Great station model! Kudos to Shawn =)

WOW!

=O

wow

Ground control to Major Tom Ground control to Major Tom:
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Ground control to Major Tom: Commencing countdown engine's on
Check ig-nition and may God's love be with you

This is ground control to Major Tom, you've really made the grade!
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear,
Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare

This is Major Tom to ground con-trol, I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating in the most peculiar way
And the stars look very difeerent today

For here am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do

Though I'm passed one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go,
tell my wife I love her very much she knows

Ground control to Major Tom:
Your circuit's dead, there's something wong.
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you ...

Here am I floating round my tin can, far above the moon
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do

Very Very nice. Looking forward to watching this project more closely.

Kudos

I give up trying to find words for this sort of stuff. Will a 'wow' do? I mean, if I enclose it in square brackets you get [wow]

Could you, please, do the rest of us a favour and post some really rubbish screenshots? I know it must be hard, but please - just to make the rest of us feel better [wink]

Jack

Quote:I give up trying to find words for this sort of stuff. Will a 'wow' do? I mean, if I enclose it in square brackets you get [wow]

Could you, please, do the rest of us a favour and post some really rubbish screenshots? I know it must be hard, but please - just to make the rest of us feel better

Jack

I can't think of anything more/better to say than Jack did. [wink]

I've got this funny feeling I'm about to be linched for this, but...

A critique :)

One thing about Objects in space, in an orbit to the sun similar to earth's is that the sun's brightness pretty much obfuscates all other sources - So on the first picture, when you're looking at the station's bright side, the fact you can see all the lights seems a bit cheesy :)

Second thing, if those blue arrows mark the entrance of a docking station, maybe they should be a bit more visible - or maybe there should be an antena extending to the outside with extra lights, like the approach lights to an airport :)
This second comment is a lot less serious - any such approach would probably be made by automatic systems and not dependent on vision at all. then again, if in the game you'll have players navigating to the dock on manual controls, it might be a good idea to make the dock aproach a lot more visible.

The model looks pretty good otherwise :)

P.S.
Not sure if you're interested in this sort of details, but...
If this station assumes that ships will be flying frequently around in manual control, it would make sense to have anti colision lights at the tips of antenas and any large structure.

Very nice, but I have a question:
Why did you have to use shaders and fancy stuff for it?
I mean, why not just put the lights in the textures?
If you want to make a MMO, you might want to keep in mind that not everyone has videocards that support advanced shaders (wasn't Intel the biggest videocard maker?).

Thanks for the comments.

alexmoura: you're right about that, but without HDRI, it's not easy to do.

The arrows showing off the entrance of the hangar are the green ones (but maybe that was a typo? or you are daltonian? :p). They will be glowing and possibly animated later in the project. There are already lights on the top of antenas, but as they as not glowing, they're not much visible (or maybe they were missing in that version? i know i saw them at one point).

Raduprv: lights are not into the diffuse textures to be able to do HDRI and apply a glow filter later.

Also, the minimal system requirements look pretty high today, but in two years that should be pretty standard. My target is pixel shader 2.0, and there are already commercial games released _today_ that require them..

But do things glow in space?
Or you are not aiming for a lot of realism?

Realism? I'm lookin' to play a game. ;-)

I like it as is and don't care for much else (graphics-wise). You've said before that this is Elite-inspired. Elite is my favorite game of all time. At this point the graphics look GREAT! Now, I'm more interested in trading and economics. What's the basic concept of trading in Infinity?

Quote:But do things glow in space?

I think that you have glow due to scattering by air (which isn't available in space) and glow because of your camera lens / eye / window of your space ship. the latter ones are available in space :)

Quote:This second comment is a lot less serious - any such approach would probably be made by automatic systems and not dependent on vision at all.

Actually, I believe they even use manual control in real life for docking at MIR for example.

Wow, this is looking sweet! I have to say that seeing an actual object from the game gives a whole new meaning to the planets in these screenshots. They actually look huge from far away when compared to the station, and it suddenly looks more like a game than a planet renderer :)

A question for you: you said the station's size is 2kms or something, so what are those lights that look like windows? Either they're really big windows, or you need to downscale the station a bit :P Other than that, kick-ass model and awsome shaders and stuff!

OMFG! dude you rock!