Quote from: "EgonOlsen"

Quote
Does the openGL version offer any speed up yet? Last I remember it didn't.

:shock: ...??...but...but..it should... :wink: The hardware support via LWJGL is way faster than the software modes. If it isn't, OpenGL may run in software emulation (done by the OpenGL implementation, not by jPCT) for some reason but i doubt that this will even work. There are three rendering modes in jPCT: software legacy (default), software OpenGL-look-a-like (a bit slower than legacy but using OpenGL's lighting model) and finally the hardware OpenGL renderer itself. Try the terrain example in OpenGL. It should be much faster (around 10 times on my machine) than the software rendered version.

I can't get the landscape demo to work since the GL version was released, I'll have a mess about with the .bat file. I remember reading somewhere that there wasn't much performace increase with the first version, might just have been my imagination.

Are the LWJGL-team working on problem 1? That would be very useful, the artist I'm working with at the moment is using 600+ polygons for the characters which can be a big strain on the software mode with older processors. I'll post details here when the alpha is finally up.

EDIT: I changed the BAT, that's MUCH faster!

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"

Quote from: "Neoteric"
Your classes but I think the problem is my end, everything is included in the archive fine, it can find the classes, but on frame buffer instantiation it throws the exception. I think it's a packgage problem.

Are you sure that you've included BufferedImageBuffer and MemoryImageBuffer into the JAR? jPCT doesn't do very much in the instantiation of a FrameBuffer that may cause this exception but it dynamically loads one of these classes depending on the VM (Memory... for 1.1 and Buffered...for 1.2+). Maybe this fails because the classes are not there? Does it output some blah before it crashes? Like "java version is:"??

I fixed the problem by taking the main class out of it's package, now the JAR runs from my HD but I still get the same problem when running off of the web, I think it can't find the textures. It just says Java.lang.NullPointerException.

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"jPCT doesn't support this ATM. However, it supports keyframed animations either directly loaded from a MD2-file (quake2 model format) or done "by hand". I suggest to convert the animations into keyframes and let jPCT interpolate between them. Support for other kinds of animation is on my list, but with a very low priority, so don't count on it.

Ok, cool.

QuoteThat's a bit too vague...in your code or in mine?

Your classes but I think the problem is my end, everything is included in the archive fine, it can find the classes, but on frame buffer instantiation it throws the exception. I think it's a packgage problem.

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"For doing animations?

yep.

I'm getting there deploying, but when I load the JAR explorer is saying there's a null pointer exception for some reason.

Cool, I'll try it.

And onother question, wow easy would it be to use a model with bones?

I'm having problems including the JPCT classes into the JAR file, how was it done in the examples? It might just be a problem with my copy of jBuilder.

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"

Quote from: "Neoteric"
Individually texturing the polygons has been deprecated in jpct, would you not reccomend that? Because it seems the only way to do landscapes properly.

It's still possible to texture the polygons individually when adding them. What is deprectaed is the possibility to change a polygon's texture AFTER adding it. The reason for this is the same i mentioned above while talking about the "vertex-shader"-stuff: The number of a polygon after adding it is not always the number it had when adding it, because jPCT optimizes the meshes (or call createTriangleStrips() and the whole mesh will be re-ordered). Maybe it's a good idea to allow some kind of IDs for polygons...we'll see....

Ah i get it, I still don't know much about vertex shaders, if you know of any good papers on the subject I'd like to take a look.

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"Funny...a frame counter would be the first thing to put in for me...
Even if nothing else happens: I just have to know how fast this "nothing else" happens  

Usually for me too, optimisation freek here as well. Apart from removing a few square roots (been a bit lazy there) there isn't much I can do to improve the speed, there must be a few Java tricks I don't know of.

I don't want to use tables because the accuracy is needed. The thing that would improve speed the most would be to find a way to wrap the floor texture faster, right now every pixel needs a mod. I could keep track of the u,v values and only mod when necessary but haven't really thought about that.

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"About the IGI-question again: I'm currently working on a octree-implementation for jPCT. That doesn't mean that something like IGI will be possible though, but it may ease the task somehow. Anyway...my current implementation lets you add an octree to an object in a single line of code, so even if it doesn't help, it doesn't hurt either.

