mirror for spits

[Guppy35]

ok, put a mirror on your plane that covers some of your 6 so you dont have to press a button. or, you could just press that button to look at your 6 and see the guy coming down on you from 1k away. if your honestly too lazy to push a button, then why fly the plane at all? and if you said they were just a field mod, it wont happen. and just because they came later on doesnt mean it would get added.

Was not my point and you know it.  Your comment suggested they were useless.  They weren't.  When you state it as fact, when it's not, I'm gonna call you on it

[guncrasher]

I don't know why you guys argue about it, HT already said no.


semp

[nrshida]

Perhaps he'll change his mind when he realises how popular the idea is?

[des506]

 i reckon it would be a programming mayhem.. tho i know not much about programming...since HT said no... we should all listen... 

p.s thank for the bbs link.. didn't know there were so many threads abt it...

[nrshida]

I think OpenGL will do the work for you, but it's been a few years since I programmed using it.

[gyrene81]

I think OpenGL will do the work for you, but it's been a few years since I programmed using it.

where did you get the idea that ah used opengl?   

[nrshida]

I do not remember the origin only the impression. However if they use DirectX there will be most likely a cloned version of the same functionality.

[gyrene81]

I do not remember the origin only the impression. However if they use DirectX there will be most likely a cloned version of the same functionality.

sorry man, it's directx and it won't "do the work for you" or "economically model a mirror". just look at the effects of self shadows.

This pretty much sums up why we choose DirectX.

DirectX has come a long way from it's start, I still hate it's driver stablity problems, but as of DX8 it has become a very clean API to work with.

My first use of a 3D api was glide.

My 2nd use was OpenGL, ported warbirds completely to OpenGL then had to report to DirectX just because there were no completed OpenGL sets that work.

As far as the "BEST" API, that question is realy irellevent in the market place. Take a look at all PC games sold what % work with OpenGL.

DirectX simply is the standard for PC games.

As far as the performance side there are so many posiblities of how one can run better than another, it's just not posible to take just the API into account with out how the appliction is written to use it. Same thing when hardware T&L, the resones it can run slower is do to code optimzations you can do. Take a look at AH terrain, the terrain does not need to be lit every frame, it only needs to be relit when the sun moves. If you were using hardware T&L you would have to light it every frame. This is one of the types of optimizations that can be done in software, but when using hardware to do T&L you are using the brute force method.

As speeds of GPU's change the balance of how to do things can shift,but once again you can't say which is faster or better looking with out taking the application , and it's methods into account.

And as far as First Person shooters go, they have one huge advanatage in performance and 1 disadvantage. The Advanatage they have is that they typicly render far fewer triangles. This is do to the flights sims need to render terrain.

There disadvantge is that thy have to do many more lighting effects.

The other emense difference is scale. In AH the world is 512x512 miles. But the grapich eng has to display items from 20 miles out down to items the size of a cockpit needle.

This forces the use of double precision floating point at some points in the graphic pipline.

First person games do not suffer from this problem.

HiTech

[nrshida]

Ah that's interesting. DirectX 8.0 was a major change and suspiciously similar to OpenGL (all of a sudden). I haven't used DirectX, isn't there a version of the stencil buffer in DirectX?

[hitech]

nrshida, the issue of mirrors is that you have to render the world twice.

HiTech

[nrshida]

Surely not the whole world? Can't you clip it out with a frustrum? Could you not just render a bland generic terrain texture if the plane is pointing upwards (same with the sky pointing downwards) and ignore anything beyond 1000 yards? I'm just doodling, I'm sure it's not a superficial change if it wasn't incorporated from the start. Thanks for the answer anyway.

You couldn't tell me which API you use for Force Feedback could you?

[guncrasher]

Surely not the whole world? Can't you clip it out with a frustrum? Could you not just render a bland generic terrain texture if the plane is pointing upwards (same with the sky pointing downwards) and ignore anything beyond 1000 yards? I'm just doodling, I'm sure it's not a superficial change if it wasn't incorporated from the start. Thanks for the answer anyway.

You couldn't tell me which API you use for Force Feedback could you?

nshida not speaking for hightech, but i am pretty sure he already thought about ways to do it and he thought it was best to not do it.  If i remember correctly most of the objections were if possible how good a system would it be.  think about it, you have a square about 4x3 (as an example) that is showing what is behind you, how detailed do you think it's gonna be?   all you would see is little dots moving around with no idea how far they are, if they were big enough to display the shape of airplane, they would already be shooting at you.  so, it's basically lot of work for nothing.  i remember in aw we had mirrors and they were pretty much useless.

semp

[nrshida]

Well it doesn't hurt to make constructive suggestions. The mirrors did actually feature on several real aircraft after all.

[guncrasher]

Well it doesn't hurt to make constructive suggestions. The mirrors did actually feature on several real aircraft after all.

nothing wrong with that nshida, but we have discussed it to death in the past 2 years.  it's kinnda like asking to repair your airplane at the rearm pad.  or vh having a resupply pad.  those have been discussed to death and they still come out at least once a month.

me i wish  when i spawn and there's another pilot spawning at same time that I wouldnt see the guy sitting behind me biting his lips.  it makes me nervous.



semp

[nrshida]