Wow.
BTW, could that be triggered in game, with SEXPs?
That effect is simply amazing.
Once the material system that The_E was working on turns up, then yes that becomes possible along with lots of other possibilities for procedural effect shaders.
Once you can pass arbitrary game and ship values to the shader, you can do *amazing* things. Coupled with a material-replace SEXP, the possibilities are endless.
- A while back I was working on a Warp Effect shader that squeezes the ship into a small tube and stretches it to infinity (well, a long way) as it warps. It looked really cool, but couldn't be used as there was no way for the shader to know that the ship was warping.
Equally, all the Star Trek warp effects (TOS, Next Gen and the reboot) can be done quite easily with shaders.
So The_E - how is it going? Is there anything any of us can do to help you?