Eye Candy - Picture

[Ozark]

Ok...Stop and think where we were in 1991. >>>>Now forward to 2001. Folks, we have come a long way.

The future is closer that you think.  

Oz



------------------
332nd Flying Mongrels

[PakRat]

Rendering away! It's running at 45-48 pixels per second so it should only take 4-5 hours to do this image at 1024 x 768 resolution. It's 4% complete on second pass from a 2x2 preview.

CPU is AMD T-Bird running at 928 MHz on Abit KT7 MB, 256 Meg RAM at 103 MHz FSB.

Also found out the strike.pov file already has a bunch of alternate camera locations so that the different ships and scene components could be previewed / adjusted.

------------------
Rape, pillage, then burn...

[Sandman_SBM]

Thanks for the email, Pakrat... I've got it running.  

[Fox29]

Xcellant picture..I now have it as my wallpaper..thanks  

[Saintaw]

Yup OZ, the beginning of the 90's compared to today is quite...(falcon3 came out in 92 if I remember well)

Picture Falcon 3 and Take any of the sims out today...we have gone a long way.

Intel declared to have 5-Gigs CPU's out on the Market in about 4 years from now (with their 3micron Technology).

Saw<--- already picturing himself, strapped in a G-Suit in front of his desk  

[Ghosth]

Yep, the next ten years are going to be exciteing!

A friend was just teling me about a magazine article he read where they are doing printed circuits on plastic film useing special inks and an off the shelf bubblejet printer.

LED's, memory cells,  seems the sky is pretty much the limit and the curcuits ran on VERY low power levels. Seems the possiblities are endless.  

[PakRat]

I'm sure it will come - and video processors like the GEForce and Voodoo line are sure to factor tremendously. But seeing images of this caliber in a video sim will still be a little ways away. My 1024 x 768 rendering took 7 hours. Need lots of advances to get that to where it will display at 40 frames/second. That's only an increase of about 1,000,000-fold.

I got into this game quite a while back with a 1 MHz, 48k byte Apple II (I think it was 1 MHz - I know the original IBM PCs were 4.77 MHz) and the original floppy version of SubLogic's Flight Simulator (Before Microsoft took them over). I'm now running a significantly more efficient and powerful processor that is 928 times faster. Even without the architecture differences, there has been a 1000-fold increase right there (give or take for bus speeds, etc). I'd figure the architecture adds at least 100-fold.

With technology increasing at faster and faster rates, it is definitely possible in the next 10-20 years or so we could see this level of quality in a consumer flight sim. Should also have full virtual reality to go along with it - head tracking, force feedback body suit, virtual instrument panels, etc.

The possibilities just boggle the mind. Hook me up!

------------------
Rape, pillage, then burn...

[This message has been edited by PakRat (edited 01-17-2001).]

[Jay_76]

Hi Packrat,

if you're a POV nut (seems like you are... I used t0 be) you might like trying Blender too.  You can find it at http://www.blender.nl/

Its about the only freeware 3D modelling and rendering suite you can get, and it's worth the download.  Every bit as powerful/capable as Lightwave in the right hands, and if you can get your head around POVray you can handle Blender.  And it renders a LOT faster, uses OpenGL well.

*S* and regards.

Jay.

[BUG_EAF322]

5-10 years and we playing like this in AH v3.13.

I'm glad this is the goldenage off technologie.
 

[PakRat]

Hi Jay,

Thanks for the heads-up! I'll check out Blender for sure. What I would like to find an easy way to get CAD files into these types of programs as I have a lot of drawings and detailed photos of WWII aircraft that I can scan, import, and convert to vector form (and have some).

As for POV, I am extremely impressed by what it can do but am no expert by any means. I can mimic like a bandit though and since the files look a lot like C code, it's pretty easy to follow. All the real work was done by the guys that did the original image(obviously). Have yet to create a single scene from scratch. But I can sure get results fast this way!  

------------------
Rape, pillage, then burn...

[Jay_76]

Hi Packrat,

I DID learn to do scenes from scratch, learned the script and started to play with it. Follow the tutorials that come with it, they're very good.  By the end of it, I was doing animations in there too: wasn't hard, you just build in a time-variable that affects movement of objects in the scene.

That being said, I got lazy and started to use MORay for a bit, which is like a 3D graphic interface for POVray.  The worst thing was I lost my animation ability, which is why I started using it in the first place.

But Blender... Now THERE'S a program.  Last I checked, it handled cad-like DXF's very well... So there's yet another reason to check it out.  be sure to save as a .blend file though: they bigger the DXF, the longer it takes to process it.

*S* and regards,

Jay.

[Jimdandy]

Man I remember when Chuck Yeager's Test Flight came out for the Commodore 64. It seems like it was not that long ago. Must have been about 1986? Then the Lucas Arts sims BOB and SWOTL around 1990. The I went to AW around 1996. I thought the graphics in each of them was so cool. Looking back they were so primative. It seems like they get better by the minute.

[Jimdandy]

Man I remember when Chuck Yeager's Test Flight came out for the Commodore 64. It seems like it was not that long ago. Must have been about 1987? Then the Lucas Arts sims BOB and SWOTL around 1992. Then I went to AW around 1996. I thought the graphics in each of them was so cool. Looking back they were so primitive. It seems like they get better by the minute.

[Jay_76]

*grin*

JimDandy,

I remember watching that opening sequence in SWOTL thinking "GOD!!! Its like I'm really there!! Look at the smoke from the rockets!! Look at the color of the B17!" and then I'd ignore the fact that the land was flat, period, and the planes rapidly turned into collections of big squares if you got too close to them. Of course, from inside the cockpit (or the turrets) you didn't notice that stuff so much. It was in 256 color, though.  You can't beat that!

Lucasarts also released a Pacific theatre sim before BOB, but having played SWOTL first, there just was NO going back to that level of simplicity.

For something different, Churck yeager's combat sim was quite good... complete with envelop windows that popped up and resplendant 16-color goodness.  It wasn't SWOTL, but it had kickin' ACM missions.

*S* and regards,
Jay.

[Lephturn]

woops, brain fart.

Thanks Pakrat!  Cool pic.

[This message has been edited by Lephturn (edited 01-17-2001).]