[Joey_X]

I'm hoping not to offend the creator of these ani's with this post, however, after playing the most recent version of FS2Open I find that the updated ship and secondary weapon loadout ani's to be rather ugly. I find that the older ones are preferable to these updated ones, for example:





Will these be updated in future versions to be more pleasing to the eye?

Also, the top-left animation of the ship rotating is a tad bothersome because it doesn't synchronize with the sound effect being played. I like the old way of rendering the ships. Perhaps we could make this optional?

Just throwing in my $0.02.

[Snail]

Disable -ship_choice_3d (In Launcher, under Gameplay, uncheck "Use models for ship selection")

[Joey_X]

Interesting. I didn't realize that checking that option changed the little loadout icons as well.

Oh well.

But I really must ask, if you don't mind, why use those ugly icons for that option?

[Snail]

Those aren't icons; that option disables all animated icons and instead uses the ship's models themselves for the ship selection. Just the plain model by itself obviously looks less impressive than the hand-made animation, but it's infinitely easier to just use this option when using mods instead of creating new interface animations.

[Joey_X]

True enough. The aliased little artifacts threw me off. Thanks for the heads up. 

This probably belongs in the SCP forum, but it's interestingly related nonetheless: What about the programming code rendering every ship (during realtime) the same way the ship loadout animations behave? (Thus eliminating the need to create a new loadout animation for mods.)

[Galemp]

Indeed: everything 'new' you see is being rendered in real time by the game engine. Hence, no glows, no wireframe, no green grid, no monochrome icons. For stock FS2 ships it doesn't matter but for mods it's a godsend as it means you don't have to render or animate interface art for all your player-useable ships. Perhaps sometime in the future FSO will support these kinds of effects but not at the moment.

[Joey_X]

Again, thanks for the heads up. That definitely clarifies the little quirks I had with it.

It's been years since I've rendered my own loadout animations for mods that I have worked on. I'm still getting used to all of the new ways of doing things.

[Herra Tohtori]

A well thought out and configured "wireframe" background image for the ship/weapon rendering window might work out reasonably well, though... What would be involved in overalying the ship animation on top of an interface animation of some miscellaneous symbols, numbers and stuff running (and possibly a green wireframe grid rotating at the same speed as the rendered ship does)?

Making that interface background image would be trivial as long as it would be possible to show that image below the animation. Even a still image would probably make a big difference.


On a related note, it would be infinitely awesome for the ship lab as well - either an option to render the ship on a transparent background instead of black (so that it can be inserted into any background, without tenacious work to deal with transparency issues on things such as cockpits, glow points outside the ship's borders and thrusters), or a possibility to select a skybox on/off for the ship lab. Both would be awesome, but I'm getting on a tangent here.

[Mars]

It looks much better when you're using high poly models Joey_X

[Droid803]

It looks much better when you're using high poly models Joey_X

Yeah, that.

I've always preferred ship_choice-3d myselfwith the high poly models and glowpoints ...
I can tell which gun back is which!

[Joey_X]

It looks much better when you're using high poly models Joey_X

I take it those aren't part of the default installation? If they are, then I guess I messed something up... somehow. (I followed the instructions.) 

Anyway, my issue with the spinning ship loadout animation isn't primarily about how it looks... more about how it synchronizes with the sound effect being played. Just seems like there's something missing, you know? Like I said, I'm still getting used to the new way of doing things.

[Solatar]

Is there a way to disable dynamic creation of icons for ships and missiles, but DO use the 3D rotating fighter for the loadout?

[Galemp]

Currently it's all linked together- 3d ship select, 3d weapons, 3d ship loadout, 3d loadout icons. At some point we really need an in-game options menu that can turn on and off all the graphics stuff that's done through launcher flags, with sliders for lighting/specular options.