[Retsof]

See Title.

[Jeff Vader]

Shiny?

[Topgun]

no, mirror.

[Jeff Vader]

Mirror is shiny.

[castor]

Go to shipslab (F3) and look closely to Ulysses cockpit with and without env. Should be clear.

[Topgun]

Mirror is shiny.

spec is shiny.
metal is shiny, it has spec. glass is shiny, it has mirror and spec.
we speak cavemen. cavemen good wolf.

[Herra Tohtori]

In a nutshell:

Environmental mapping makes ship's surface reflect the environment (background textures) in addition to light sources (specular reflections).

The intensity, or strength of the environmental reflection from a surface will depend on the shinemap on two possible levels.

First, if the shinemap does not have an alpha channel, env mapping uses the RGB intensity of the shinemap for the intensity of environmental reflections..

Second, if the shinemap has an alpha channel, that will be used as instead to determine the intensity of the reflection, while RGB takes care of the intensity and colour of light source reflections (specular lighting). Fully black alpha channel means that the area does not reflect the environment at all, while white alpha channel means full intensity reflection, making a mirror-like effect. Of course, usually alpha channel is used to manage transparency in image editing, so actually making the alpha channel like FS2_Open likes it will mean you will need to first make the shinemap and test it with no env mapping enabled, then apply a proper alpha mask to it and save it with the alpha channel to make properly managed environmental reflections for the ship.

Alpha env mapping is significantly better way to deal with envmapping than simple RGB intensity, (though not ideal) since it gives an opportunity to have parts like glass and chromed parts reflect the full environmental reflection (or at least high intensity reflection, depending on what looks good...) while parts like non-polished metal will retain specular reflection, but have much lower intensity or no environmental reflection at all.

[Grizzly]

Alpha env mapping is significantly better way to deal with envmapping than simple RGB intensity, (though not ideal) since it gives an opportunity to have parts like glass and chromed parts reflect the full environmental reflection (or at least high intensity reflection, depending on what looks good...) while parts like non-polished metal will retain specular reflection, but have much lower intensity or no environmental reflection at all.

Which you can clearly see on the triton, who's hull is made of polished daimond.

[Vasudan Admiral]

You realise that particular mirrorsyndrome case has been fixed about 5 times by 5 different people? The triton in the beta VPs is mirror free.

[Retsof]

But it dosen't reflect the environment, It just make that generic nebula reflection brighter.

[blowfish]

But it dosen't reflect the environment, It just make that generic nebula reflection brighter.

It reflects the background, which includes the skybox (usually starfield.pof) and any nebulae/planets that are there too.