[Marcov]

Simply put, I'm looking for backgrounds that look scary (e.g. the inside of a horrible huge ship, fire and brimstone hell, tunnel of doom, etc.). Can anyone please post pictures of them and then put their download links here?

Thanks.

[Deadly in a Shadow]

What about the nighteyes-subspace tunnel. Looks scary though.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

You could look for the Karos graveyard from Homeworld. It is not exactly inside a horribly huge ship, but I remembered going holy sh** when I understood that yes, those background regular shapes (as opposed to irregular nebulae and stuff we usually see in the background) looked like pieces of an insanely large ship.

[Rodo]

Scary background is somewhat of a general concept, what's scary for some is not scary for others.
You thinking of a nightmare mission?, cause if that's what you´re thinking maybe going full nebula without background would be best.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Or full nebulae background without a nebula?

No that'd just be being on 'shrooms

[LoneKnight]

Was it ever possible to create animated backgrounds?

[Deadly in a Shadow]

Was it ever possible to create animated backgrounds?

The only animated background I know is the subspace tunnel (retail and the nighteyes-version).

[Dragon]

Animated skybox should be doable.

[Snail]

is an animated 2048*2048 texture really a good idea?

[MatthTheGeek]

There has been a discussion on IRC not so long ago about that. Making animated skyboxes is technically possible, the same way it is possible to have animated glowmaps. However, it is not technically feasible, because you'll have to load every single frame of the animation, let's say 30 frames, for each of the 6 faces, at 2048². That'll be more than sufficient to make most recent systems asplode, not to mention older ones.

Remember the fps drop you have looking at Karunas and Sanctii in WiH ? It's ridiculous compared to what that would do.

[Deadly in a Shadow]

There has been a discussion on IRC not so long ago about that. Making animated skyboxes is technically possible, the same way it is possible to have animated glowmaps. However, it is not technically feasible, because you'll have to load every single frame of the animation, let's say 30 frames, for each of the 6 faces, at 2048². That'll be more than sufficient to make most recent systems asplode, not to mention older ones.

Remember the fps drop you have looking at Karunas and Sanctii in WiH ? It's ridiculous compared to what that would do.

Like.....at least two Solaris destroyers on the field?

[MatthTheGeek]

If your Solaris has 2048² maps, then about 180 Solarises on field. Minus polies.

[Rodo]

Animated skyboxes are doable, BtRL featured one for the asteroid field... or was it an animated dds in front of the real skybox maybe?.

Nevertheless it's doable, the question is if that's really REALLY necessary.

[Deadly in a Shadow]

If your Solaris has 2048² maps, then about 180 Solarises on field. Minus polies.

Uhhhhh......wow.

[MatthTheGeek]

Well, actually, not that much. Let's make the calculus.

Solaris has, IIRC, 2 textures. Each of them has a diffuse, a glow, a shine and a normal map. So we have 8 maps on the Solaris.

If we have an animated background with 30 frames, we're at 30*6 = 180 maps.

So we're actually at 22.5 Solarises, minus polies. 5.6 Solarises if they're using 4096² maps versus 2048² for the skyboxes.

I'm not convinced this comparison is very pertinent. Ships in general will be much more performance-eating than skyboxes, with polies, collision detection, weapons...

EDIT: Also, keep in mind that even if you put 22 Solaris on field, maps will be loaded only once on the memory. You'd need 22 Solarises equivalent with different maps each. Have fun with that.

[Macfie]

Take a look at the background emporium on the freespace wiki.  Singh has some interesting backgrounds.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Background_Emporium

[Marcov]

You could look for the Karos graveyard from Homeworld. It is not exactly inside a horribly huge ship, but I remembered going holy sh** when I understood that yes, those background regular shapes (as opposed to irregular nebulae and stuff we usually see in the background) looked like pieces of an insanely large ship.

Picture, please.

Also, just for your information, you could actually use the maps from a ship and then put it up as a background in FRED. See here, it looks like I'm inside an infinitely large Orion;



Cool, though, but it isn't "exactly" like inside a huge epic ship.

Just for your own eyecandy and due to some nostalgia, I'm posting this picture of a rather scary SkyRoads background "black hole":



Basically, it just looks like a subspace tunnel, but being rather dark and black makes it eerie.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Journey to Hiigara posted decent shots in its hosting request here. You should ask them if you want more pics or the skybox itself. Or google it, there is some good shots of the background on the first image page.

[Marcov]

Kind of funny to make debris of a mere 10 kilometer ship a background .

[Angelus]

Animated skyboxes are doable, BtRL featured one for the asteroid field... or was it an animated dds in front of the real skybox maybe?.

Nevertheless it's doable, the question is if that's really REALLY necessary.

The rotating asteroids belt was a huge separate model, that was placed like a ship in the mission.