demo/Test Release I

[Jochen Stier]

Hi, I have uploaded another pre-alpha of the editor. Tamarin2.3dm contains Tamarins latest shuttle including engines, lights and an avatar inside; but I have not yet animated the door. Since this is not a standalone ship but rather just a shuttle, the avatar cannot walk around inside the ship while it is in flight. This will only be possible in larger ships with a dedicated physics context. In the case of the shuttle, the avatar is considered attached to the shuttle when it is a child in the tree view. The engines are standalone objects stored in separate files. Each consists of the 3d model, a particle trail and a light source; as such they are completely reusable. After you start the simulation all you have to do is double-click on the shuttle in the tree view and fly around. Or you can also try demo7.3dm which also contains the shuttle. Demo7 also shows off the new and improved atmosphere, but it does not do deferred lighting yet.

This version contains significant improvements to the manipulators. You can now align translation and rotation to a grid using the buttons in the toolbar in order to active the snapping function and define the grid size. Try to align the balls in demo2.3dm! Remember that you can select an object in the 3D view using CTRL and a left mouse click. If you select a ball in demo2 this way, then you selected the geometry of the ball and the scaling manipulator is automatically attached. The scalar manipulator is fairly boring though and you cannot do much with it. So, with the geometry selected unclick the scalar manipulator in the toolbar and select another ball with CTRL – left mouse click. Now it should automatically select the body above the geometry and attach the rotate/translate manipulator. Now try to align all the balls. You can change the grid size in the toolbar. Let me know how it went…

[Tamarin]

Wow! Very nice update indeed.

I've found myself busy with autocad the last week. I have to draft an entire house for my year four carpentry program   Ahh well... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqGPixy24xk

[Jochen Stier]

Awesome video!! That will make a nice entry for the final exam. Not quite 16 inch centers though. You will have a hard time shingling that one


Did you notive how the engines illuminate the back of the shuttle when they are firing. You just gotta love deferred lighting. Every engine has its own light source. Once I get around to implementing spot lights the engines could cast out a cone of light as long as then engine trail. That will create some nice visuals when flying low over the ground.

[zachzab]

What if the engine trail is the cone of light?

[Jochen Stier]

That's kind of the idea, but I have to treat lights differently. The engine trail is a particle system and the light source has to overlayed separately.

[TorakunSama]

WoooW!!!
I saw major technical improvements, I like the whole feel of the engine. The editor is also getting much more stable and organized! I finally manage to place objects on the surface of a planet! I still can't scale or rotate properly, the handles are still unusual for me.
The atmos scattering is much better as well.
It looks like you feddled a bit with the planet as well, Nice Job!
The shuttles are brilliant.

A few artistics remarks though:
Don't be hasty in including features in the game. I know clouds look very cool, but they are wrong (I know you know that already, and congrats BTW for adding them ). If they were meant to simulate cirrus, well, they failed. Cirrus are indeed high atmospheric clouds, but they're still inside it not out. Furthermore they look like stratus and are way too abundant and sort of regular. The effect is still cool, but from orbit it looks weird. Find a way to lower them closer to the surface, or get volumetric clouds, you may check Mr. Oneil's clouds on sponeil.net.
The sun is not visible yet outside the atmosphere, you could add the flare you have in the engines, to show it (just a thought). The engines trail are rigid. If you turn the ship the trail does not trail back in the air, it turns with the ship or diconnects from the engines  O_0 ?
The FPS is also low when you are close to a plane 9 on my pc [ C2D 4600 1.13GHZ, Nvidia 8600GT, 1G DDR2  Ram 800Mhz] and it rises to 50 when looking in the void, was it supposed to be this low? Imagine having a major war near a planet... Giant ships, Megagiant space station/city, thousands of fighters...

Thank you for your hard work, and for letting us test it!

[Jochen Stier]

Thx for your feedback... it's slowly getting there.

The FPS is also low when you are close to a plane 9 on my pc [ C2D 4600 1.13GHZ, Nvidia 8600GT, 1G DDR2  Ram 800Mhz] and it rises to 50 when looking in the void, was it supposed to be this low? Imagine having a major war near a planet... Giant ships, Megagiant space station/city, thousands of fighters...

By "close to a plane", do you mean close to the surface? It is hard to believe that your frame rate drops down to 9 fps ? I have the same graphics card as you do with 512MB, so the bottleneck must be the PC.  I also have dual core, but something like 2.4.GHZ. I guess the bus also makes a diff... are you on a PCI Express ?

The reworked atmosphere is somewhat more expensive; especially the water, but it never drops below 50fps on my PC.

I definitely hear you about the clouds. In this version I just had the cirrus clouds painted on the atmosphere sphere, which is obviously not right. Anyways, in my move to deferred lighting I have already lost the clouds again. I will take another shot at them soon.

[TorakunSama]

By close to a planet I meant on high orbit, when the one side of the planet is completely visible. I do have the same graphics than you and it's obviously a PCI express card. But the problem might be my OS being unstable, or my motherboard being low end. I'll clean up disassemble and rebuild the PC and reinstall everything.
If I'm between the two planets I have 45 fps when I look at the blue planet! Anyways, keep working on lighting since is more relevant than clouds for now.
BTW, what you think of Mr. O'Neil's clouds (I bet you had already seen it)?

 

[Tamarin]

I have a P4 single core (3 Ghz) and 8800 GT. I get around 40 fps at all times with demo7 in the editor.

I noticed that when I added more models (in the shuttle) the first normal map was always referenced. You can see this in demo7 if you look at the engine, it has the normal map of the ship applied to it.

[Jochen Stier]

Somehow I cannot reproduce this effect with the normal maps. Let me know if you notice this again in the future.

With a single core CPU the terrain generation function is going to be a bit slower and I would expect a drop in framerate. So 40 makes
about sense. I  am guessing that at the end there is still about a 10-15 percent performance improvement to be had.

Actually, it just occurred to me that 40 is the target framerate... at least in the runtime engine.

[Jochen Stier]

I actually have an 8800GT as well, not an 8600. So I can't really say what to expext on torakunsamas system. 9 fps is a little low though.

[TorakunSama]

When creating planets from that troublesome distance,I get an average of 15fps. But I'm formatting this weekend, I'll give you a new report then...