Forums » Suggestions
Remove the Blurry Stars
I've taken a look at the following threads:
Higher Rez Backgrounds
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/13745
Enhanced starfield resolution
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10076
But I don't think it is a resolution problem.
From what I understand, the starfield background is dynamically created (based on user settings), then baked into a texture. This destination texture seems to be a good resolution.
It appears like there are 2 kinds of stars getting created. Good stars, and ugly stars. It seems like the ugly stars should be able to toggle off, or at least toned down a lot.
I've highlighted 2 of the good stars, and 1 of the ugly ones. I also compared it to the ugliest ones I could find in X3:Reunion.
It's also possible the good stars aren't getting baked in and are fully dynamic like planets. In that case, just disable the baked in uglies and leave just the nebula.
I was also trying to figure out why the stars are only ugly in the black areas:
Example: http://images.vendetta-online.com/screenshots/dump0011.jpg
I think the nebula parts are obscuring the blurry stars in the background. Only the crisp bright stars shine through.
BTW, sorry for calling your baby ugly :) But seriously, she needs a nose-job.
Higher Rez Backgrounds
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/13745
Enhanced starfield resolution
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10076
But I don't think it is a resolution problem.
From what I understand, the starfield background is dynamically created (based on user settings), then baked into a texture. This destination texture seems to be a good resolution.
It appears like there are 2 kinds of stars getting created. Good stars, and ugly stars. It seems like the ugly stars should be able to toggle off, or at least toned down a lot.
I've highlighted 2 of the good stars, and 1 of the ugly ones. I also compared it to the ugliest ones I could find in X3:Reunion.
It's also possible the good stars aren't getting baked in and are fully dynamic like planets. In that case, just disable the baked in uglies and leave just the nebula.
I was also trying to figure out why the stars are only ugly in the black areas:
Example: http://images.vendetta-online.com/screenshots/dump0011.jpg
I think the nebula parts are obscuring the blurry stars in the background. Only the crisp bright stars shine through.
BTW, sorry for calling your baby ugly :) But seriously, she needs a nose-job.
Very good work Proton. Was wondering about the blurry stars earlier and if it was a video card issue.
The stars do not have to just be white either. The colors can range from red to blue.
The stars do not have to just be white either. The colors can range from red to blue.
[STAMP OF APPROVAL] (tm)
I have long wished for a background that doesn't get blurry upon zooming in. Maybe this could be a quick and dirty thing that the devs could do with little effort?
What I'd like is to be able to disable the nebulas AND the blurry stars. VO looks pretty cool with just the stars.
ya i remember a bug when you jumped our of a storm there was only the star field i really liked it looks a lot more realistic
I much prefer the stars only background we saw with that bug myself.
Hrm. I've talked to Ray about this in the past, but I'll have to do so again, and get the skinny on exactly what this would require.
Basically, there are two different types of stars. Those that come on a "starfield" texture, predefined, and those generated using point-sprites. Back when we implemented the pointsprite starfield, videocards were a lot slower, so it was undesirable to have like.. 100,000 pointsprites onscreen at once. So, we created only a lower overall percentage of pointsprites, and the rest of the "stars" used the generic "starfield" textures. Then, we created multiple fallbacks to allow us to bake these pointsprites onto a dynamic background (which can include planets, nebulae, etc). On the highest background detail level, this doesn't happen.. the pointsprites are truly dynamic real-time "stars" that are rendered individually by your card. But, they're in the overall minority.
What we really need is to A) vastly increase the resolution of the generic "starfield" texture, or how it's handled in some way (probably a dumb idea), or B) greatly increase the number of pointsprites and offer new upper graphics-setting levels that allow people with fast systems to have the entire starfield rendered in realtime if they desire. Then we could do away with the "starfields" and just bake pointsprites onto the background for people with slower machines.
I'll have to talk to ray to find out the implementation caveats and specifics to these cases, but I'm sure it's doable. However, I don't expect it to be a minor thing.. so it probably won't happen in the near future. But, I totally agree, the big, blurry stars from the generic "starfield" texture look pretty ugly now. They looked fine in 800x600 on a 17" CRT, but on some 24" widescreen in high resolution and stretched at the FOV bounds, they look pretty bad.
