Snail wrote:Make it like the external camera and view commands and stuff. Maybe you could have a second eyepoint inside the cockpit, and when you activate this command it switches to this eyepoint and turns on "show ship".

There's already some code for changing to and from a 2nd eyepoint (or 3rd, etc, I believe), Goob set it up a wee while back for me but I'm not sure if it made its way into the latest full build.

Basically you could set a key in FRED (or, indeed, any event) to change the eyepoint used, so you could cycle to a view closer to the screen (i.e. showing less cockpit, more view). Obviously this would screw up the HUD positioning in this case, though, if you did anything other than set to a view 'outside' the cockpit; I've always worked from the position of the HUD display being projected upon the pilots helmet visor (an advantage of not sticking much to the FS1/2 pilot models).

this could act as trackIR support...too look around the cockpit, it would be as simple as switching eyepoints as the player moved his head.

akenbosch wrote:nononono, the list of damaged subsytems that drops down from the "hull integrity" box.

Oh. I see now, I misread yo post

um, whatever happened to this thing?

Heh, just replied to your HLP thread - basically nothing. It's waiting for code changes that I simply cannot make at the moment. I do intend to learn C++ at some point though, so even if no other coder feels like it, it will eventually get done.

However seeing as the SoL, BTRL and the Star Wars mod all will end up using internal cockpits, I'm fairly sure it will come about before I have to do it. (In fact, being on the SW team, could you add it to the list of mods supporting internal cockpits on the feature request page of the wiki?)

However, you did remind me to release the dev material for the external view of the cockpits here:

http://www.freewebs.com/twisted-infinit ... ockpit.zip
(Rightclick -> save as)

As I said on HLP though, this isn't the model pictured in this thread, it's just meant to be used in conjunction with it once the system is implemented. You use this one in your fighter models, and the internal view one will be linked to your ships via the ships tbl entry.

I know some of TrashMan's models have some sort of cockpit thing going. Not a incredibly detailed one and it gets in the way of some gauges, but it works. Such examples is his GTF Pheonix and GTB Athena MK II. Check Hades Combine for them when it comes back up

continuing with the thread necroing, put some blood stains on the seat!

{<BlackEye>} wrote:I know some of TrashMan's models have some sort of cockpit thing going. Not a incredibly detailed one and it gets in the way of some gauges, but it works. Such examples is his GTF Pheonix and GTB Athena MK II. Check Hades Combine for them when it comes back up

From what I remember he made the classic mistake of crowbar-ing in the HUD from the FS1 cutscene, regardless of suitability for the model. I always hated it when people recycled Nicos cockpit rather than draw their own.

{<BlackEye>} wrote:I know some of TrashMan's models have some sort of cockpit thing going. Not a incredibly detailed one and it gets in the way of some gauges, but it works. Such examples is his GTF Pheonix and GTB Athena MK II. Check Hades Combine for them when it comes back up

If by 'works' you mean his hud guages just sit there and do nothing but glare at you with their ugly low-resolution-textureness, then yes they do indeed 'work'.

The whole aim of this cockpit model was to take it to the next level - Ie, move the elements of the players HUD onto the model. From the looks of things on HLP, this will probably involve Render To Texture (RTT) stuff with drawing hud guages onto a texture that is mapped to the cockpit model.


Aldo: I don't mind the idea of having the same cockpit design in all ships - especially with the state of affairs as it is - before any real 3d cockpit system is in place. This is because in the long run you'll only ever see that ugly low detail cockpit model when your wingmen are busy trying to climb into your own cockpit for a reassuring cuddle mid mission, at which point the usual reaction is to shoot them rather than admire/not-admire the detail of the external cockpit model.

Once the system is fully implemented we can go crazy with various cockpit designs customised for different ships, but there's really not any need to put those various designs into the appropriate ships in a low poly model form unless someone really, really wants to.

The same cockpit design simply doesn't work for different ships, though - it's too messy.

I have also just found that the Wing Commnader Saga team have started developing 3d cockpits. On the recent news posts on the website, they have released a preview image of a cockpit for their Longbow fighter. Its got model file and two mapping layers. Worthy investigating.

aldo wrote:The same cockpit design simply doesn't work for different ships, though - it's too messy.

The way it's usually 'merged' with the hull is just to stretch polygons till it fits - that's messy. What I've been doing is to take the 'core' of the cockpit and build it into the surroundings. Have a look at the interiors of the loki or (I think) the zeus. The cockpit core mesh is the same but it looks built in rather than stretched into size.

It's not as good as having custom cockpit designs for each and every fighter, but I figure that for the external model you just don't need that. As I said though - for the internal 'proper' cockpit models we can go crazy over time and make as many variants for individual fighters/bombers as we like.

BlackEye wrote:I have also just found that the Wing Commnader Saga team have started developing 3d cockpits. On the recent news posts on the website, they have released a preview image of a cockpit for their Longbow fighter. Its got model file and two mapping layers. Worthy investigating.

Err, I think you're missing the point here. I built this cockpit model in this thread for the eventual development of a proper internal cockpit system. That system simply does not exist yet, though parts of it do.

Currently thanks to WMC we can plonk an entry in the ships table to tell the game which cockpit model to use and what offset it should have, and it will render (imperfectly) instead of the old 'show ship' method.

Swifty has now allowed us to make use of a kind of advanced cockpit slewing which can keep certain HUD elements stationary relative to the ship while the view can look around with TrackIR which will be very useful for stuff that can't be rendered to a texture.

Samuel is recoding the HUD_Objects table to allow far better flexibility in the HUD elements.

Finally Taylor is fixing up the Render To Texture code that will allow us to draw elements onto a texture that can then be applied to faces on models such as the one in this thread.

Sweet...so, when can we see this in action?