NewsForumsCodeLogsGallerySpecsSearch

Flight Engine Runway

Community Forums/Showcase/Flight Engine Runway

Chroma(Posted 2009) [#1]
Been working on a runway. Actually made it in Inkscape. The terrain texture is low res atm. Still haven't bought L3TD so I can export 4096x4096.

The only problem I'm having is with Mipmapping. If I enable it, you can't see the markings while on approach. If I disable mipmapping then it looks great from high above but on approach you see the pixel banding taking place. There should be different levels (strengths) of mipmapping IMO.

Still looking for a direction to take the game. Could do something like Battlefield 1942 or just a pure flight sim with no vehicle. Hmm...





InvisibleKid(Posted 2009) [#2]
what about a combat flight game with 2 modes.

maybe something like:

1. arcardish
-unlimited fuel, + option for limited or unlimited ammo
-fly over the runway within a certain height to rearm, and repair (ala bf)

2. simish
-limited fuel/ammo
-have to acctually land for a period of time to refuel and rearm
-possibly have a flying fuel plane ( not a good idea if theres not gonna be any planes with hover capablity)

i personaly would love a game with the 2 option, i think it'd be realy fun as a tdm game.


EOF(Posted 2009) [#3]
Another idea: "Air Taxi"

Pick passengers up from from location, get them to the other ASAP
Big scores for quickest times, smooth landings etc ..


Vorderman(Posted 2009) [#4]
Chroma : I would suggest you buy Fastlibs - with it you can directly control the mipmapping and LOD bias levels and you should be able to eliminate your visual problem with about 2lines of code.

Also, have you tried saving your textures in DDS format? You can specify how many mip-levels the texture will have (I use 2 levels for the roads in SRX to reduce the problems you are experiencing) and what form of filtering is used when you save the texture, which overrides Blitz's default mipmapping, so you can get much clearer textures that don't blur.


Chroma(Posted 2009) [#5]
@KingNothing: Yeah i'm more a fan of option 2 also. Still don't know what era to put the game in though. Seems everythings been played out.

@Jim: Heh now that's something new. Kinda like crazy taxi but somethere where you're ferrying aroung high ranking generals etc. Or even the president.

@Vorderman: I'm guessing you're using Photoshop, correct? I've been dodging that bullet for like 10 years. I do have Gimp2 but not sure if that app can do what you're saying. I'll check into it.

Atm, I'm using Leadwerks .dds converter and it doesn't offer any of those features.

What you are saying though, sounds like the answer to all my problems. I'll go buy FastLibs right now. I would be absolutely thrilled to solve this though. Thanks for the tip and if you want to get ultra-specific please be my guest.


Chroma(Posted 2009) [#6]
Ok I just bought the whole FastLibs bundle. Now I'm off to play with it for a few hours! Weeeee!


Chroma(Posted 2009) [#7]
Disregard: You have to use B3D v1.99 per the help file. Hopefully Mikhail with update Fastlibs to work with B3D 1.11 soon!! :)


Chroma(Posted 2009) [#8]
Bah!

I reverted to version 1.99 and now I'm getting a MAV on line:

 Return Setbuffer_ (buffer)


I haven't post on Mikhails site but I will soon. ANy ideas?


Chroma(Posted 2009) [#9]
Ah gotta love growing pains.

You have to put InitExt BEFORE Setbuffer(backbuffer)...


Chroma(Posted 2009) [#10]
Wow...I just bought L3DT. Expect some stupendous creations here soon. Also have the FastExt lib now so let's see how cool I can get this terrain looking...

Btw, since I'm in the buying mood...anyone else have any tools that would work good for a flight sim? Pitch me a sale!


stayne(Posted 2009) [#11]
http://jerome.le.chat.free.fr/index.php/en/download/blender/city-engine-download.html

City building plugin for Blender - could come in handy. Let me know if you need help with it.


Ross C(Posted 2009) [#12]
As a side note, you can control the mipmap levels on a .dds texture.


Chroma(Posted 2009) [#13]
Ross, are you saying that you can control mipmap in Blitz3D through the mipmap levels in a .dds? Or does B3D have it's own mipmap algorithm that overides the mip-map data in a .dds?


Ross C(Posted 2009) [#14]
Well, you can speificy the detial levels of a .dds texture in an application like photoshop. I'm not 100% sure the exact working of it, but i believe you specificy what each texture looks like for each detail level, and how many detail levels to have.

This thread has more explained on it:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=84939


Krischan(Posted 2009) [#15]
I had this issue before and yes in B3D it works. Save a DDS with mipmap levels (at least 8) and B3D will handle it (or just passes the texture to the GFX card, heh). Here the proof, without any flags, hacks or whatever, press SPACE to see the difference:



Grab the demo here: http://www.christianhart.de/bb/mipmaps.zip

The two DDS textures were saved with the nVidia Photoshop Plugin in PS3, but any free DDS export software with MipMap support should do this, too.





Krischan(Posted 2009) [#16]
A freeware solution is Paint.NET with built-in DDS support and able to export MipMaps, too:

Paint.NET Download

EDIT: I tested it saving the same texture with Paint.NET and I'm getting the same results, I only can't define the number of MipMap Levels like in the nVidia Plugin but I guess Paint.NET creates them all (13?). No need to spend money for Photoshop just for DDS support.