MTM2.com

First off, it took me a long, long time to decide exactly where to post this ("Should I post it in the Truck making forum? But I didn't do anything to the trucks, just a texture. Maybe it should go in the Custom Textures forum? But it's more relevant to trucks, and this forum is tilted toward tracks. But being non-track-related doesn't preclude it from this forum. etc...")

Now: This is a little experiment with MTM2's light effects I started late one night, sometime last week. I was sick of the ugly MTM2 light beams, and, inspired by the light effects in 4x4 Evo, wanted to achieve something more realistic and less obstructive. I've done a little write-up of the whole thing (be warned, it's a bit image intensive), anyway it's all explained here:
http://mtm2.com/~d2s/litefuzz/lites.html

Phineus also threw in some pics of his own:
http://rhinoseros.com/~pics/ideas/litefuzz/

This is just something that I did out of personal interest, but I figured it would hold fascination for others too. If there's demand I'll release it to the general public, when (I'll use the word 'when') I arrive at a "final" version. There are still some things about it that I think need improvement (can we eliminate the greenish tinge at the ends of the beams? My current thinking is it's a graphics engine issue, not something wrong/fixable with the textures), though I'm not sure yet what direction to take on that.

Thoughts?

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Please use the brake provided and not the vehicle in front of you.
- V8 Challenge online racing guidelines

Uh, don't see any difference between this and the MTM2 headlights :confused:

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"Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around" -Penelope Cruz, Vanilla Sky

Fila, look at drive2survive's before and after pics. Open them in separate windows if you have to. There's a big difference. The only other things I can note, right now, are that perhaps using gray scale images will effect the greenie thing, and I really like the way d2s shows us how he went step by step to arrive at this end. An excellent demonstration of troubleshooting and tackling a problem. Right now I have the litefuzz.pod (how come the download isn't zipped?) mounted atop my pod.ini file, and pending updates I think we should encourage winterkill to add this to his fixitall1to2.pod. I think it's great.

Oy.... hmmm yeah i see now. I like the original stuff more. Can't give u a reason, just like it

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"Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around" -Penelope Cruz, Vanilla Sky

What driving view do you normally use then Fila?

I use Chase Near exclusively (with the camera elevated a little so I can see where I'm going) and those light beams tend to get in the way a bit... that's what really sparked me to begin tinkering with them. From an ornamental standpoint (say, watching a replay) the originals are fine, but you try reading the road ahead through 'em... lol.

>> how come the download isn't zipped?

Coz it only contains one texture, so it's only 65KB (although it would still benefit from zipping), and it's still work in progress (and I'm lazy)...

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Please use the brake provided and not the vehicle in front of you.
- V8 Challenge online racing guidelines

Update. I've been messing around with the coloured light textures: check out Page 2 at http://mtm2.com/~d2s/litefuzz/lites_colour.html .

Unfortunately, I don't think they work nearly was well as the plain, 'white' lights do... the colour just doesn't seem to fade to transparency as nicely as the white lights do. I think maybe I've taken this as far as I can... anyway, see what you think yourself...

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Please use the brake provided and not the vehicle in front of you.
- V8 Challenge online racing guidelines

In your pics, the dashboard guages make the beams harder to see... compared to the first page. I know you're going to saying something like: "and I'm lazy" ... but you should really turn them things off when taking pics :·p

Anyway.

The dark ends on the beams are due to the color palette. There are not enough colors in your palettes, and the ends are not black but a dark version of red or blue, and hence not transparent. I adjusted your images using the stock act files, then saved everything new. Have a look at the fore n aft pics.

I can do better than "I'm lazy"...

Ahh, sorry 'bout the dash... I actually took some 50 screenshots, and I turned the dash off for some of those (honest I did)... but then the ones I picked as the 'best' pics all had the dash on

Yeah, I understand the cause and effect of the dark ends of the beams. For the white lights, I didn't take them right to absolute black at the ends, so that the ends are still faintly visible... but the transparency deal works a whole lot better on them. I did the exact same darkening on the coloured ones, with the same step, and you saw the results.

The problem's not so much that they don't fade as nicely at the ends - that can be achieved easily enough by making them black - but that the darker bit in-between is so readily visible... your versions look much better, but still I wonder how they appear over a lighter or illuminated surface...

Given that coloured lights have their greatest use in police sirens and the like, I think I may just leave them well enough alone...

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Please use the brake provided and not the vehicle in front of you.
- V8 Challenge online racing guidelines

>> I wonder how they appear over a lighter or illuminated surface...

They look good. I chose those pics cuz I thought they avoided the overlap - well, actually, I wanted to match the before and after beams exactly, but good luck, hehe. Anyway, I have a download at the bottom of the page. Try it and see fer yerself. I think they're fine. In fact, I'm glad you started this whole thing cuz I've never really liked the hex boxes for lights.

Next up should be figuring out a way to use the evo smoke textures in mtm2.

This looks really interesting D2S....I think you are on to something....

