[Subspace Anomaly]

Hello, I'm not entirely sure, even after reading readmes :>, whether this is the right place to discuss or not.

Anyway to thing, since it's 2011, and probably majority of people are operating with at least 3.x OpenGL hardware, I wonder if game should attempt to look more like it's cinematics (those from age where they appeared unbelievable, are nowdays pretty much doable in realtime).
I'd love to create a thread about missing effects that might once be added and those which would community not really like in game.

1) Volumetric effects (mainly light effects, but might be also fog)

Sorry for pitiful size, but this is taken from briefing animation in mission after capturing Tatanis.
This effect would be very helpful for replacing old sun effects that more or less just randomly blind player (even in nebula :S) while creating very spectacular effect at little HW expense.

2) Dynamic range

Taken from FS1 cinematic intro.
As you can see all the objects in the view truly appear to be affected by very bright planet they are orbiting, though there is also planet lighting applied and blur, it alone would give better impression of strong lighting in the scenes like planets.

3) Materializing effects



While FS1 effect is more complicated, FS2 effect is nearly doable with fixed pipeline functions with double render, it only needs blooming. Implementing this would not only allow having same quality for custom made content, but also sound would be matching image :d.

4) Shadows


I think this was hot topic in the past already, so don't dare to add more than honorable mention.

5) Motion Blur


Taken from FS2 cinematic intro, great effect for better game impression, though also quite a distraction. However objects appearing to be in motion would definitely add whole new life to dogfights.

6) Depth of Field



I don't particularly like this one, however taken from FS2 cinematic, it could definitely add something. Though this usually assumes player is always looking at centre of his screen, thus being OK in cinematics, but not great in game.

7) Lens effects



Nothing really new, there is already something like this, however it might use some improvements.


Now there are more things I haven't brought up ( like smoke effects ), I think it'd nice to share some thoughts and wishes and perhaps inspire self or others to even add some of those or deny them as unfitting game.

Hope that spellcheck helped :d.

[Luis Dias]

All of those are pretty nice additions, but the problem as I apparently see it, is that there aren't graphical coders at work around here. Some time ago, a Descent modder came here with big hopes to get shadows working in FS2, but I haven't heard of him since.

If you are so inclined to make these changes yourself, I don't think anyone here would not put you in a pedestal.

[The E]

Yes, all of these things would be nice to have.

But.

Unless you are a coder, experienced in OpenGL and willing to do this yourself, do not expect this to get done anytime soon. There are quite a few things being worked on at the moment in terms of graphics, some of which may provide the groundwork for the effects you are asking for, but getting this things completed is still some way away.

In the end, while we are always open to suggestions, do not be disappointed if we are not jumping on it immediately.

Oh, and one more thing. We do not look kindly on people proposing such sweeping changes without willingness or ability to provide assistance beyond mere encouragement. That may sound overly harsh, and I apologize for any insult caused, but backseat coders, just like armchair generals, are something we do not like very much.

[pecenipicek]

2) Dynamic range

Taken from FS1 cinematic intro.
As you can see all the objects in the view truly appear to be affected by very bright planet they are orbiting, though there is also planet lighting applied and blur, it alone would give better impression of strong lighting in the scenes like planets.

Unless i misunderstand horribly how stuff works in general, that'd be doable via shaders. Coding it is up to yourself. (this is basically proper HDR instead of just bloom if i'm not mistaken, right?)

3) Materializing effects



While FS1 effect is more complicated, FS2 effect is nearly doable with fixed pipeline functions with double render, it only needs blooming. Implementing this would not only allow having same quality for custom made content, but also sound would be matching image :d.

If i remember correctly, MjnMixael and somebody fiddled a bit with an ingame cloak/decloak effect, which involved texture replacements at specified intervals and such...

5) Motion Blur


Taken from FS2 cinematic intro, great effect for better game impression, though also quite a distraction. However objects appearing to be in motion would definitely add whole new life to dogfights.

This was in during some very early test builds by some guy about a year ago (i forgot the persons name, so sorry), and the effect was.. crap. Headache-inducing monstrosity.

6) Depth of Field



I don't particularly like this one, however taken from FS2 cinematic, it could definitely add something. Though this usually assumes player is always looking at centre of his screen, thus being OK in cinematics, but not great in game.

