[Pnakotus]

I'm curious about the status of muzzle flashes, but not for the usual reason.  I'm less interested in nice pretty gun-style muzzle flashes than using 'muzzle flash' effects to make the lighting better.  I've noticed shots fired by a ship don't cast much light back on the ship that fired it (since most caps have flat sides), so there's still the sense of retail where the projectiles just magically appear.  Could muzzle flashes be use to illuminate the hull around the dot-turret or the turret behind the barrel?

[S-99]

Do the custom flags of spec_point and spec_tube at their maximum value which is 1.0
Then you should have waht you want

[Pnakotus]

I already have.  On ships like Fenris and Orion (with the flat sides), there's no 'backwards' light cast.  The bolts light things as they pass, and sometimes light things they hit, but seldom backwards.  You can see the glow off any detail on the hull, but not the flat area around the turret itself.

PS, thanks for the help.  I'd already nicked the commandline options from your posts in the screenshot thread. 

[S-99]

Yes i recommend those if my screenshots are proof enough. Just don't mind the glow smartshader, that's the only thing the command line can't do and should not be confused with "why the **** my screenshots are glowing" and "how is that possible with the scp". Just for clarification and nonconfusion...smartshader.

[Pnakotus]

Well, yeah... except I still get only intermittent glows on surfaces bolts HIT, and only very, very rare glows on surfaces that FIRE bolts.  I can grab some screencaps, but shouldn't the bolts cast light in all directions equally?  The bolts all light things as they fly past, but not directly forward or backward? 

[Kaine]

Well, yeah... except I still get only intermittent glows on surfaces bolts HIT, and only very, very rare glows on surfaces that FIRE bolts.  I can grab some screencaps, but shouldn't the bolts cast light in all directions equally?  The bolts all light things as they fly past, but not directly forward or backward? 

i'm having the same issue with the same settings. "splashback" lighting is minimal or nonexistant in the majority of cases... i want to see capitol ships light up like christmas trees when they unleash those monster beams   

[Colonol Dekker]

We've all seen news reports or old stock footage of naval barrages during night manouvres, IT would be so cool if someone made a night mission (low low light) and set up some sort of broadside with Big ol capital muzzle flashes.........

[aldo_14]

Perhaps the code culls out light casting dependent on performance concerns?

[Colonol Dekker]

I assume that Pnakotus set the ingame (F2 options) to maximum in game as well?

[Pnakotus]

Yeah.  I clearly don't understand the lighting system, because it's a bit strange that blobs cast light on things they pass (even the firing ship if it's path takes it alongside), but there's no glare on the hull around the firepoint when they fire.  So it's retail-esque 'a blob appears and flies away', with no visceral 'hot damn we're firing guns at them' at all.  And the lighting for beams is odd too - it *sometimes* lights around the firing point, but not always, and *sometimes* lights the ship it hits, but not always.  It seems likely that it's similiar, ie that the ships it *does* light are due to the firing angle allowing 'side' light to light the ships.

[S-99]

First off for me with the right flag settings my game always looks like this(don't mind the glow, that's due to smartshader). My capships always get lit up like christmas trees and give away they're positions respectively.
Another thing to remember is that if you're lighting is getting ****ed up, play in opengl. Directx has been abandoned in favor of opengl, and opgengl has superior lighting affects as well as faster performance. Another thing if your lighting is getting ****ed up, get the latest build, clean out your vp's, etc. sort of thing.

[Pnakotus]

Of COURSE I'm using OpenGL.  I'd just like you to realise that in your own image, the firing cannons aren't casting any light on the front hull plate.  The inbound beam is illuminating (which mine don't, grrr) but like I said, firing weapons don't cast light backwards.  Also, my last post referred to blob turrets, none of which are in your picture.

So, frankly, stop assuming I'm a retard who uses DX even though it's been abandoned for months.  Stop assuming I'm not using the latest vps and patch, or the latest build.  When I say 'blob' and 'firing weapons', don't assume I mean 'beam' and 'incoming weapons'.  It's quite frustrating to attempt to describe a lighting issue when everyone simply ignores it.  This is even more ironic, since I'm using YOUR SETTINGS that you posted in another thread.  I apologise for the lack of screencaps, but I'm not set up in my new house yet and this system can't run FS2.    However, your screencap illustrates my problem perfectly, in that the two firing beams don't illuminate jack **** on their way out - look at the lower blob points: they are illuminated on the bottom, from the incoming beam, and not on the top from the two firing beams.  This is clearly broken.

[S-99]

Hey now, no ones trying to treat you like an idiot, and certainly no ones ignoring you. In the least if none of us can fix the problem. We can help pin it down. For me i've taken plenty of screenshots, i think we can use them for reference on like beam fire(i don't have many of blob turrets). But actually if you look closely on the first screenshot, the front of the deimos is actually illuminated from it's own beams. But like you pointed out, not exactly correctly from further reference i post here. It's own beams do illuminate the ship, but not so brilliantly as when the deimos is taking beam fire. The deimos should be illuminated the same as when it takes beam fire to when it fires. Here you can clearly see the deimos self illuminated, but not so brilliantly as when it was shot at(i take it this is the one thing you are pointing for your rant on beam lighting).



These three pictures should show off the difference you were looking for at least for beams for you. The beams being shot at a ship illumination-wise should be the same for the ship doing the shooting. There is a clear difference here you were pointing out, and here is some reference for you.

[Kaine]

this issue could be be related to the way subspace portals do not light up ships travelling in or out of them, but they light up ships nearby. As seen here.

[Ulala]

Okay, sure the thing is more illuminated when shot, but it also has more beams at that point. Two leaving it, one coming in. Just be sure you get one where it's only taking a hit (not firing) and see that it's still over-illuminated. 

[S-99]

Over-illuminated? Beams are ****ing bright and give off a ton of light.
What taylor said, "And beams are "unique" light sources, meaning they only apply light to the object they are hitting or originating from.  The origin light is a little strange I think, probably needs to be projected a little further away from the model."

[taylor]

I'll post a test build later tonight with the lighting changes for everyone to test.  It has the extra lighting for warps and the (perhaps) fixed beam muzzle light.  I still don't like the muzzle light, since it only applies when the beam is on rather than with the warmup glow, but that's more than I want to fix right now.

EDIT:  Test build of the lighting changes: http://icculus.org/~taylor/fso/testing/light_test.rar

[neoterran]

I've tested the new build and it looks more like it should with beams and with the warp-effect. I think that it's okay that lighting doesn't come during the warm-up glow because it goes on as soon as the beam fires, which produces a fairly dramatic lighting effect. Plus it's neat to see ships dark and just the warm up glows, and then light up when a huge beam fires out.

[taylor]

OK.  Any other recomendations based on the updated code?  I'm trying to decide if I want to put that in for 3.6.9 or not and if it's not just a big improvement then I'm not going to bother with it until maybe a later bugfix release for 3.6.9 or something.

The only issue that really bugs me right now is that the lighting code is such crap.  A model will only get rendered with so many lights (as a performance thing) and since lights from beams are added near the end they sometimes won't get rendered at all (but then there are other problems which do that too).  I might work on that some later tonight, it's always bothered me and I just can't let things like that go.

[neoterran]

I think that it should definately go into 3.6.9...