The color-fade-to-black problem sounds similar to the problem we have painting shades on a truck...you can always see the transitions to lighter or darker shades, due to the lack of color-shades in total...

Not so with white/black/shades of grey, of which there are plenty of in the default pallette....this must be why the effect is poor with colored light-beams. That would be a great addition to the FIXALL.POD.

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I found something else interesting.....the poor light beam effect only occurs in DirectX mode.....

Of course, you don't have lightbeams in software mode, But I also have 3DFX mode, due to my VOODOO5 video card. In that setting, the light beams look exactly as your AFTER pictures. They even look round instead of hexagonal (except where they contact the ground. I had the same performance with my pent-1/voodoo2 card.

http://mtm2.com/~bigdogge/temp_pics/DX_VS_3DFX.JPG



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BigDOGGe's Boneyard...The Best Custom Trucks in MTM2 -
http://mtm2.com/~bigdogge/

Little update: http://mtm2.com/~d2s/litefuzz/lites_colour.html
I even killed the dashboard gauges for ya, Phin.

I'm still not 100% sure on the coloured beams, but Phin likes them, and his versions are definitely better than my attempts so I'll keep out of doing anything with those.

I'm also not sure how to combat the green effect on the 'white' light beams (or even whether it's worthwhile - I still think they look better than the standard, even with the greenish tinge). Phin, you suggested converting the textures to grey scale and saving the palette; well, as it happens they are greyscale already...

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BigDOGGe, that's an interesting find... I tried on my old computer with its Voodoo 2 and it indeed does the same (hadn't driven at night before).

So, I'm trying to do with modified textures, what is in this case a hardware effect?

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Please use the brake provided and not the vehicle in front of you.
- V8 Challenge online racing guidelines

For a very long time now I've felt that 3dfx had it up on all graphics cards. I was extremely disappointed when they were bought out. But the worst of it is I have a v5500 sitting here and it won't fit in my current comp, so I can't use it =(

I guess this fix is the best compromise.

I wonder how will the lights look on Geforce FX (5). Since it's the first card that will use the technology the 3dfx guys were thinking about.

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"Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around" -Penelope Cruz, Vanilla Sky

I doubt they'll look like DOGGe's 3Dfx pic, Fila. Unless they implement the exact same (years-old) 3Dfx renderer, the game won't recognise it, hence you won't be able choose anything but Direct3D in the game's graphic options, and hence you'll be trapped with the hexxy beams still (though it'll run at a million frames a second ). I guess when they programmed the game, the ability to make light beams look this way simply wasn't a facility in DirectX (and/or it was too hard to write/implement themselves), whereas it was with 3Dfx.

I was actually quite surprised when I first found out MTM2 had an alternate graphics engine for 3Dfx - and that it seems to run better, too... Nowadays, of course, DirectX is the universal standard for Windows comps, but graphics card companies still come up with their proprietry rendering technologies...

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Please use the brake provided and not the vehicle in front of you.
- V8 Challenge online racing guidelines

Yes but once with Doom 3 OpenGL 2.0 will come out and will kick DirectX's butt.

As in terms of performace OpenGL beats the cwap out of DirectX 8.1 (but it doesn't support the pixel shader). Before making upgrades to my computer i ran Serious Sam2 in DirectX with full details and the game was dragging at most times. I switched to OpenGL and i had same detail quality wihout any fps drops. So everytime i get the chance OpenGL is the way to go (wasn't that what 3dfx supported only?).

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"Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around" -Penelope Cruz, Vanilla Sky

OpenGL and GLIDE for my old Voodoo Banshee card (voodoo2 compatible)

When I first tried this Voodoo5 5500 card, I got poor graphics performance....then I installed the WinXP Microsoft update for voodoo cards, and suddenly some of my 3D stuff worked....then after updating my adapter driver at voodoofiles.com, suddenly everything worked, including mtm2/3DFX, and my openGL 3D screensavers.

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-BigDOGGe's Boneyard...The Best Custom Trucks in MTM2 -
http://mtm2.com/~bigdogge/

<font size=1>Edited by ZOtm_BigDOGGe (17-12-2002)</font>

Fila: I said DirectX was a standard. I didn't say it was necessarily good


Now, having sat on my hands for about a week, I've finally decided to try making a couple of litefuzz variants to try out some different ideas: http://mtm2.com/~d2s/litefuzz/lites_new.html

Have a look and see which you like - I've put up a series of screenshots, but you can also download and try them out yourself. I still think the versions I came out with at the end of the first series of experiments (Lites_1 on this page) are the best, but I was surprised at how effectively adding a bit of red to the textures neutralises the greenish tinge in overlapping beams, and I might incorporate that into it...

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Please use the brake provided and not the vehicle in front of you.
- V8 Challenge online racing guidelines

I can't believe how much the green shows in Lites_2. Holey moley.

I propose we all go and buy 3dfx cards.

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"Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around" -Penelope Cruz, Vanilla Sky

I have a Banshee and a TnT 2........ I'm sticking with the tnt 2 for now...

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