[Fury]

Should FSU bring back modeled thrusters on ships and missiles?

Take a look at Diaspora trailers to see how modeled thruster cones on ships can do when they're done right. Modeled thruster cones are used in Diaspora capital ships.
http://www.diaspora-game.com/

And then there's missiles. Thruster effect capabilities on missiles frankly suck. They're much less than what we can do with ships. Hence I'm seriously asking to look at modeled thruster cones again for missiles too.

Perhaps a modeler could add modeled thruster cones back to something like Helios and say, Orion. Then we'll see what we can do effects-wise and compare.

[Hades]

I like this idea, and actually I've been wanting this for a while now, as not only would they look better than sprites, they'd be no clipping issues and they'd be a lot better to use on irregularly shaped thrusters as well (i.e. anything not a complete circle).

[headdie]

Please, please, pretty please

[mjn.mixael]

Is it possible to do a mix off both? The flares look really nice on some things like the swarm missiles.

[Fury]

Missile flares? Those are separate thing altogether and should/would be used regardless.

It's just that missiles are limited to a thruster glow, trail and particle spew at the moment. There's no real thruster effect unless missile has modeled thruster cone, which no missiles today have. So thruster effects on missiles are far more limited than even on ships without modeled thruster cones.

Which is why modeled thruster cones probably should make a return for both.

[Herra Tohtori]

Modeled thrusters don't have the ever-annoying flickering problems, not to mention they would also be free of clipping issues. I'd say that the possibility definitely needs to be explored.

Maybe it would even be possible to do some distortion shader effects on the thrusters...

[The E]

Not until the material system gets finished.

[Dragon]

I think that modelled thrusters could be a good idea if done right, somebody could try to create a better thruster effect.
Also, I wonder how difficult would it be to add a function to PCS2 for creating thruster cones.

[Herra Tohtori]

Also, I wonder how difficult would it be to add a function to PCS2 for creating thruster cones.

My guess is: Very, considering it would have to forst somehow decide which parts of the model are supposed to be the thrusters.

Computers are not good at recognizing features like that without very complex programming. Then it would need to actually model the thruster cones...

[Dragon]

I was rather thinking about "generate cones" button, which would take radius of a thruster glowpoint and generate a simple cone with "thruster01" texture applied.
Perhaps it could even have a bit more functionality than that (for example, allow manipulating the lenght of the cone, and perhaps the radius of it's other end, allowing the thruster mesh to be a cone, cylinder or something inbetween).

[The E]

Nothing like that is ever simple.

[Dragon]

IIRC, one of the POF manipulation programs had a button to generate shield mesh, so why not thrusters?
Also, when I said "simple cone", I didn't meant that the implementation would be simple, but that the cone would be just a cone (to get more interesting shapes, a modeling program would be nessesary).

[The E]

Shield meshes are easy, since the only requirement for them is that they have to cover the entire ship. You can take a simple globe model, scale it to match the biggest bounding box in terms of dimensions, and you can be pretty sure that the shield will cover everything.

Modelling a thruster cone is not that hard, and will always yield better results than something autogenerated.

[Dragon]

I know (in fact, even I can do it, sans texturing), but I think that autogeneration could come in handy for editing existing models.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but autogenerating thruster cone means generating a cylinder of with radius of one of it's bases identical to the radius of a selected thruster glowpoint, height and radius of a second base entered in a window that'd pop up after pressing the button.
This would work good for circular thrusters and have the adventage of being quick and easy for anybody who know how to work with PCS2.

[Fury]

The problem is that shouldn't thruster cones be of same shape as thruster itself? Differently shaped thruster cone would just look weird. Not all thrusters are cones, and not all are even symmetrical.

[Dragon]

For those that are not, you'd need a modelling program, or a glow large enough to mask the difference.
As I said, autogeneration will never be a prefect method for everything, but for some ships (or testing the thruster effects) it may be good enough.

[Nohiki]

I'm not sure if i like more the pic or model thrusters. The modeled ones seem too boxy for me. It's supposed to be a stream of particles, so if it has sharp edges, it ain't good. It should be blurry. Not to mention that it should alter shape while turning. Having a straight cone on a Shrieke while circling around another fighter will look just weird.

[Dragon]

I think it should be done with cones, particles, trails and bitmaps for the full effect.
Cones: Short flames close to the exhaust, becoming faint rapidly.
Particles: Engine smoke, which is faint close to the exhaust, but becomes more visible further out.
Trails: Background for everything when on AB, could be also a contrail for regular flight in atmosphere.
Thruster Bitmaps: Glow around the engine (thruster flame could also be used as background for cones and partices, but it'd require an effect genius to pull this off).

Of course, not all of this may be fit for FS (especially smoke can look non-FSy).

[Hades]

I'm not sure if i like more the pic or model thrusters. The modeled ones seem too boxy for me. It's supposed to be a stream of particles, so if it has sharp edges, it ain't good. It should be blurry. Not to mention that it should alter shape while turning. Having a straight cone on a Shrieke while circling around another fighter will look just weird.

...
First off, the only modeled thrusters we've seen in great detail are the ones from retail, from 11 to 12 years ago. They certainly wouldn't be boxy now and they certainly would be able to have particles as well.

Also, I wouldn't think that the flame from an engine would turn in space. Ships have maneuvering thrusters you know (see: the ani with the Poseidon picking up a cargo container in FS1)

[Dragon]

It would, as the "flame" is in fact a trail.
Also, thrust vectoring in addition to manouvering thrusters.