[nodlew]

Really? I don't remember cockpits in Beyond the Red Line, Blue Planet, The Babylon Project...I'm not sure I've ever seen a mod with cockpits released so far. Diaspora and The End Project both seem to be putting effort into them.


I have no wish to enter into a pointless polemic. However, Btrl had cockpits if I have not gone completely insane. BluePlanet2 has great cockpits and they add immeasurably to the Wow factor of that mod. I'm playing BPAOA right now--all of the ships have some kind of cockpit--enabled via TBM file. The Babylon Project is ancient history. I bet they would have done cockpits if they could. You know what would be great way to keep that great mod relevant and re-playable? Add COCKPITS!

FS2 was not released in remotely recent history--FS2 was released in Pre-History, when Dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

Yes, to me. This is my thread, it necessarily includes my opinions and my wants and wishes for the game and it began as an appeal for help so that I could begin the process of working out my own means of accomplishing those ends. I'm not just grousing here.

That's enough. Anti-cockpit opinion would be better expressed elsewhere. I would rather discuss the details of making cockpits and the challenges thereof than explore the motives behind your ambivalence regarding cockpits. 

[General Battuta]

Really? I don't remember cockpits in Beyond the Red Line, Blue Planet, The Babylon Project...I'm not sure I've ever seen a mod with cockpits released so far. Diaspora and The End Project both seem to be putting effort into them


I have no wish to enter into a pointless polemic. However, Btrl had cockpits if I have not gone completely insane. BluePlanet2 has great cockpits and they add immeasurably to the Wow factor of that mod. I'm playing BPAOA right now--all of the ships have some kind of cockpit--enabled via TBM file. The Babylon Project is ancient history. I bet they would have done cockpits if they could. You know what would be great way to keep that great mod relevant and re-playable? Add COCKPITS!

The cockpits you're talking about are simply the ones modeled into the ships. Ideally we could get something a lot better, maybe even interactive.

Unless I'm mistaken Blue Planet 2's cockpits are a decent example of how not to do them, since their texture count is very high. They could use redesign and optimization.

FS2 was not released in remotely recent history--FS2 was released in Pre-History, when Dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

Yes, to me. This is my thread, it necessarily includes my opinions and my wants and wishes for the game and it began as an appeal for help so that I could begin the process of working out my own means of accomplishing those ends. I'm not just grousing here.

That's enough. Anti-cockpit opinion would be better expressed elsewhere. I would rather discuss the details of making cockpits and the challenges thereof than explore the motives behind your ambivalence regarding cockpits.  

Well that's interesting, I could've sworn that I said I had nothing against cockpits and that it'd be great if you could achieve your goals. Maybe you misread my post?

I think the best attitude for you to take would be one of conciliatory understanding - don't blame FSO or the FreeSpace Upgrade Project for the lack of functioning cockpits, just work towards achieving them. Lashing out at them for not providing a feature you want is less productive than helping work towards that feature.

[The E]

Unless I'm mistaken Blue Planet 2's cockpits are a decent example of how not to do them, since their texture count is very high. They could use redesign and optimization.

Yes. Those cool cockpits are a massive ressource hog, because they're rendered for every ship of that class on screen. There are better ways to do them, most of which involve this ships.tbl setting.

Now, let me clarify a bit of FSU policy here. One of the reasons why working cockpits are not a priority for us is that FSU is committed to preserving the retail gameplay experience. Visible cockpits are not a part of that. If a modder wants to add them, or make them visible, that's his or her prerogative, but it's not a priority for us.

[nodlew]

I have not lashed out at anyone, but I am on the verge of lashing out at you. If you require for me to kiss your ass to get you to leave me the *uck alone, then by all means I am puckering up. If I have in some way offended you, then by all means, I take it back. OK?

[The E]

I am very sorry if I have caused offense. I was simply trying to clarify FSU's position on this issue, I did not want to cause anyone to lash out.

[nodlew]

As far as the resource hog factor goes--I have a very modest computer, Core2 Duo, GeForce 9800. It runs BP2 without a hitch. I'm sure the polys in the BP2 cockpits could be reduced, but the visual effect is, in my opinion, spectacular. Not to mention the amazing animations incorporated into the ship designs. The fact that such things could be accomplished is jaw-dropping.

[nodlew]

I too am sorry. Peace.

[The E]

Oh, there's no doubt about how awesome it looks. But here's the problem. At the moment, I think those cockpits use textures in the 512^2 to 1024^2 category, while accounting for several hundreds of LOD0 polygons. Actually, let me pull up the correct stats.
For the Uriel gunship (wraith.pof), for example, the cockpit has 2289 polygons, and it uses 4 1024^2 and 1 512^2 diffuse texture. All of these have glow, and some even have normal maps. Meaning we are talking about around 10 MB of video memory for these cockpits alone.

Now, the problem is that these cockpits are rendered whenever LOD0 of that ship is visible. Due to the way the FSO engine is set up, this incurs a disproportionally high cost in terms of ressources.

Now, if Steve-O had done the smart thing and used the ships.tbl option I linked to above, that cockpit model would only have to be rendered once, for the player. As it is, they need to be rendered or at least processed for ships that, in most cases, won't ever be close enough for you to see those cockpits.

[General Battuta]

I have not lashed out at anyone, but I am on the verge of lashing out at you. If you require for me to kiss your ass to get you to leave me the *uck alone, then by all means I am puckering up. If I have in some way offended you, then by all means, I take it back. OK?

