[Bobboau]

get rid of HTL models, they arn't good for this

[Fineus]

Is there any way to specify "key geometry"? That is... the parts of the model that really matter where shadow is concerned? That way there'd be far fewer points of shadow being calculated - HTL models could be used and still cast shadows without a massive drop in FPS.

Just a thought...

[Bobboau]

there is, you make a low poly version of the hull and flag it as being the volume geometry. anything other than that is going to requier being done on the fly wich would negate it's usefullness

[Taristin]

So for the Fenris, since the old one is the level 1 LOD, use that, right?

[Bobboau]

could do that when a volume model isn't available

[Taristin]

Well... we would have to recompile with another object that'd be used as a volume model?

[Bobboau]

there are maybe four HTL models done, what youd need to do is make a new subobject, and recompile the POF.

[Taristin]

And the game would know not to render the subobject, correct? (I know I'm annoying, but I like to know how things work...)

[Bobboau]

yeah, it wouldn't even need to be textured (well it would but just so PCS would convert it corectly)

[KARMA]

relatively OT.. those shots make me really think we need an high poly hecate:)

[Singh]

Originally posted by KARMA
relatively OT.. those shots make me really think we need an high poly hecate:)

The hecate is pretty ok..just needs a LOT better textures than the one it currently has..

[Flipside]

Tell you what, we need a high poly Hatsheput, that one really does look odd at times, where the curves need smoothing out

[Trivial Psychic]

I'd like to report a bug with build-3.  A friend of mine was testing this out, and when he fired his hornets, the trails were more like dotted lines.  Now, these were Lightspeed's Hornet designs, so this may be partially due to the particle code in there, but I thought I'd mention this.

Later!

[Falcon]

Originally posted by Raa
Who wanted a sense of scale?
Ignore the crappy framerates and the horribly looking environment mapping.
This is me in a Kisou (roughly perseus/pegesus sized) By Enif Station



And this is the same mission. Guess where I am now...

 

  I can't stop looking at it!

Bob this is excellent! Cheers!

Oh and all hail king Bob!

[WMCoolmon]

Whats up with the side of the colossus in that pic?

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Flipside
Tell you what, we need a high poly Hatsheput, that one really does look odd at times, where the curves need smoothing out

Hat could probably be done relatively easily, as there aren't a wole lot of places that need detail added, it juts needs to be (selectively) smoothed.

Oh, and I suspect environment mapping is the culprit on the Callousness

[übermetroid]

Originally posted by Raa

You're not using -pcx32 are you? If you are, shut it down!

What should be turned on for the best look / best speed?

[WMCoolmon]

With the mediaVPs, probably

32-bit
-glow
-jpgtga
-shine
-pcx32

You can use pcxdds to gain a small boost but it will make textures look worse, how much depends on the texture.

[Bobboau]

I just realised something that's gona make things a lot harder, evey ship both casts and receives shadows - from it's self - wich means I can't do a check to see if there is nothing behind or in front of it. I will still be able to get rid of things that are too far away to be seen easily and a lot of subobjects, but this is going to make things hurt more than I thought it was going to.

[WMCoolmon]

You know, if each ship has a bounding box that encompasses it, you could just check to see if any other ship's bounding box lies within the first ship's bounding box. Then apply shadows if it does.

You could also do some culling with the direction of lights, ie no ship that lies between a ship and a light souce is going to receive any shadows from the latter ship because of the light source.
Edit: Revisement of that idea....
If you form a line between a given ship (A) and a light source, another ship that forms an acute angle with that line will receive no shadows from ship A.

AKA a ship closer to the light will receive no shadows from a ship father from the light.