[News] NanoFX 1.6 Viewer Preview

[CaptainWallis]

Fair enough and well put, 2011 is definately one of our goals for a public release, what features/ships the release will contian are still to be determined, and of course it really comes down to how much free time the team can give to get to the release done and out for download.

It's gonna be awsome when it finally arrives. I was on Moddb the other night and I noticed
The latest Excalibur update had 2 images of the sns Galaxy class, and it looked so much better to the one currently in the model
viewer. The lighting was very different. Is this the one you mentioned Mark was in the middle of finalizing
 if so he deserves a beer (or two.lol. It looks amazing).

[Anew7]

What does RTT quality stand for? What does it do?

[Brendan Caulfield]

Render To Texture? A nacent viewscreen thingy? Or something to do with the weathering?

[Michael]

Render to Texture is correct.

You can save some FPS by adjusting this setting.  RTT setting only affects Enhanced Glows and HDR. 

- High renders the RTTs at the same screen res your window is.
- Medium renders the RTTs at 1/2 your screen res.
- Low renders the RTTs at 1/4 your screen res.

The lower the setting, the less accurate it looks, but still may be good enough for your tastes.  Medium usually suffices, however if you have a high-end system then I would recommend changing it to High.  Only use Low if you want to use Enhanced Glows and HDR Lighting and your suffer from low FPS.

[Anew7]

Hey Nano...

Can we have a weapons/shields demo video soon? Like one that shows the torpedo doppler howl effect along with better colors and smoother animations! Also, the phaser and beam weapon textures (maybe even include a cutting beam effect!)

I am a huge torpedo fanatic, I don't know why. And whenever I see Voyager/DS9/TNG photons let loose shooting-star style I get joyful. The only nitpick I really have with what is shown so far is that the photons need much smoother animating and sharper textures.

With regards to shields, the electric impact effect could be showcased! I have a left over impact SFX from my old BC install if you want me to post it. It's pretty good, but maybe you guys could add to it to give it that extra umph.

Oooh, am I getting excited! It's one thing to see a new Star trek game being made, it's another to see a Star trek game being made that's loyal to CANON!

[Aresius]

Soemthing odd happened when I tried to take a few shots (literal) with the stock galaxy against an imported Borg sphere.
The phasers were one big bad glow right at the deflector, with several (not one but at least 3, in one instance I even counted 7) spikes going into all different directions.
The torpedos worked at first (thought not as they should, they were basically odd darts of moving glob, constantly changing form, with planes and ploys turned inside out), then didn't work at all after I shot a third one...

Can you tell me if there are any requirements of additional software? The elder 1.4a was working perfectly on the system, no glitch, oddity, or anything for that matter. I'm now on my laptop, so I cannot show any examples or tell you what y system specs are, tho..

[Michael]

Sounds like the video memory got corrupted for the particles.  This can happen if you change your window size during play or you run low on video mem.  Laptops are rough because they share video memory with the system memory.  Try to resize you window to what you want before you start loading you ships.

[Anew7]

Is there a hardpointing tutorial/readme that we could follow? I am having one hell of a time placing weapon hardpoints on uploaded ships. I've also been tinkering with torpedo scripts and messed up something in the rot accel  script that's causing the torps to loop-to-loop... what does the rot accel lines of script in the torp nfx do exactly?

[Aresius]

@Michael: I didn't change it during run. Ran it first in fullscreen, then shut it down and ran it in windowed mode. Same error.
Don't have it on the lappy.

[Michael]

Did you change any scripts?

[Aresius]

I've imported a Cardie Galor, a Borg Sphere, and a Federation Defiant... I don't know if that's changing any scripts, didn't look like it, so I don't think so.

[Michael]

Some exported models from bc are not well done, so they may not work well, the scale of the model may be way off, so you can try setting the length of the ship in the hp editor under ship properties to get the ship to properly scale.  This may help if you are getting weird burst that are big.

[MR_7]

Thought i'd just note a few problems i've found with the model viewer.

• When paused the pulses and torpedoes still have there time limit and explode. Annoys me because i like pausing and taking screenshots.
• If you pause whilst warping, the ship stretches without sign of stopping
• When you hardpoint a pulse to a direction its arc doesn't change. In other words it a pulse with the diection of 10 degrees to the left will not fire on the target. It fires when at 0 degrees and therefore misses the target. I hope that makes sence, i might make a video if it makes no sence.
• A destroyed ship can still warp

Otherwise i'm gaining more FPS than i have with the older one But i want deffered lighting damn it lol

[Black Patriot]

Thought i'd just note a few problems i've found with the model viewer.

• When paused the pulses and torpedoes still have there time limit and explode. Annoys me because i like pausing and taking screenshots.
• If you pause whilst warping, the ship stretches without sign of stopping
• When you hardpoint a pulse to a direction its arc doesn't change. In other words it a pulse with the diection of 10 degrees to the left will not fire on the target. It fires when at 0 degrees and therefore misses the target. I hope that makes sence, i might make a video if it makes no sence.
• A destroyed ship can still warp

Otherwise i'm gaining more FPS than i have with the older one But i want deffered lighting damn it lol

Those are some good points, but I get the feeling that these really won't be fixed for the model viewer, at least not the public one. I'll remind everyone again (so that Nano doesn't have to) but this is a model viewer, it's not really supposed to have usable weapons or warp effects or any of that stuff, it was just thrown in as a demonstration, and as something fun to try out. I know we all wish that there was more to the model viewer, that we could have battles like on bridge commander, but if it comes down to the dev team working on the model viewer or the whole Excalibur engine, then I'd vote for the whole engine.

[kfir]

hi i need help, why does it look bad in my viewer?
it's on maximum settings, have the latest directx, .net and my video card is radeon x1600 pro
thats the SNS galaxy..

[Michael]

Go into video settings and set your Anisotropic Filtering to the highest setting.  If you have already done that, then your Catalyst Control Center is overriding your setttings and you either need to set that to Application Controlled or set it to maximum in that control panel.

[kfir]

thanks, actually it wasn't the Anisotropic Filtering that was set to low it was mipmap.. anyway looks great!!! you are doing an amazing job!