For really massive RPG/flightsim landscapes I guess it would need to be scrolled/patch-worked anyway. Doing the detail textures/blending in software necessary for good landscapes seems a little ambitious, might have to wait for the full opengl release before I can think about implementing one.

Individually texturing the polygons has been deprecated in jpct, would you not reccomend that? Because it seems the only way to do landscapes properly.

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"About Stuntcar Racer...i just discovered this one. Have a look:

http://www.flipcode.com/cgi-bin/msg.cgi?showThread=02-10-2003&forum=iotd&id=-1

Hehe, that's nice. Hasn't got the banked track right and it's too thin but the engine is pretty good. The plan is in mine to interpolate the track using Bezier curves and give it a better flowing shape.

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"Yes...it's looking fine now. Is there a way to show the framerate or am i just blind?

I haven't put a frame counter in yet, I'll put shading in soon if I can find a cheep way to do it, will need to know the frame rate then.

Providing it runs smoothly enough I'm not too worried.

Finally that problem is fixed.

http://www.omegaruins.com/projects/VrTour/popup3.html

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"BTW: I had a look at your email-address. Are you the guy who wrote this raycasting applet with the slightly wrong rendered floors?

Afraid so, how did you know that?  :shock: Think I'll leave the 3D graphics to the experts in the future, what annoys me most is i've actually got it to work before back on my old Amiga, I'll have to plug it back in and find out how I did it.

Got to get around to fixing that this weekend. I think the problem is with the fisheye on the walls rather then the floor, can't for the life of me work out what though. I must just be calculating the wrong ray components. Notice the walls squash at the far sides of the screen.

EDIT:I've just replaced the current version with a more optimised one.

http://www.omegaruins.com/projects/VrTour/popup2.html

And another question. I'm fairly new to 3D graphics so how big can I expect to make a level for a first person game? Especially if it was again spread across a large landscape again, including collision detection, interiors and perhaps lights, can the engine cull fast enough with a view frustum etc? or should I opt for a scrolling tile basis?

Something like the Project IGI engine is what I have in mind.

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"
I can imagine three different solutions to this problem:
1.) Code the lighting information into the texture. This may produce nice results in some cases, but to be honest i doubt that will in your case.
2.) Use the normal lighting jPCT offers. Place the "sun" in the distance and play with the lightMul, linearDiv and fadeOutLight parameters in Config. Maybe it's possible to produce the desired effect this way.
3.) (and this is NOT possible at the moment but something i'm still thinking about)...use a kind of simple VertexShader-Interface to implement some things on a vertex-level for yourself. Problem with this is, that i have to find a logical, convenient and fast way of doing this and that isn't that easy. Anyway, it won't help you much hear me talking about features that may come in the future...

So i suggest to go with the dynamic lighting jPCT offers. If it really doesn't work, please let me know where the problem is...maybe i can do something about it.

Number two was the one I was heading for, didn't realise there were lightMul, linearDiv and fadeOutLight peramiters, I haven't gone through all the documentation yet. Either that or I can try and calcualte the normals and shading myself, which I don't really have time to do at the moment.

Quote from: "EgonOlsen"
That's not possible, because that would hurt the software-renderers performance too much. If you really need it, do the modulo-calculation by yourself on the texture-coords (before calling addTriangle()). But that will require that you build the object by yourself (i.e. not using one of the loaders in Loader). IF the vertex-shader-stuff mentioned above would be in jPCT, it should be possible to do such things in a more convenient way...IF.... :wink:

BTW: I loved stuntcar racer. It was a great game to be played via a (null-)modem connection.

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I could piece togeather the landscape into a patch work so the texture is split into smaller areas, shouldn't have too much impact on the over all speed and also very simple.

...that reminds me I have to give the OGL version a go.

I downloaded SCR on an emulator a while ago, can't get enough of it. If I get off the ground with this hopefully my stunt car racer will be upto 6 player over TCP/IP, I won't get around to implementing that until after the physics though (obviously) and that when my universtiy work is out the way.

Thanks for your time.

After having done a little research on Java3D I decided there wasn't anything like enough support or examples for it, so I'll be using JPCT.

I will be basing my game on the classic Stunt Car Racer:



I'll update on how it goes and when my site is up.

A question though... I would like my landscape to be sun-lit (i.e from a distance and static) what would be the way to do this?

Also how is texture repeating set so it isn't streched over the whole landscape?