Basically, there are two different types of stars. Those that come on a "starfield" texture, predefined, and those generated using point-sprites. Back when we implemented the pointsprite starfield, videocards were a lot slower, so it was undesirable to have like.. 100,000 pointsprites onscreen at once. So, we created only a lower overall percentage of pointsprites, and the rest of the "stars" used the generic "starfield" textures. Then, we created multiple fallbacks to allow us to bake these pointsprites onto a dynamic background (which can include planets, nebulae, etc). On the highest background detail level, this doesn't happen.. the pointsprites are truly dynamic real-time "stars" that are rendered individually by your card. But, they're in the overall minority.
What we really need is to A) vastly increase the resolution of the generic "starfield" texture, or how it's handled in some way (probably a dumb idea), or B) greatly increase the number of pointsprites and offer new upper graphics-setting levels that allow people with fast systems to have the entire starfield rendered in realtime if they desire. Then we could do away with the "starfields" and just bake pointsprites onto the background for people with slower machines.
I'll have to talk to ray to find out the implementation caveats and specifics to these cases, but I'm sure it's doable. However, I don't expect it to be a minor thing.. so it probably won't happen in the near future. But, I totally agree, the big, blurry stars from the generic "starfield" texture look pretty ugly now. They looked fine in 800x600 on a 17" CRT, but on some 24" widescreen in high resolution and stretched at the FOV bounds, they look pretty bad.
Yes, actually, the blurry stars makes the backdrop seem a bit... smudged and dirty.
Now I realize why I liked X3's starlit vistas better.
On a slightly related note, and in complete opposition to MSKanakas suggestion ;-) , I'd love to see more background graphical effects (sunflares, unrealistic solar winds, gaily coloured nebulas) in the future, such as the ones you'll find in X3, EVE, and Homeworld, to brighten VO's skies a bit, and to add variation (unrealistic though it might be). Though they should be toggleable, as suggested.
Now I realize why I liked X3's starlit vistas better.
On a slightly related note, and in complete opposition to MSKanakas suggestion ;-) , I'd love to see more background graphical effects (sunflares, unrealistic solar winds, gaily coloured nebulas) in the future, such as the ones you'll find in X3, EVE, and Homeworld, to brighten VO's skies a bit, and to add variation (unrealistic though it might be). Though they should be toggleable, as suggested.
Ghost mentioned the stars get blurry when you zoom in, I just tried out zooming and see what he is talking about.
When you magnify your view, only dynamic objects should magnify, not the starfield.
This sounds like a trickier problem than the baked in star issue for a few reasons:
* It would require adding another step to the rendering. Something like:
-- Render dynamic opaque objects with zoom fov
-- Render starfield with standard fov
-- Render dynamic transparent objects with zoom fov
* Planets are baked in on lower detail levels, so they would not zoom.
I'm curious how many people even use the lower detail backgrounds. Valve collects this type of data from players who played HL2:Episode 1, it helped them to understand their audience. Perhaps VO could send this config data to the server to give them an idea of the audience capabilities.
If this game isn't going to be officially advertised for a while, then it makes sense to shoot for hardware that will be commonly available in a year (so the mid-high end stuff right now).
[edit]Speaking of Valve's hardware survey, they just released a new one that started May 30, 2007. Over 370,000 unique samples.
The Valve Survey Results
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
Analysis by ars technica
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070604-valve-hardware-survey-shows-gamers-yet-to-embrace-vista.html
HL2: EP1 Stats
http://www.steampowered.com/status/ep1/
[/edit]
When you magnify your view, only dynamic objects should magnify, not the starfield.
This sounds like a trickier problem than the baked in star issue for a few reasons:
* It would require adding another step to the rendering. Something like:
-- Render dynamic opaque objects with zoom fov
-- Render starfield with standard fov
-- Render dynamic transparent objects with zoom fov
* Planets are baked in on lower detail levels, so they would not zoom.
I'm curious how many people even use the lower detail backgrounds. Valve collects this type of data from players who played HL2:Episode 1, it helped them to understand their audience. Perhaps VO could send this config data to the server to give them an idea of the audience capabilities.
If this game isn't going to be officially advertised for a while, then it makes sense to shoot for hardware that will be commonly available in a year (so the mid-high end stuff right now).
[edit]Speaking of Valve's hardware survey, they just released a new one that started May 30, 2007. Over 370,000 unique samples.
The Valve Survey Results
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
Analysis by ars technica
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070604-valve-hardware-survey-shows-gamers-yet-to-embrace-vista.html
HL2: EP1 Stats
http://www.steampowered.com/status/ep1/
[/edit]
Overall, VO's "extremely high" setting background looks sort of dirty and old nowadays. Having the nebulae regenerated as more high-res textures in tandem with the generic starfield texture being tossed aside would be awesome.
