OK, i have a few updates for you all - start with this area, any ideas where we are located in this shot?
Also re-reading one of the comments, just to put peoples minds to rest; i'd like to say something about the 'multiple light sources' which is a myth I neglected to debunk last time. As you can see in this shot there are at least 4 light sources, a key (sun) light, an ambient light source and a couple of point lights for the interior, we can't have lots of point lights running inside orbiter, afaik, as it will slow things down.
So, as the post seems to imply, does this mean the interior will in reality be all dark and uninviting and that the renders are completely misleading?
No, of course not, as we don't need to have lots of point lights in the sim. We use a technique common to 3d graphics to pre-calculate lighting effects.
This should be obvious to anyone who has flown the mk1, which basically looks the same in game as it does in my renders... this is because we 'bake' (pre-calculate) the lighting into the textures. we also do this for ambient occlusion so these 'expensive' effects transfer directly to realtime. Essentially, via this technique, the quality of the renders is directly reflected in the final exported version.
The only thing it wont do is produce dynamic lighting effects, but since we typically have nothing moving around inside the cabin this is irrelevant anyway. Indeed, a lot of the renders i've posted here are using pre-calc lighting, as it looks basically indistinguishable from actually working out the point lights.
This technique basically covers 3 of the 4 light sources used in the attached render... since we already have a key light in orbiter, the sun, we have the final light source also.
Then finally in your realtime engine, all you need is a shadow casting key (sun) light, anti aliasing and shaders which support bump and specular - my shaders are not particularly fancy here - and you have basically the exact same setup as I have for renders. All of this is currently possible in orbiter depending on your setup and hardware.
Finally, lighting and texturing are intimately linked, ok its a 'fake' but one employed all the time in games, tv and movies. A common mistake in texturing is that surfaces are shown to be one continous colour. Ask yourself what colour is your ceiling, it might commonly be painted white (we'll assume that is the case with this example) and all too often someone will say, 'white' which is not untrue, but how it appears may be beige or grey - due to how its lit and how wide your eyes are. The final colour of a surface as we percieve it is dependent on lighting intensity, colour and angle and how much light your sensor, whether retina, CCD or photographic film, is exposed to.
Now, is percieved colour of your ceiling a constant blue, grey, beige, or brown? no, its shaded, some areas are darker or lighter or have different tones. so bear this in mind if you're working on a texture. Baking lighting effects can help achieve this shading and save you time in creating an effective, realistic looking texture by immitating these lighting effects which otherwise would be very expensive to calculate.