Optical Illusion or an actual design in Legacy

[IKS]

When I was doing my latest map background I found this incredible little nugget of beauty in Legacy. If your background contains a natural glow in the actual texture somehow when your ship is in line with this background it blends in with it around the edges of the ship as if the nebula has actual ambient lighting.

Now I know some of you are going to say yeah that's in Legacy already but I do believe I am the only one to do these glowing backgrounds and I think this optical effect from them looks cool. It has nothing to do with the directional light as image 1 shows you below - that is the same class of ship side by side in Legacy Map Editor. Image 2 is an ingame shot with default directional lighting

Spoiler:

Shown below is an actual in game shot of this effect. See for yourself.

Spoiler:

Legacy seems to have some issue with glowing objects at a distance (thinks of Alexraptor's Yrrebodan and the gas rings around the planet) so could this be something we could exploit further in mapping? Thoughts on it?

[yopyop]

nice find.

[tjoz]

I dont understand what Im looking at? Map background or the nebulae? If there is glows on the map background texture set, that I can understand. If its nebulae things, I will teach you some fancy tricks

Nebulae has some very nice secrets that no-one has seem to pick up on...

[gdata]

It looks like Legacy's shaders are actually including the background for some kind of blending calculation. It's definitely an interesting find, but I think of an actual use of it...anybody else?
Yea, it seems like Legacy sometimes forgets that nebulae should not shine through other objects. But this might be a problem caused by the planet itself, not the nebula. Remember when we did not have the exporter? We could see phasers and photons through our ships. This still happens with the asteroids sometimes. I guess that's the same reason why nebulae shine through planets when you are at a certain distance.

[IKS]

Originally Posted by tjoz

I dont understand what Im looking at? Map background or the nebulae? If there is glows on the map background texture set, that I can understand. If its nebulae things, I will teach you some fancy tricks

Nebulae has some very nice secrets that no-one has seem to pick up on...

Legacy Porn

There is no Nebulae, Its all in the Map Background, there are glows on the MBG texture set which means for some odd reason the glow transfers to lighting around the edge of the ships when placed in line with the MBG texture.

Originally Posted by gdata

It looks like Legacy's shaders are actually including the background for some kind of blending calculation. It's definitely an interesting find, but I think of an actual use of it...anybody else?

Well lets say you want to do a map that is set in nebula or for instance a perfect example is Fluidic space then you do all 6 MBG Textures for the map background and put a glow on the textures. That way you get a 360 degree haze on the edge of the ship as if there is small light gas clouds surrounding the ship - more subtle and realistic than Legacy's crappy stock nebulae and no lag whatsoever

[Muldrf]

I wouldn't be very surprised if it reacts a bit differently in various versions of legacy. And possibly with different videocards/drivers.

There are oddities everywhere that can be used in creative ways. Fluidic Space sounds like it could be a good use for this one.

[IKS]

Originally Posted by Muldrf

I wouldn't be very surprised if it reacts a bit differently in various versions of legacy. And possibly with different videocards/drivers.

There are oddities everywhere that can be used in creative ways. Fluidic Space sounds like it could be a good use for this one.

Well I could try make a fluidic space map, give a copy to you for UU, a copy to Gdata for TB and Tjoz for Aftermath..three very different Legacy versions, more than likely three different graphics cards and see if it behaves the same way?

[gdata]

sounds like a plan to find out how it works. for the record: I'm running a 260GTX I can also have someone run it on a 4890 ATi if you want?

[IKS]

Made a new Fluidic Space MBG texture this morning, not as good as I had hoped but its only for testing purposes.

The glitch doesn't appear too well here because there is no real glow in the MBG texture however I am going to sort that out soon. Map lighting or ambient lighting could also help out in getting the effect I believe.

Spoiler:

I think the bottom Intrepid has a slight orange haze around it but thats only at a distance so thats no bueno, I'll keep trying