Shader-doable if memory serves? Not 100% sure on this one tho.



And heed what The_E said. Unless you can code it yourself, dont expect anything.

[mjn.mixael]

3) Materializing effects



While FS1 effect is more complicated, FS2 effect is nearly doable with fixed pipeline functions with double render, it only needs blooming. Implementing this would not only allow having same quality for custom made content, but also sound would be matching image :d.

If i remember correctly, MjnMixael and somebody fiddled a bit with an ingame cloak/decloak effect, which involved texture replacements at specified intervals and such...

Yes, for use in-mission. Though a built in version of this specifically would be handy.. We could then lose all the interface files (that's a large chunk if you are using my new ones with the HTL models) and just have it done in the code. You know, stick it in with 3D weapon select...

BUT, I get ahead of the times here. Having that working is a long-shot.

[Valathil]

All of those are pretty nice additions, but the problem as I apparently see it, is that there aren't graphical coders at work around here.

[Dragon]

3 and 7 are done, 5 and 6 may not be a good idea (DoF looks good in a movie and motion blur was in and didn't looked good), 4 is being worked on.
From these, only 1 and 2 look truly interesting. 2 might be doable via shaders (though I don't know for sure) and 1 has been partially done via scripting (of course, it'd be great to see volumetric effects implemented into the engine).

[mjn.mixael]

3 and 7 are done, 5 and 6 may not be a good idea (DoF looks good in a movie and motion blur was in and didn't looked good), 4 is being worked on.
From these, only 1 and 2 look truly interesting. 2 might be doable via shaders (though I don't know for sure) and 1 has been partially done via scripting (of course, it'd be great to see volumetric effects implemented into the engine).

What bologna is this? Materializing effects are NOT done... they are hacked. (using names not numbers so people don't have to go up and down to figure out what I'm talking about...)

Also you must expand your mind! Motion Blur and Depth of Field WOULD be a good idea, especially if we could control them with sexps. You know what seriously helps rendered cutscenes stand apart from ingame ones? Those effects. They may not be good during actual flying time.. but ingame cutscenes could make serious use of them.

BUT this is all a moot point!

It's not like these are new suggestions. The issue isn't whether or not they'd be good or useful. The issue is whether or not the SCP can. And currently? They really aren't a near-future reality.

[Kolgena]

I've heard that some sort of sunshaft shader based off the one from Crysis had been made by the same dude who first made bloom. Is it possible to clean that one up, or is it messy beyond repair?

[Subspace Anomaly]

Light Scattering/Shadowmaps should be somewhat less trickier than the rest, because for most of their implementations you just need to scene more times.

I've never touched freespace code before, but will hopefuly read it soon enough (from what I understand setting up scene with different parameters won't be that big problem).

To have a really good idea about effects and their complexity I reccomend reading GPU Gems which NVidia released for free online:
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_part01.html
It might be interesting even to those who don't understand a thing.

[The E]

Light Scattering/Shadowmaps should be somewhat less trickier than the rest, because for most of their implementations you just need to scene more times.

I've never touched freespace code before, but will hopefuly read it soon enough (from what I understand setting up scene with different parameters won't be that big problem).

Ahhhahahahaha.

Haha.

*sniff*

I'm sorry, but you are quite underestimating the challenge here. Here's a quote from taylor (our retired master coder) on the matter:

If I remember correctly though, I decided to hold off of further development of shadow support in order to implement proper pre-render support.  That was for performance as well a visual improvements and would also lay the ground work for doing things like shadows.  It would have been possible to add shadows without that  initial work, but the performance and quality wouldn't have been as good, plus the shadow code implementation would have just been shoehorned in like so many other things (which would have hurt in the long-run).  Essentially I decided to add in basic material sorting (opaque and transparent), early Z-pass (greatly improved speed and to address some lighting issues), improved culling (object and subobject), and better sorting (to fix render order glitches).  And that would pretty much lay the ground work for some decent shadow support.

That's basically what you'd have to do.

To have a really good idea about effects and their complexity I reccomend reading GPU Gems which NVidia released for free online:
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_part01.html
It might be interesting even to those who don't understand a thing.

