I found a strange blue dome on Deimos using Beta r54 and D3D9Client. I put a DG in it but nothing happened...:lol: It can't be seen with default inline client.
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I'm hoping for a improvement in the exhaust rendering myself. I'm thinking taking the step from the pseudo-3D (really 2D texture with billboard mapping) rendering we have now to actual 3D rendering. This should improve visuals a great deal.I know very little at all about 3D rendering, but after some research, it seems the main benefit of deferred rendering would be inexpensive multiple light sources. I assume D3D9 currently uses a forward rendering approach.
It seems that ordinary deferred rendering has problems with multiple material types within a scene, whereas light-prepass rendering doesn't. Would this be a problem for scenes containing multiple vessels having parts with different material definitions?
Currently the only light sources in Orbiter I can think of are the sun, planet, and vessel lights. Could new visual effects be realized if a few hundred light sources were available?
Three major visual effects I'm hoping for in future versions are self-shadowing, realtime irradiance mapping (sunlight reflected off clouds, ocean sunglint, and land, also glow from planet night lights), and blurred reflections (a cross between mirror reflections and specular lighting, like reflections from smooth but not shiny metallic surfaces). Would using deferred or light-prepass architecture make any of these effects easier to realize?
A while back I found an article about realtime calculation of irradiance environment maps. I thought I linked to it in a D3D9 related thread, but I can't find it anymore. Here is the article: http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter10.html. It sounds similar to the realtime reflection maps already in the D3D9 client, except a special blurring algorithm is applied. This technique might hold some promise even if it is a bit computationally expensive, since the lighting environment changes relatively slowly compared to the reflection environment. The lighting environment could be recalculated at 1Hz or even slower, once every two or five seconds, whereas the reflection environment looks bad if the updates are not much slower than the frame rate.
If a realtime irradiance map can be calculated in near real-time, a blurred reflection map may also be possible using a similar (less) blurring algorithm, also recalculated at a slow rate.
@Jarmo: Could you take a look at issue found by Nikogori?
Scenario for easy check attached
Indeed you did! ThanksPoles :lol:, Fixed.
I'm hoping for a improvement in the exhaust rendering myself. I'm thinking taking the step from the pseudo-3D (really 2D texture with billboard mapping) rendering we have now to actual 3D rendering. This should improve visuals a great deal.
It seems that ordinary deferred rendering has problems with multiple material types within a scene, whereas light-prepass rendering doesn't. Would this be a problem for scenes containing multiple vessels having parts with different material definitions?
We are not talking about hundreds of light sources, merely implementing the current ones in a per-pixel basis instead of per-vertex basis. Currently local light sources (vertex lights) won't interact with normal maps properly.Currently the only light sources in Orbiter I can think of are the sun, planet, and vessel lights. Could new visual effects be realized if a few hundred light sources were available?
Three major visual effects I'm hoping for in future versions are self-shadowing, realtime irradiance mapping (sunlight reflected off clouds, ocean sunglint, and land, also glow from planet night lights), and blurred reflections (a cross between mirror reflections and specular lighting, like reflections from smooth but not shiny metallic surfaces). Would using deferred or light-prepass architecture make any of these effects easier to realize?
would have thought D3D9 would have made sure it works with it with little change
Is the "forgot to create symbolic links" problem happening too often?
In that case the D3D9Client could create that links *always* without any user-action required.
The downside of course is, that the user looses control of that process.
Some might not like to have symbolic links at all (Linux users might dislike this automatic "feature").
Yes it does! ...but nobody reads messagesDoesn't the client display a warning on a splash screen if the links are not present ?
I'll wait for any reaction from users ("easy spacecraft.dll" vs. "Linux" ).Maybe that could be improved ? I'll leave it to you.
Yes it does! ...but nobody reads messages
The only complaint is the current specular reflection. Interesting if you want to create mirrors, but incorrect for other metallic surfaces. At least on my machine/config.
I suggest looking into Physical Based Rendering lighting model as the next step. We already have support for multiple textures (we would need diffuse, specular, gloss, normal), so it's very close.
It would benefit things like solar panels a lot!
For example, here's my Skylab B with PBR textures. It's the same model (and base textures) as in Orbiter.
https://sketchfab.com/models/eda477f1c1214a1f801eefea5da9bcee