[General Battuta]

The higher the framerate, the greater the chance for wasted frames, that is, frames that can't be shown due to the actual FPS being too low. That means wasted memory, and wasted bmpman slots.

That's completely irrelevant when you have a pc that can just run freespace at a constant 60 fps though   

Wrong. Bmpman slots are set by the game engine, not by your PC.

And trust me, you won't like what happens when they all get used up.

[Nighteyes]

The higher the framerate, the greater the chance for wasted frames, that is, frames that can't be shown due to the actual FPS being too low. That means wasted memory, and wasted bmpman slots.

That's completely irrelevant when you have a pc that can just run freespace at a constant 60 fps though   

anyway this is not relevent, as the human eye can't notice noticible difference after 24 fps animation, so anything higher than 30 fps is wasted frames, as the effect can just be rerendered to be faster and still play at 30 fps with a smaller total frame count...

[Spoon]

The higher the framerate, the greater the chance for wasted frames, that is, frames that can't be shown due to the actual FPS being too low. That means wasted memory, and wasted bmpman slots.

That's completely irrelevant when you have a pc that can just run freespace at a constant 60 fps though   

Wrong. Bmpman slots are set by the game engine, not by your PC.

And trust me, you won't like what happens when they all get used up.

Setting the effect to be played at a higher frame rate does not consume more Bmpman slots... It still loads the same amount of frames. What The E said is that frames will be wasted when the game is running at a frame rate lower then the frame rate of the effect. In that case frames would indeed be 'wasted' and thus it would be a waste for the game to load in those frames into Bmpman. Of course the same goes for when the effect is set to 30 fps and your pc's fps drops below that.
Setting a higher frame rate for .eff file effects just causes them to be played slower/faster though. The same effect can be achieved by cutting out a few frames from the animation. But for me, setting it to 45 frames is just easier.

as the human eye can't notice noticible difference after 24 fps animation

[General Battuta]

Ooh, I gotcha.

[High Max]

;-)

[Shivan Hunter]

Response time has nothing to do with the actual FPS of the image being rendered. What you want there is refresh rate. Response time only reduces ghosting.

However, the 24fps thing is indeed crap. The value of 24fps comes from the popular 24p video format that uses 24 fps, and often appears smooth because of motion blur. 24fps can be easily distinguished from, say, 60fps.

[Rodo]

perfect timing! I just re-started retail FS2 campaign on monday, this will add more flavour to the playthrough.

[High Max]

;-)

[Herra Tohtori]

Eyes can pretty well tell the difference between continuous reality and framed video.

The threshold to where the brains can start fooling themselves to think they're looking at a moving picture instead of frame after frame is somewhere around 24 FPS, but the higher the FPS, the closer to continuous the image stream is, and the less obvious the frames become.

The biggest thing that reveals frame rate is fast panning motion or an object moving fast through the image. In reality, the image is continuous so the eyes and (more importantly) brains will most likely pick the object up, calculate the route of the object and create an illusion that the eye was tracking the object all the time. With framed video, it doesn't work quite as smoothly.

Aside from that, peripheral sight can pick up very fast movements and short light signals...

[mjn.mixael]

I'm surprised that Wikipeda article doesn't explain where 24p came from. It basically came from the speed of film reels back in the day when the highest coherent speed was 24 fps. Since this became the standard for film, filmmakers today insist that films always be 24p. It really is purely aesthetic because 30fps is far clearer.

Back on topic...

[MetalDestroyer]

I've got something weird. The first time I test it, it works like a charm and since, I have the default one (from Media VP or from Blue Planet).
I put the pof into models folder, and all eff and tga are into effects folder. :/

I'm playing with the 3.6.12 RC 2 and the folowing command-line
M:\Jeux\Freespace2\fs2_open_3_6_12r_INF_SSE2_RC2.exe -mod BluePlanet_DC,MediaVP_3.6.10_Final_August2009,Explosions -spec -glow -env -mipmap -missile_lighting -normal -3dshockwave -img2dds -no_vsync -cache_bitmaps -dualscanlines -targetinfo -orbradar -rearm_timer -ballistic_gauge -ship_choice_3d -weapon_choice_3d -3dwarp -warp_flash -snd_preload -post_process  -ambient_factor 100 -no_emissive_light -fov 1.1 -ogl_spec 75 -height -normal -spec_exp 11 -spec_point 2.0  -post_process  -bloom_intensity 180


Nighteyes effects are into my Explosions Folder. Before I placed them into this folder, I put them in BP data folder and nothing.

[Maverick]

Ok, i'm still kinda of lost... i did it both ways it was explained but now heres the funny part... when i used them as a separate mod, the missile impacts didnt change but the shockwaves did and vice versa when i used it in the mediavps, the missile impacts changed but the shockwaves didnt. lol whats going on

[Nighteyes]

guys, I adjusted the main explosions now and they are brighter and have a bit more color to them, I also tested out a "damage fire trail"(particleexp01) that turned out pretty nice so I'll share these on my next day off when I have time to convert them and finalise the frames on them
btw I use mostly After Effects for these effects, the shockwave was made in 3ds max and enhanced in AE as well... the explosions are a mix of all the "old" mediavps explosions, as well as the btrl explosions

[Kolgena]

Can't wait for the new explosions!

Your released pack was perfect, except your desaturated explosions looked really weird overlaid with bright yellow beam pierce effects.

Also, where can I get a planar shockwave model that doesn't double the image? :/

[Shivan Hunter]

You'd need to make a different model and call it shockwave.pof. Should be doable- correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't it just be a matter of making a double-sided 2D plane and mapping the texture onto it?

Thing is, look at the model (shockwave.pof) in PCS2 sometime. It has a thickness to it. The shockwave gets rendered on both sides, so you see both sides of the model. More info here.

It's bugged me ever since the originals were released, I've just been too lazy to make a proper one with just a plane.

[Nighteyes]

guys, I also added to the pack a shockwave.pof, this one fixs the duplicate rendering problem... just place it in models folder in mediavps/data/models, that should fix it.
to fix the bright yellow beam peirce effect you need to adjust the effect table to use an explosion the would be more apropriate...

[Kolgena]

to fix the bright yellow beam peirce effect you need to adjust the effect table to use an explosion the would be more apropriate...

Do you have any personal recommendations for what to use? It is your effects pack after all

[Nighteyes]

I updated the first post, that covers all FS main effects, feedback is welcome, and enjoy guys!

[petar91]

Can you tell us what command line to use to activate your effects in the *.tbm file ?

i use these for the moment :

#Start

$Name:   exp01
   +Explosion_Large1
$LOD:      1

$Name:   exp02
   +Explosion_Large2
$LOD:      1

#End


Do you have any recommandation to complete this ?

[Commander Zane]

Superb work on the damage trail, they're iddy bitty (Actual) fireballs!