[Bobboau]

environment maps arn't realy a lighting thing, there sort of a cheat reflection, basicly you render a background image to a specal texture and then render that texture in a very specal way across the model, the end result of wich is it looks like a reflection, now it would be posable to render every ship in the sceen to the background image to be used per ship, but this would take a huge amound of power to do, I'm thinking maybe down the line I could implement something that would render one or two close objects for a few polys on a huge ship.

now that all said yes they are calculated per vertex, but there is no lighting going on, it's all UV coordanants being generated by the card based on the position and angle of each vertex and normal.

and looking at a few big ships in game, I'm thinking the background isn't getting put together quite right

[ChronoReverse]

I too vote for no ambience (or at least low-ambience).

Having played through the main campaign twice with no ambience and only specular, I can say for sure that not only is it possible, it's better

[Omniscaper]

I found that with "-ambient_factor 85" give the best balance of ambience to show off those EXCELLENT environment maps. Of course if there is nothing to reflect, the ambience level should be increased but I still prefer a low or none setting.

[Bobboau]

you know we do have a build floating around here somewere with that glow  effect you want, sticks did it called it overexposure

[Omniscaper]

Mind if I give it a go? Is your env mapping implemented on that too? I just would like to see what an uber sugered up FSO looks like.

[ChronoReverse]

Btw, what kind of computer are you running this on Omni?  I'm running a P3 1.33GHz + 256PC133 + GF4ti4200_128 and I get 85 FPS when looking at a single ship...

[Bobboau]

no my stuf isn't in it, it was made quite a while ago, right after the first semi-stable HT&L build with a lighting model that worked. I'll see if I can find you a link to an EXE, though it might not be able to handle the ST ubberships (first generation of THL had a staticly allocated geometry buffer for models)

looks like an actual build was never posted.. sorry

[Omniscaper]

ChronoReverse, its my uncle's lousy Geforce4MX. Only got 64mb and I'm using Lightspeed's TGA's. I'll convert them to DDS but I doubt that will help. The fillrate of this card is just TOO low, ESPECIALLY with Bobboau's new environment maps.

Bobboau, thats a bummer, but I'd rather stick with your latest masterpiece. I guess transplant surgery is not a cut and paste procedure when it comes to code I assume.

In anycase this is absolutely STUNNING!!! Bobbaou, you could not have released your environment map build at a better time. Lightspeed's work COMPLIMENTS yours beautifully!!!


Long live the uber polished starships.  Fresh out of the factory gloss!!!









All that glitters is gold!!! I made all specualars on the Excelsior white and got complete reflections (well,... psuedo reflections)

[SadisticSid]

Spec(tac)ular! How did you get rid of the ambient light Omni?

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

I have nothing else to say. That's absolutely amazingly beautiful.

Now, release 3.6 and get all this to a stable build

[Nico]

That's really A1, but don't overdo the specmaps, don't wanna have FS2 suffer from the demo maker chrome syndrom.

[Carl]

Capital work, bob! this is the best graphical improvement since specular highlights!

how buggy is this, btw?

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Omniscaper
Much more dramatic!!! Gives Lightspeed's nebulas a more eerie mood.

Ohh ho-ho-holy crap!

This is going straight in the highlights once it's in a stable official build...

[Carl]

1. The most recent environment map will be applied in the tech room.

2. The asteroids are shiny

3. the artemis looks really neat

i had screenshots, but...no uploader

[ChronoReverse]

Just two notes.

I've fired up Derelict with this new stuff and it looks AMAZING.

Remember the ice asteroids in the beginning?  They are blue AND shiny like glass now.  It looks great.

But normal asteroids need the specular turned off =/

The civilian blockade mission is now playable.  I remember when I tried it on normal FS way back, it didn't work quite right ever.


@omni

Oh, poor you.  But I know you have a Radeon somewhere right?

[J3Vr6]

Well not everyone has an uber Radeon card, and some have worse cards than that geforce 4.  Is this only going to be for people who have tricked out computers or is it going to get efficient and run on lower end systems?

[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by Setekh
Yeah, it's the same complaint as with the people who don't like it with too much specular mapping, and new thruster plumes, and stuff. "It's not FS anymore!" If we can set the ambience per mission, that will allow us to have an old-school version of the main FS2 campaign, that looks pants, and a kick-ass new version with all the bells and whistles.

I think a variable ambient setting would have even more uses than that--it would go great with skyboxes. An atmospheric mission in daytime would look kinda odd without near-fullbright ambient lighting.

[Fineus]

Definitely I think scaleability is the way forward for graphical enhancements. When Lightspeed first came out with some of the shine-maps I thought some of the ships looked really dodgy (no offence mate!) but with a little tweaking and what have you things are looking fine now, but thats only possible because the settings are adjustable.

[Omniscaper]

If you really want to make asteroid shine to go away, simply make its specualr map all black. I see only 3 texture: asteroid01a, asteroid01b, asteroid01c. Just make a blackimage and give it the same name and add "-shine" at the end of the name. Whats the big deal.

Unless you don't have Photoshop or other image editor, adjusting things like shine is a matter of changing an image's brightness and contrast.

Ambient can be adjusted like Bobboau said earlier by using the
"-ambient_factor x" just put a number where x is. It would be nice to be able to control it in Fred for mission control.

Must get back home SOON to test out this trueform thing. This computer is poop.

[Singh]

Originally posted by Omniscaper
ChronoReverse, its my uncle's lousy Geforce4MX. Only got 64mb and I'm using Lightspeed's TGA's. I'll convert them to DDS but I doubt that will help. The fillrate of this card is just TOO low, ESPECIALLY with Bobboau's new environment maps.

Bobboau, thats a bummer, but I'd rather stick with your latest masterpiece. I guess transplant surgery is not a cut and paste procedure when it comes to code I assume.
All that glitters is gold!!! I made all specualars on the Excelsior white and got complete reflections (well,... psuedo reflections)

 

At least now you know how us poor people with no good computers feel, especially when we are presented with your ships but with no way to use em..........