[Dragon]

Indeed, it would be great if we got actual shadows into FSO.

[karx11erx]

Cool smoke fx are far more impressive than shadows.

[The E]

Maybe, but I think that those are more appropriate if we were to work on a game in atmosphere. Don't get me wrong, having those would be a good thing, but I believe that the addition of shadowing would have a greater effect on FSO's atmosphere than smoke clouds.

[karx11erx]

I am not talking about smoke clouds, but about rocket smoke trails.

[Kolgena]

I'd still say shadows would look a lot nicer on top of what we already have than new missile trails would. Also, probably not the greatest use of resources to render smoke trails for up to 30 missiles at once.

[General Battuta]

How about we let people work on what they want to work on, instead of trying to drag them about?

If he's got experience with smoke trails and he'd like to help with smoke trails, smoke trails it shall be.

[Dragon]

I am not talking about smoke clouds, but about rocket smoke trails.

I'm working on it, though the effect is quite excessive, recent improvements in FSO give it acceptable preformance.

I'm also making a version for Mediavps, but I don't have too much free time, so it's not going quickly.

[Droid803]

I question your assertion that it has 'acceptable preformance (sic)' on the grounds that you do not have an FPS meter displayed.

[Commander Zane]

Cool smoke fx are far more impressive than shadows.

Speaking of which, why did the D2X-XL team think it would be a good idea to remove a majority of the smoke options? Those are by are the most hardware-intensive effects out of anything XL uses and I no longer get the option to turn my ship trails / missile trails off? Even with ship shrapnel at Off I get a massive frame skip from exploding robots because of what smoke effects do appear when they die.

Put it this way: I can have everything else at the highest settings. Everything. Except anything relating to smoke effects, anything above Off and boom, 2FPS.

---Not the right place for this, but I need to know.

[karx11erx]

I don't want to appear rude, but those smoke trails don't look too convincing. What do you think about something like this (confined spaces):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G58vaNl4Us

or this (wide spaces):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faAdBuVkfKg

You can turn smoke trails down or off. Why most options got removed has been explained in a lengthy article in my worklog on my website. Btw, the real killer is not just smoke, but soft blended smoke. Don't use the highest render quality, and D2X-XL won't do that. I think that if you could be bothered to read the D2X-XL worklog and forum, you might already have found answers for your questions and solutions for your performance issues. I have explained all that stuff often and lengthy enough. That you have maxed out all options but your machine can't handle smoke at those settings tells me that you didn't try to find out what would be the right mix of settings for your machine - and that is exactly why so many options have been removed. There are too many people like you who max everything out and then don't understand the side effects on certain other settings. Lotsa + smoke + highest render quality -> soft particle blending, which requires depth (Z) buffer reads and comparisons in shaders. I also wonder which D2X-XL version you are using. There have been major performance improvements regarding depth buffer handling recently.

Yeah, so once again I wrote stuff I have written over and over before because someone couldn't be arsed to get his ass in the know by reading the easy to find relevant resources about it.

[Dragon]

I question your assertion that it has 'acceptable preformance (sic)' on the grounds that you do not have an FPS meter displayed.

It's a release build, it runs smoothly on my machine (which is rather average). I'd give it at least 60 FPS, I'll have to check with a meter to be sure.

I don't want to appear rude, but those smoke trails don't look too convincing. What do you think about something like this:

As I said, I'm still working on it. Nuke's particle code allows a lot of options and I have yet to try some of them.
Also, it's an old version, Mediavps one has an updated effect, which looks better.
I've played D2X-XL and I would like to have smoke trails similar to the ones it uses. I just need some time to work on them.

[karx11erx]

You wouldn't need to work on them. I could make a stand alone module out of the code and explain how to use it, and you would get those smoke trails just so. How about it?

As I have seen, FS2 still uses the old vm_* vector stuff that's already in Descent 1 (fixed point arithmetic). I can support that as well as floating point vectors.

If I'd get some more suitable textures, I could also enhance them. The golden heat exhaust textures you are using might be a nice addition to what I built. The biggest thing about smoke trails are good textures, and the right mix of them.

[Commander Zane]

I don't want to appear rude, but those smoke trails don't look too convincing. What do you think about something like this (confined spaces):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G58vaNl4Us

or this (wide spaces):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faAdBuVkfKg

You can turn smoke trails down or off. Why most options got removed has been explained in a lengthy article in my worklog on my website. Btw, the real killer is not just smoke, but soft blended smoke. Don't use the highest render quality, and D2X-XL won't do that. I think that if you could be bothered to read the D2X-XL worklog and forum, you might already have found answers for your questions and solutions for your performance issues. I have explained all that stuff often and lengthy enough. That you have maxed out all options but your machine can't handle smoke at those settings tells me that you didn't try to find out what would be the right mix of settings for your machine - and that is exactly why so many options have been removed. There are too many people like you who max everything out and then don't understand the side effects on certain other settings. Lotsa + smoke + highest render quality -> soft particle blending, which requires depth (Z) buffer reads and comparisons in shaders. I also wonder which D2X-XL version you are using. There have been major performance improvements regarding depth buffer handling recently.

Yeah, so once again I wrote stuff I have written over and over before because someone couldn't be arsed to get his ass in the know by reading the easy to find relevant resources about it.

Actually I have experimented with the options on 1.15.125, that's one of the reasons why I know I can go through with most everything except the smoke at higher settings. I haven't checked since then until today, and even with the settings down to mimic the standard Descent II's graphics the smoke effects are still framerate killers. So thanks for assuming that I don't understand anything about mix-and-matching game settings.

And actually, this is the funny thing. When D2X-XL used to have the in-depth settings, I had no problems finding the right combination of high settings and optimal framerates. Now it's simplified and I have more problems getting the desired results.

[General Battuta]

Could the discussion of Descent please be moved to a Descent forum?

Thanks.

[karx11erx]

Could the discussion of Descent please be moved to a Descent forum?

Thanks.

Indeed. Zane, please register on my forum and lets see how we can help you there.

[NGTM-1R]

I am not talking about smoke clouds, but about rocket smoke trails.

I believe Diaspora has already cracked this problem, though persistence taxes the engine too much.

[The E]

Persistence makes little sense in space, anyway.

[karajorma]

So does sound, but we're not turning that off.

Rule of cool > *

[Dragon]

You wouldn't need to work on them. I could make a stand alone module out of the code and explain how to use it, and you would get those smoke trails just so. How about it?

As I have seen, FS2 still uses the old vm_* vector stuff that's already in Descent 1 (fixed point arithmetic). I can support that as well as floating point vectors.

If I'd get some more suitable textures, I could also enhance them. The golden heat exhaust textures you are using might be a nice addition to what I built. The biggest thing about smoke trails are good textures, and the right mix of them.

Everything I'm doing doesn't involve any code edits, particle system is already pretty good, I just have to explore all the options it gives.
Of course, if you can improve particle code, then it'd be welcome, but remember to allow as many values as possible to be customized in tables. From what you say, it seems that all edits in D2X-XL have to be done in code. This is not the case with FS2_Open, which features such things at tables: http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Tables

[karx11erx]

D2X-XL reads its persistent particle system settings from disk. No problem to read it from tables.

You are giving me the impression that you'd rather do this on your own instead of achieving something in a team.