And fix the zoom thing already >.o
And fix the zoom thing already >.o
When you magnify your view, only dynamic objects should magnify, not the starfield.
People keep bringing this up, but I don't follow the logic. Why wouldn't the starfield magnify? Isn't that the whole point of a telescope? You're reducing the FOV, not actually moving the viewer.
Certainly it sucks that we're zooming onto a relatively low-resolution texture instead of a bunch of point sprite stars, but that's a different issue. The stars themselves shouldn't get noticeably bigger, but you still need to zoom into the area of the starfield.
People keep bringing this up, but I don't follow the logic. Why wouldn't the starfield magnify? Isn't that the whole point of a telescope? You're reducing the FOV, not actually moving the viewer.
Certainly it sucks that we're zooming onto a relatively low-resolution texture instead of a bunch of point sprite stars, but that's a different issue. The stars themselves shouldn't get noticeably bigger, but you still need to zoom into the area of the starfield.
i think what he means is that the stars are meant to be so distant that no ship-based telescope would make much of a differences on the perceived distance of those distant stars.
so, this boils down to the definition of the telescope itself.
if it's an optical magnification, it shouldn't bring any visual difference to background stars.
if it's a software image magnification telescope, there yes, the image should scale up as it does right now because scaling a flat image doesn't have the same depth/distance perception.
so, this boils down to the definition of the telescope itself.
if it's an optical magnification, it shouldn't bring any visual difference to background stars.
if it's a software image magnification telescope, there yes, the image should scale up as it does right now because scaling a flat image doesn't have the same depth/distance perception.
Aye, if you look at a starfield through a telescope, the stars don't get bigger. They remain infinite points of light, albiet brighter and more of them. If you look at another planet, however, they become finite orbs. Thats a generalization, obviously the Sun does not appear as an infinite point of light, and through most telescopes, Pluto is still just a point of light, if it can be seen at all. You get the idea though.
As for preferences, I like the barren starfields that MSKanaka is talking about. After seeing Incarnate's post, I'm guessing that the background textures just didn't render with that bug, and all we saw were the point sprites.
As for preferences, I like the barren starfields that MSKanaka is talking about. After seeing Incarnate's post, I'm guessing that the background textures just didn't render with that bug, and all we saw were the point sprites.
Good call upper case, I didn't even realize the difference between optical and digital zoom. Now I realize that the cool zooming effect you see in Battlestar Galactica is a digital zoom. Interesting.
I took some example screenshots from Eve.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Doug.Wolanick/EveOnlineZoomCompare
This YouTube video also shows the 2 zooms in real-time (I didn't make the video)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=64ONfmt-dq8
BTW, after taking these screenshots I tried to fly back to the station to dock and couldn't figure out why my WSAD keys weren't working lol. Stupid Eve.
I took some example screenshots from Eve.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Doug.Wolanick/EveOnlineZoomCompare
This YouTube video also shows the 2 zooms in real-time (I didn't make the video)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=64ONfmt-dq8
BTW, after taking these screenshots I tried to fly back to the station to dock and couldn't figure out why my WSAD keys weren't working lol. Stupid Eve.
a1k0n, the logic is explained in one simple word: Parallax
:)
:)
demonen, parallax motion wont affect the star field with the relative short distances our ships cover.
space is big. very big. so mind-bogingly big you wouldn't believe how big it is. (etc)
besides, what we're talking about here is telescopically zooming in the star field. not turboingly zooming across it.
i think that the current zoom effect is correct, if we accept the fact the zoom we experience is a software zoom magnification of the image our ships observe with a fix-len camera.
our ships are not equipped with telescoping lens.
space is big. very big. so mind-bogingly big you wouldn't believe how big it is. (etc)
besides, what we're talking about here is telescopically zooming in the star field. not turboingly zooming across it.
i think that the current zoom effect is correct, if we accept the fact the zoom we experience is a software zoom magnification of the image our ships observe with a fix-len camera.
our ships are not equipped with telescoping lens.
a1k0n's point is that the star-FIELD should magnify. Not the stars, but the field (relative distances between them, fov). And he's correct, of course. The problem is that the stars themselves magnify, especially in the case of the low resolution background stars. Anyway.. one ugly problem at a time.
Has this been rectified yet? The background zooming with the foreground always made things seem so artificial and unfinished compared with the cripsness of everything else in vo.
Come into the game and look?