[Pnakotus]

How come there is no lighting/nameplates/etc in the aspect window?  Does it just display the model, and not the specific ship that's in the level?

[karajorma]

The aspect window displays LOD1 of the model not LOD0.

AFAIK once everyone starts using mipmaps the effect might change somewhat as if the nameplate has mipmaps they could appear on LOD 1 too. Depends on whether the ship was built to have that effect.

[Zacam]

Having nameplates show up in the apsect window, while nice, _is_ moderately pointless since directly above it you see the declaration of both it's name and it's type.

As for lighting, I preffer the aspect lighting stays the way it is. Helps visual identification out when I run on "real space" settings for ambient lighting. If the aspect window showed the same lighting, I still wouldn't be able to see what I'm aiming at, or where on it I'm aiming which is the entire point of the aspect window in the first place.

[Pnakotus]

I agree that detail would be largely invisible or redundant, but it'd be pretty.   I commented because I play on extremely low ambient light levels, and it's quite glaring to see the aspect thing lit up like that.

[taylor]

I agree that detail would be largely invisible or redundant, but it'd be pretty.

It'd be slow.  That's a lot of CPU/rendering cycles that could be better spent on the main scene rather than the tiny model in that tiny little box in the corner of the screen.

Plus the hud target box is more a representation of the target rather than a picture of the actual target itself.  That line gets a bit blurry from time to time (like bomb view), but that's how you should look at it.  If you wanted lights on the model then we'd have to create a light source, render the model with it, including spec and envmaps, and that's an extreme waste of power that would be better used for things like bumpmaps and shader effects.

[Flaser]

The aspect window displays LOD1 of the model not LOD0.

AFAIK once everyone starts using mipmaps the effect might change somewhat as if the nameplate has mipmaps they could appear on LOD 1 too. Depends on whether the ship was built to have that effect.

IIRC the window now can show whatever LOD was setup in the table. (Was made for the Dragon as its LOD0 was pretty lowpoly while LOD1 looked purty.)

[Wanderer]

Yeah...

ships.tbl (or -shp.tbm):
$POF target LOD:

[taylor]

It will never do nameplates unless we rewrite the code anyway.  It doesn't do a full ship_render() for the models in the targetbox, so it won't do texture replacement, damage, or anything like that.  All it does is appropriately move rotating subobjects for that model and render the model, a model which is the of the same type as the ship targeted, but not the exact same ship.

[aldo_14]

I agree that detail would be largely invisible or redundant, but it'd be pretty.   I commented because I play on extremely low ambient light levels, and it's quite glaring to see the aspect thing lit up like that.

mmm... on the other hand, you could think of it as a computer (i.e. avionics / hud) display of the target, rather than any sort of actual video footage.

[neoterran]

I bet it would look cooler in wireframe, no ?

[Kaine]

I bet it would look cooler in wireframe, no ?

i was thinking the same thing, actually

[neoterran]

plus it would take less resources, look more like a HUD generated view as opposed to a crappy model down there. Anyone want to give us at least a launcher option for this ? (psst.... taylor) 

[taylor]

Wireframe view is already a keyboard option, so adding a cmdline option for it also is asking a bit much. 

But, I think that there is (or will/should be) a tbl related option to enabled it by default.  I thought that something like this was added for TBP (on a per-species, or per-ship, basis), or we were thinking about it and then got distracted by something else.  If you want it enabled by default for all ships then try hitting up Backslash for a hud_gauges.tbl option for it, since I think he was in the process of adding stuff to that tbl anyway.

[neoterran]

Alright, thanks for the pointers !

[Chris B. Yond]

Wireframe view is already a keyboard option

Would you mind telling me the shortcut? Is there a SCP keyboard reference somewhere around?

[taylor]

Would you mind telling me the shortcut? Is there a SCP keyboard reference somewhere around?

It's an original key, not something that we added, so it should be in the control config screen in the game.  But I think it's toggled with ALT-SHIFT-Q, or something like that.  I assign it to ALT-W myself, but I know that's not the default.

[Chris B. Yond]

Thank you. My FPS dropped from 25 to 8 in wireframe mode (Targetting GTM Hippocrates)

[neoterran]

I didn't notice any framerate drops here, but it is kind of annoying that you cannot make it persistent. Oh well, i can't imagine me pressing alt-shift-q everytime i start up freespace.

[taylor]

Thank you. My FPS dropped from 25 to 8 in wireframe mode (Targetting GTM Hippocrates)

The speed depends on what build you are using.  Older builds used lines to draw the wireframe models, and that's extremely slow.  Newer builds can use HTL mode (automatic, depends on the target) for wireframe drawing and that's a lot faster.  If using HTL mode then there should be almost no drop in FPS.  I can't remember when I made the change-over though, and there were some issues which slowed it down a bit originally.

I didn't notice any framerate drops here, but it is kind of annoying that you cannot make it persistent.

I'd add it myself, but since I know that Backslash was already working to upgrade hud_gauges.tbl, I don't want to get in his way with my changes.  Plus, this is minor, basically grunt work, and us old guys have to give the rookies something to do. 

[Chris B. Yond]

The speed depends on what build you are using.  Older builds used lines to draw the wireframe models, and that's extremely slow.

I used the latest CVS build (P420060711) Well, never mind.