[Herra Tohtori]

Starfield experimenting... Zero distortion skybox texture. Two versions; with more and less of the dim stars.

First I tried with a 8192x4096 skybox texture, but the GPU or the engine didn't like that big a texture, so I had to resize it to only 4096x2048.

Here be two comparision shots. First with more stars and then with less stars. Tell me what you think.






However, I do not know how the UV mapping in the MediaVP standard skybox is done. These maps would probably work best with a simplest possible spherical UVmap - from a cylinder around the equator to the sphere (AFAIK that's the simplest way). Other kind of mapping would likely cause at least some kind of distortions.

Here are also the JPG versions of the textures, should you want to take a closer look at them.

Less stars


More stars



What surprized me was how the new starfield affected the nebulae.

[Dolphin]

Looks good, but fewer stars looks better. You also might consider layering the nebula over the stars--looks less like you've just put a noise filter on it. I usually put a cloud layer over my stars that's about 30% transparency and color burn, makes the stars look less filtered in. But who am I to talk, this is my first post on a Freespace forum in seven years. 

[BlackDove]

Just looks like noising it up then doing the reduction thing, like that tutorial suggests in Photoshop (I think we've all done our star fields like that at some point).

Both look overly simplistic to me. No better or worse. Needs more work/uniqueness per field.

[Herra Tohtori]

That's pretty much what I expected.

My screen probably displays slightly less of the dimmer stars due to my darkish gamma calibration... As to what comes to complexity, this was the first uniform starfield test, and the starfield texture does not have one single nebula in it. Now, off to add complexity and finding a good brightness/contrast balance.


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[DaBrain]

Looks good, but fewer stars looks better.   

I agree, the current one is still better.

Acutally, I think the number of stars is fine in the current version. Maybe the res could be higher though.

Also... Lunar Cell isn't a good tool to create game content. Maybe the effects look ok alone, but I don't like them in the game.

[m2258734a]

Also... Lunar Cell isn't a good tool to create game content. Maybe the effects look ok alone, but I don't like them in the game.

Agreed. I used LunarCell in my example shots just to create a quick scene for the stars that I had made. I would recommend LunarCell for any beginner who wants to create planets which look decent in certain aspects. IMO, the planets look like cartoons, especially when cloud coverage is relatively low. Not only that, but planet surfaces (especially liquid surfaces) do not look very realistic and become very repetitive. LunarCell planets might be better for those who use mv_cell, however.

[Mobius]

Looks good, but fewer stars looks better. You also might consider layering the nebula over the stars--looks less like you've just put a noise filter on it. I usually put a cloud layer over my stars that's about 30% transparency and color burn, makes the stars look less filtered in. But who am I to talk, this is my first post on a Freespace forum in seven years. 

Welcome, 34th!

LunarCell planets might be better for those who use mv_cell, however.

No, I don't think so...they're good for every scenario or mod.

[Darklord42]

are you kidding me? thoes screenshots working with lightspeeds nebulas are nothing short of amazing.  The currentone doesnt even compare.   This one realy brings out the vastness of space.  True the higher resolustion really helps.
Its just that that is what I think of space as actually being in my minds eye.  That and thats what you see in all thoes hubble telescope pictures.

[Alan Bolte]

Consider this an enthusiastic vote for more stars.

[BlackDove]

Personally I would like our **** ingame to be adjusted to look like this...





But hey, that's an artistic choice more than just high quality-ing the thing we have and were going for. There's a slight difference between them CG's and Gameplay looks. I wish we could make it all old school FS1 CB cutscene style. Not trying to achieve "realizm!" Realism is ****ing boring and uneventful.

[jr2]

How did you do that???
What's your command line?

IMHO, there should then be two or more quick-config options in Turey's new launcher that he's working on, to set different presets to adjust how things look in-game.

[S-99]

You can get a game to look like that, through such things as bloom or hdr, along with bump maps and possibly even lense flares. The only game that has come close to looking like the fs1 lucy cutscenes was doom3, and doom3 did a good job with what it had, mainly bloom, expert lighting, and bump maps.

[Herra Tohtori]

How did you do that???

Frames from cutscenes, thus, renders. Not in-game shots...

[jr2]

[Mobius]

Darklord42: Are you from ACS?  You should know me


That pic is obviously fake. The Scorpions are placed well, and the light of that sun and the way it hits objects is different from the one of FS.

[jr2]

That pic I have seen somewheres else, though...

[Dysko]

That pic is obviously fake. The Scorpions are placed well, and the light of that sun and the way it hits objects is different from the one of FS.

It's the CB ANI shown after Lucy's attack on Tombaugh Station, but looks like a blue sun has been added.

[Mobius]

In fact, that was my point. Without considering the sun, everything is normal.

[takashi]

i would like to see the "sun glare" effect seen in those shots, WCS, and BTRL to be in the next media vps.

[Grizzly]

Yeah, I like that one to, pity that you should never look into the sun.