Freeworlds: Tides of War is a fan built Star Wars total conversion mod for Digital Anvil's Freelancer game that was released several years ago. When fans began to make mods for Freelancer, one of the many things people were keen on seeing was a Freelancer mod based on the Star Wars universe developed by George Lucas. Freeworlds and Tides of War were the answer to this outcry. The development team of both mods have now joined forces to create an epic new Star Wars TC, Freeworlds: Tides of War.
Kuat Drive Yards 3.0
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Description
The third (public) iteration of the famous orbital shipyards of Kuat.
Oh man, can we go deeper? It looks incredibly detailed and polished, great work!
Nice work
But the Shadows on the planet is just way to off
You should see multilines of densities of shadows on the planet if any and the shadows should be soft... Moreever, seeing the shadow at the equator of the planet all arround seems a little odd, but I can't tell like that if it's ok... I'm pretty sure it's not.
And the white line moving while the camera is moving is even wierder...
What does it comes from? Space is relatively empty. Microdebrits et and asteroids exist, but it's does not seem write, these whitespot...
Anyway, the most important is done right, so kept it up
For the hardness of the shadows - Shadows are completely new to the engine, and we are working on making them as realistic as possible. However, elements are very complex, or just plain not possible with the engine.
And for the shadow following the equator, yes, it would be there almost all the way to the terminator. See, when dealing with light on a solar level, you can pretty much say that all light coming from the sun is coming on a 0 degree vector, because of the distances involved. Therefore, an object directly intersecting that would cast a shadow on a 0 degree vector as well. Now, the shadow currently cast by KDY probably isn't 100% geometrically accurate, but its close.
As for the white streaks, that's dust. Its a basic element of the Freelancer UI that helps some feel movement. Realistic? Not really. Neither is Star Wars.
I'd add that the sun being effectively a directional, point light, hard shadows are actually physically accurate. The reason soft shadows would appear would largely be due to atmospheric scattering, and this is NOT something you want to simulate in real time in an already fairly strained engine. You're all going to have to live with depressingly sharp shadows, it would seem.
As for shadows around the equator, their projection is correct. Their placement is correct. What makes it feel a bit odd is that our scale is not realistic, because a realistic scale would be impossible in Freelancer without a lot of workarounds. Normally the planet should be many times larger, which would make KDY's shadow very small compared to the entire surface area.
Thankfully we've never said we were aiming for a realistic rendition of anything :)
Thanks, I didn't know that shadows were new to the engine, still haven't had time to play the base game...
But TSP_FriendlyFire, may I remind you that the earth is merely a small sphere compared to the earth? What I want to say is, the sun is not a point light. We see that in physic class at secondary school. We calculating shadows for a object like the sun, you have the estimate the relative size of the object compare to where you are and calculate the shadows from two point of the object that are opposite to the other (works for spheres only). Even in space orbit, the sun is not a tiny point like a distant star, but a small sphere.
And I don't think that any games makes atmosphere rendering and it's light modification in real time, I might be wrong... There are ways to smothen a shadow else then going the full realist way.
On the 0 degree point, it's true. Two day per years at one place: on the equinox at the equator. It's a truth that is nice, since it's what allows us to have seasons...
But still, the work is very well done.
One the white streak, that explains it. Thanks man!
I'm sorry but no. It is very common in astrophysics to approximate the sun, not only as a point light, but as a directional light. In either cases, the resulting shadows are hard.
Again, the reason shadows on Earth appear to be soft is not due to the Sun's radius, it's the atmosphere scattering the light and causing a penumbra.
Furthermore, soft shadows are ridiculously expensive in games. There's a reason they're not frequent. Area lights basically don't exist in any rasterizer; at best you have tricks around it.
Youtube.com Some nice atmospheric effects that we will never see in fl
This looks amazing! I cannot wait for this to come out.
What is the name of the song used during this video?
It's too dark!
First, in Star Wars everything is lit, even in the middle of nowhere. It's not too realistic, but you said it yourselves: "Thankfully we've never said we were aiming for a realistic rendition of anything :)" (quote by FrinendlyFire)
Second, in real world, the planet (and even the moon) reflects the sunlight. The apparent magnitude of most planets is less than the brightest star (Sirius): En.wikipedia.org. Even new Moon is brighter than Sirius (even if it doesn't feel like it). Point is, stellar bodies reflect quite a lot of light back into space. So, the KDY should be better lit even just for that reason.
I think you should make the everything brighter, when not facing directly at the sun. Not as bright as when pointed at the star, but still brighter.
Well then, dear friend, I would be most pleased if you could give me well-performing code that can do indirect lighting in a real-time deferred renderer.
That is some harsh critique here
It's probably hard for some people to grasp just how impressive it is to see scenes like this taking place in a freelancer mod. To hell with the minor details.
Fantastic, great to see this asset going from strength to strength. All kinds of awesome, great work guys.