[jdjtcagle]

I DID NOT MAKE THIS... its setekh's... just having some fun modifing it:)

[Ashrak]

ewww

[jdjtcagle]

I know...

[Jiggyhound]

o_O

messy

[Shinobi]

Can we see the original?

[Flipside]

The Beeeemz!!! My eyes!

How did you make that Sobek look like a Romulan warbird? hehehehe

[Fineus]

http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/hosted/array/array.php?image=100&page=0

[Stryke 9]

See, this is why most people don't mess around with others' work. Without anything to directly compare it to, you end up looking a lot better if the results are iffy.

[jdjtcagle]

that is a result of free time and lack of people in FS2 multiplayer:D

Oh and I have NO!!! experience or the tools to make it descent;)

[Lightspeed]

The JPG compression artifacts look horrible.

[jdjtcagle]

yes, yes tell me about it.
back when I made this, I didn't know about formats so i would just click yes to whatever menu came up:)

[Lightspeed]

don't worry. Even "popular" game developers *cough*egosoft!*cough* do mistakes like that.

The ugly compression artifacts on X² must've been some of the worst i've seen yet.

[jdjtcagle]

man, you realy hate that game (with a passion)
I think that game, what really captured my attention was the stars in the background... which reminds me when are those backgrounds going into Freespace?? playing and seeing those really sorry multicolored background crap is really hurting my head:)

[Fineus]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
don't worry. Even "popular" game developers *cough*egosoft!*cough* do mistakes like that.

I'm going to give you a new custom title at this rate

[jdjtcagle]

Wondering...What do you have to do to get one of those custom titles?

[Corsair]

It's errm....different. Not exactly an improvement...
Everything's much harder, with much more contrast.

[Lightspeed]

I'll show you guys - might be hard to get what I mean if you:

a) do not watch for details
b) have a broken monitor (brightness-wise)
c) play with lots of sunlight in your room

Lookie here, what I can do with some screenshots:

This is a screenshot of my FS2nebulae, which i'm gonna take as a comparison reference


This is taken with my normal gamma & brightness values.

Now, the same situation in X2:


Do you see the artifacts? Look at the edges of the nebula. If you cannot see them, your monitor is broken (you should be able to see that, if you synch your monitor with any decent test chart).

For those whose monitor isn't working that well, I have boosted the levels of the image to show it better:

Boosted FS2 Image:


You can see the contrast is a bit screwy bit its still a gradient. It looks like it is, a puffy whispy nebula (no hidden artifacts)

Boosted X2 Image:


See the UGLY edges, weird pixels, and most important- The false colours. Typical compression artifacts, of the really bad type.

I could remove those problems within about 3 minutes, but egosoft either didnt care, or didnt notice. In both cases, it sucks, as its really visible in-game and just looks wrong. It's not that bad in some systems, but horrible on others.

[jdjtcagle]

I was never arguing about the background... Just the stars of the game in general.  Freespace 2 random dots. X2 galaxies, clusters, variety in color, size, ect.
Thats all I'm talking about the quality of the game just the beauty of the stars in the background:)

[Lightspeed]

X² looks pretty random on most parts too, actually. Plus, there's compression artifacts around them (notice the little boxes around some of them in image 2) - also, I don't like the bright colourful lenseflares among the X² background stars.

But yep, I agree FS2's stars could use a little upgrade

[jdjtcagle]

also, wouldn't you think that in a red star system the background would be red to black over the sky?? does that happen?? Something like the command brief ani in FS1 where it shows the footage of tombaugh station being attacked by the lucifer