Calm down. You are acting very un-Dudelike. If stating that I think you achieving your goals would be awesome somehow qualifies as 'not leaving you alone', then color me bemused.  

Now as The_E pointed out, the issue with in-model cockpits like those used in BP2 is that the FSOpen rendering engine is very misguided. The big problem is not actually the polycount in the cockpit but the texture count. It's good that you can run BP2 without a hitch, but most people can't, and one of the reasons for that is these damn cockpits being rendered in every ship in the frame.

Hopefully what we can do is set up an independent cockpit model that is rendered only for the player. I believe there is code-side support for this right now but I'm not totally sure how to implement it (as I am an enormous nooblet when it comes to modeling and rendering-related issues.) If we did this, though, we could have much more detailed cockpits that didn't cause performance hangups.

Cockpit interactivity has been demoed by Nuke. I'm not entirely sure how reliable it is right now, though.

In the meantime Diaspora has some pretty gorgeous cockpits that you can check out on their preview videos.

EDIT: the ships.tbl option The_E has mentioned is what I was talking about above, and what cockpits should use.

[nodlew]

Now, if Steve-O had done the smart thing and used the ships.tbl option I linked to above, that cockpit model would only have to be rendered once, for the player. As it is, they need to be rendered or at least processed for ships that, in most cases, won't ever be close enough for you to see those cockpits.

OK, I get that. And that is very useful information to me--it corrects my thinking on how to approach making my own cockpits.

Forgive my insufficiency of Dudeness, I am tired. No, I don't know very much about these issues or the challenges they involve when it comes to modding FreeSpace. My opinions regarding the importance of cockpits are just that--opinions which reflect my own expectations when playing a simulation. The lack of cockpits has always been my first and almost my only real beef with Freespace and you will forgive some surprise on my part that little effort seems to have been made to remedy the situation. But I have tried my hand at 3d modeling in the past, and since it demonstrably can be done, I'm just the sort of obsessive person to dedicate a few months of my life to doing it myself.

But I will give myself this little bit of credit--in a matter of a few hours I have managed to remove the "mini-HUD" from the target panel in the Terran Cockpits as available now.  For those of us for whom the cockpit view is essential, that is a major improvement. Think what I might accomplish if I knew what I was doing?

[rscaper1070]

The GenericCp.pof is an excellent example of how it should be done. Open that up with PCS2 and check out how it's put together. Only what the player sees is necessary so you can get pretty detailed. For other specific ship cockpits you would take the design elements of the ship that the player can see and incorporate them. For instance if you use the showship way with the Perseus the modeled gunsite is way below where the targeting reticule is. I've been working at modeling a cockpit that looks like you are sitting in a Perseus but with everything where it should be and making sure to create enough HUD space for when it becomes possible to display the gauges there. I just started learning this stuff so it's been slow going. My first few models ended up being full of rat nests and holes but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

[nodlew]

The GenericCp.pof is an excellent example of how it should be done.

Yep, I realized that right away and I've examined the file in the viewer.  Do you know, rscaper, what software was likely to have been used to produce it? What tools are you using? How do the texture maps get applied to the models?

The Generic Cockpit works perfectly as a Generic Cockpit. I was thinking that in order to make ship specific cockpits one way would be to borrow any elements of the ship model that would be visible from the cockpit interior, incorporate a cockpit with those elements along with a much better rendered pilot, and texture the whole thing with textures that don't look like something chucked up by a sick cat. Visible Canopy elements might need to be replaced with more detailed versions. Since the Myrmidon has no cockpit at all, I was thinking of beginning my efforts there. Also, I've been thinking that the Rear View should be a "Camera View" of the Rear of the ship, if such a thing is possible. Given the way the views seem to work in-game, I suppose the cockpit model will have to incorporate a rear camera "Window" to look through. Hmmm, makes me think. A portion of the rear of the model needs to be included so that one sees the important bits while looking at the "Rear View Camera".

...with everything where it should be and making sure to create enough HUD space for when it becomes possible to display the gauges there

Ah. So the Hud configuration isn't ready yet. That explains a few things.

[The E]

To create models for FSO, you need to strt with a 3d modelling app, like Blender, 3DS Max, Wings, or others. It's also where you need to do the necessary UV-Mapping (which is the process where textures get assigned to specific surfaces), then export that model to Collada 1.4.1, and import that into PCS2 to turn it into a pof file that the game can read.

There are several links to tutorials hidden here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=70249.0

[nodlew]

Thanks, E.

Checking the links now.

[Kusanagi]

While FSO is amazing, when dealing with the model format and such, there's times when it becomes painfully obvious that we're dealing with an 11 year old engine, no matter how well it gets upgraded. 

For me, like Battuta said, I am a fan of not having anything obstruct my field of view while flying the ships but that is because it is my preference.

I would love to see cockpits done well but there needs to be a massive overhaul of the source code if you want something like dynamic textures for gauges that show information being mapped to the model. For the FSU team, there would be no point in doing these hi-poly cockpits for each ship at least until that code could be implemented, since you would have to remake everything from scratch to be compatible with the new code.

I'm not sure if FSO will add support for dynamic textures, especially since they decided not to move forward with the damage decal code.

[The E]

Render-to-texture support for HUD gauges is closer than you think. That's quite a different beast from damage decals.

[Kusanagi]

Oh REALLY? 

[Scooby_Doo]

Render-to-texture support for HUD gauges is closer than you think. That's quite a different beast from damage decals.

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