the observer, looks at the cloaked ship.

Normally, the left observer will see the reflection of the planet on the 100% reflective "cloaked ship". BUT...what if the cloaked ship's LEFT side reflected the environment to its RIGHT, and the RIGHT reflected the LEFT environment? and TOP OF the ship reflecting whats UNDER the ship, and the SHIP's FRONT reflecting whats BEHIND the ship...

Such a thing would probably be a near-perfect Klingon Bird of Prey Effect! Ideally, looking at the ship from the nebula you would see the planet and a slight distortion... unfortunately i have no idea how to do something like this.

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Bobboau
you mean the one were user selected ship's thruster glows don't show up?

try this build

I didnt mean that one but it also needs fixing

I meant the bug with the intersections with the ship's hull.

[Bobboau]

that isn't so much a bug as it's an unfortunate side effect of the way things work

and is the 'thrusters not showing up' bug fixed in that build?

[Tolwyn]

I agree, ambient lightning as it was in the original FS sucks. But would it be possible to implement a much darker version of it? I agree that it may be realistic space-shadows, but I really don't understand why we are making so much work on ships and textures, if you want to display them nearly black in the game. There isn't much left on the model to see, except for the lights.

If we want it realistic, we could turn off the sound too, cause sound cannot travel in space.

A suggestion here: would it be possible to implement a much darker version of the ambient lightning... something in very dark grey.