I'm quite familiar with the GPU Gems series. However, reading a paper about an effect, and actually integrating it into our pipeline in a performant way are two very different things.

[Nuke]

3) Materializing effects



While FS1 effect is more complicated, FS2 effect is nearly doable with fixed pipeline functions with double render, it only needs blooming. Implementing this would not only allow having same quality for custom made content, but also sound would be matching image :d.

If i remember correctly, MjnMixael and somebody fiddled a bit with an ingame cloak/decloak effect, which involved texture replacements at specified intervals and such...

Yes, for use in-mission. Though a built in version of this specifically would be handy.. We could then lose all the interface files (that's a large chunk if you are using my new ones with the HTL models) and just have it done in the code. You know, stick it in with 3D weapon select...

BUT, I get ahead of the times here. Having that working is a long-shot.

i think for this kinda thing i will just wait for a materials system proper. once that is implemented it should be fairly easy to do procedural cloaking effect that do not require loading a huge texture animation for each ship. should work on interface effects too. kinda wish we had some render options for scripting functions like renderFrame() and renderTechModel(). like wireframe, textured wireframe, blur, clipping boxes etc, and some kind of texture replacement for tech models (we might have something that can accomplist this already). bottom graphic can be done by something like this.

1: render wireframe ship to texture
2: render textured ship to texture
3: render grid procedurally
4: create 2 polygons, their with should be the same and their combined height should equal width, interpolate their height dimention so that one grows in height as the other shrinks, maintaining a square. uv space should assume both are mapped square. use the wireframe texture on one and the textured texture on the other. animate the squares so it appears a scan line is turning a wireframe render into a textured render
5: draw a big glowey green line over the seam
6: when the scanline part of the animation is over with, animate the grid and rendered texture so that it looks like it tilts to isometric, and then rotate the ship.

most of this can be done with scripting now. we dont have script access to wireframe draw mode though, but the rest can be done.

[Dragon]

IIRC, somebody (The_E?) was working on material system and made some interesting progress, so maybe we'll see some news about that in forseeable future.

[Nuke]

IIRC, somebody (The_E?) was working on material system and made some interesting progress, so maybe we'll see some news about that in forseeable future.

il believe it when i see it, but his specs looked good on paper.

[Valathil]

number 3 is practically running on my pc now ( the fs1 one ) just need to do the whole **** that sorounds passing a timer to the shader and everything. Not in the near future MY ASS

[mjn.mixael]

 

Ok, can I make a bit of a request then...?

I would love to see that working for 3d ship/weapon select... Perhaps a table to define options? (fs1 vs fs2 style)

[Valathil]

yeah i know you would. thats what im doing but not today, too tired this is harder than i thought getting it cleanly into the engine. fs2 effect comes when fs1 is up and running. fs2 effect wont need a shader which is much easier to implement cause i dont have to pass parameters through 10 layers of abstraction. which is also why im not doing it first cause its BOOOOORING

[Subspace Anomaly]

Essentially I decided to add in basic material sorting...

Wait,  that almost sounds like he's done quite a bunch of it. Correct me if I don't understand, perhaps I should just look myself in code to see.

I would love to see that working for 3d ship/weapon select... Perhaps a table to define options? (fs1 vs fs2 style)

If it is done by shader you should just put in different shader in your mod and it'll compile and work itselfs.

However, reading a paper about an effect, and actually integrating it into our pipeline in a performant way are two very different things.

Indeed, good thing we are in the age of easily accessable information.

I've heard that some sort of sunshaft shader based off the one from Crysis had been made by the same dude who first made bloom. Is it possible to clean that one up, or is it messy beyond repair?

Shader itself is not a problem, however you need another render pass to set it up. And according to The E  current render pass is slow so one can't just reuse it without drasticly improving it. This'd be same for shadows as well and basicly quite a big bunch of other things.

[Kolgena]

number 3 is practically running on my pc now ( the fs1 one ) just need to do the whole **** that sorounds passing a timer to the shader and everything. Not in the near future MY ASS

wtf how do you do what you do?

[Valathil]

wtf how do you do what you do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96kwILL35ig

EDIT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apKv9OO8sgQ