[Flaser]

If overexporure was implemented, couldn't it be used to blur shadows - after all the stenciled shapes could be handled as 'negative' glow map?

BTW with the distance at which stars are most of the time in FS the light rays can be treated as if they were parallel to the vector of your position relative to the star.

[Nuke]

impressive

[Bobboau]

ok some implementation notes,

this will only be implemented for directional lights (ie stars)

I'm going to use the dot-failed polygons to close the shadow volume on the occluder side,

all shadows in for a light are going to all go twards the same point way the hell of in the distance in the direction that the light is traveling at (but within the clipping space)

I'm going to be useing the Depth-fail method, becose the way things are set up I will never have to worry about far clipping of the volume, and capping should be simple (and we will likely be spending great amounts of time inside the shadows of cap ships)

I'm thinking that some sort of subtractive lighting might need to be used to get this to work well with multable lights and without reewriteing the entier rendering sequence. (would rendering the ship with the light in question andD3DBLENDOP_SUBTRACT work here?)

[Col. Fishguts]

Wow...DaveB is back....AND Bob's working on stencil shadows...that's one interesting thread.

@Bob: Does this method cast shadows on other ships only, or on the shadow casting ship itself too ?

[Bobboau]

I think it can get both

[Tiara]

Ooooowww...

[Ace]

Originally posted by Flaser
If overexporure was implemented, couldn't it be used to blur shadows - after all the stenciled shapes could be handled as 'negative' glow map?

I was just thinking that myself. It'd involve having a "glow map" on the geometry generated by the stenciling, but I think it would be possible.

[Flipside]

Or maybe reduce the shadow opacity depending on the LOD, so it's like 80%, 60, 40, 20 and 0 for any Lod 4+ models?

Just a thought

Edit : On second thought, I get the feeling that for the sake of speed, the routine would just check for 'polygons' and wouldn't do anything to identify who's polygons?

[Setekh]

This thread is just so cool, in so many ways.

[Inquisitor]

oh yeah

I wish dave say hello more often

[Carl]

Originally posted by Flaser
If overexporure was implemented, couldn't it be used to blur shadows - after all the stenciled shapes could be handled as 'negative' glow map?

i really doubt it, as bob would have to impliment multiply blending, where RGB 0, 0, 0 is 100% opaque. currently FS only uses addition blending, where RGB 255, 255, 255 is 100% opaque.

[Goober5000]

New thread for the shadow stuff:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,25761.0.html

[RandomTiger]

Checking in : Impressed!
While I'm cruising around, I figured I'd drop in and say hi to the source code peeps.

Just wanted to say - I'm totally blown away by the stuff you guys are doing. You guys have gone absolutely bonkers with this stuff. Never in my wildest dreams did I think the source would be this useful. I'm also glad that as far as I can tell, no one has been permanently scarred from exposure to it

Particularly neat is the whole Linux thing. I know I was down on it at the onset, but you guys have really kicked ass. Shows what the hell I know

No doubt, Freespace will live on for a heckuva lot longer because of your efforts.

So, now I'll go ahead and register my own personal fanboy request : Man oh man would I love to see real stencil shadows from big ships. That's one uber-dramatic element FS2 never really had - the proper LOOMING presence of the big guys reflected in the lighting on the little guys.

Anyways - rock on!

Wow, I've only just seen this.

Its great to get this kind of feedback of Daveb.
It is actually very impressive what we have managed to get done.
I forget that sometimes.

[Flipside]

Well, you all deserve to remember it

Yeah, it's a pity we don't see DaveB more often, but seeing this again felt good

[castor]

Yep.
Looking back a couple of years, I think FS has gone beyond all expectations, thanx to SCP crew *hat off *
What's most important, instead of the atmosphere of desperation theres the atmosphere of hope

Edit: some typoeessss