[Vengence]

Ok, so I have this enourmas model in my harddisk right, I want to know if it is even possible to put it in FS2. The ship in question is *Drum roll* a monsterous 120km long monster called the Guardian. The thing is huge, really huge. Heck you can fight an entire fleet battle over it's hull if it was in FS2. So to sum it all up, is it possilbe (even as a map object and not an active ship) to put it in?

If that fails, I still have a killer 12km long... 'Expedition Ship' (it is more or less a heavily armed exploration warship).  Haha, I love giant ships even if they aren't practical.

[FireCrack]

i think the size of the "universe" in fs2 is a 150km cube, though unsure exactly if a ship can be that big.

[Anaz]

Ships can be as rediculously huge as you want them. IIRC in base FS2, collision would break if you made em too big.

[Galemp]

Go for it. Inferno's made entire planets. The main problem is that you'll only be seeing a small portion of the ships hull, and unless you have obscene amounts of detail it's going to be really bland... aka 'Death Star Syndrome.'

[Bobboau]

but if youved watched omniscapers video you know that death stars can have rediculus amout of detail in this game.

[Flaser]

Just make sure you split the ship into a quanzilions sectors and recursive detail box it - reusing portions would cut back on development time.

[aldo_14]

Hmm.  Model big is yours.

[BlackDove]

Remember to post screenshots.

[Mefustae]

Star Wars may have their Death Star planet-killer, but we have a SYSTEM-killer! And by that, I mean a computer system-killer! *Zing!!*

[FireCrack]

heh

[Prophet]

Haha... I almost gave that one a sigh...

[Vengence]

Ok, I'll get a screen soon. Just a few moments.
alright, here it is:

Notice my Hurricane's size, 6km long. Now notice the size of the object they are escorting.



Big huh?



Back View



Side View.

[Hudson]

Your reallly realllllly gonna have to have some cool textures on that.. no offense but the textures on the hurricanes or whatever is meh, it looks like the ship has a racing stripe.

[Nuclear1]

Texture it. Even in just a render, I'd love that thing.

[Nuke]

nice if youre aiming for a total conversion.

[StratComm]

Colissions were, and may still be, a function of polygon density.  If the ship gets too big and the polygons too massive, strange things can happen, though I'm honestly not sure if that's a problem with the model or the converter.  There was a time too that FS2 had a clipping plane at 100km from the player, which would be a very bad thing for ships larger than this boundary, though that's been moved out beyond reason.  However, if you want this model just for scenery, I don't think it's a problem if it's huge.  Bigger things have been put in-game, though they weren't nearly as complex.

[Vengence]

Originally posted by Hudson
Your reallly realllllly gonna have to have some cool textures on that.. no offense but the textures on the hurricanes or whatever is meh, it looks like the ship has a racing stripe.

I wouldn't say 'racing' strikes, more like 'identification' stripes and the big ship there will be only for scenery. Also I do plan on a tc of sorts, just not as complex as some others. I just have to find out how to do glow maps, shaders, reflections, and a bunch more stuff I don't know. If only 3ds was as easy as RenX (game pack of Gmax), I could add a reflective shader in no time in it.

[Prophet]

About those smaller ships... They have lights on their back, but none on their belly... Is there any reason for it? Other than that you are a terrestrial being and didn't think that someone could be looking it from below...

[Mefustae]

How about we see some a comparison shot. Put the Big C in with that scene pictured above so we (read: I) can get a good gauge on truly how big that behemoth is...?

[Anaz]

Uh...any shaders that FS2 use are entirely dependant on FS2's engine, which currently doesn't have shader support. The specular reflections and glowmaps are just texture manipulations. To make the glow map, you make a texture named -glow.pcx/tga/jpg where is the name of the base texture.  To make the spec map, you use -shine.pcx/tga/jpg.