More Apache work

Entry posted by Flexman · June 16, 2010

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Our Apache received more love today, the cockpit panel textures suffered a little from DDS compression acne. But by increasing the bits-per-pixel to 24 and using DXT1, we get better quality results using a texture half the size as a larger one using 8bpp compressed. And smaller texture memory footprint too. This only works for some textures.

Additionally specular maps were added to the cockpit, now it reacts to light in a much more dynamic way and the scratched glass blast shield and canopy really adds to the sense of enclosure in a cockpit space.

A few major systems are not currently fitted to our Apache, the TADS (or ETADS) was initially removed due to rendering problems. I've re-instated the TADS class and rewrote the rendering function. It's still quite primitive and there's post0processing to add to the tads_buffer as well as overlaying the symbology. As expected the performance hit is around 20% when drawing at full frame-rate. I'll add a frame-skip value to adjust performance for users. The good news is that it's not worse that I thought it would be plus there's still lots I can do to improve performance.

The ETADS display is using the same Fullbright shader as the other MPDs so it's a little overbright. When I'm done it should look the part.

Over the test-map testing the TADS camera.

Rest of the week might be a little quiet as we're rushing to complete the startup and caution/warning system to go with it (keep getting side-tracked and doing other things). The dual-seat multiplayer mode throws up some interesting logic problems with the messaging system when generated messages don't have a source. It has resulted in front-seat controls sending signals to back-seat controls which in turn trigger front-seat controls and so on. This is why messages have a source ID so remote control messages don't trigger a local message transmission thus continuing the cycle. Yes, all I need is a message filter.

Little update***