Satellite Photo Terrain? Shader Effects?

[secks]

Jet Thunder is looking very good so far. Flying VSTOLs within a dynamic campaign environment will be a blast. I recently purchased LOMAC, and am extremely impressed with its graphics. The high-resolution satellite textures drastically enhance LOMAC's visual realism, as do the various shader effects.

 

Will JT feature high res satellite terrain textures? What about shader effects (realtime shadows, reflective water, etc)?

 

Carl

[+Dante-JT]

Will JT feature high res satellite terrain textures? What about shader effects (realtime shadows, reflective water, etc

 

Yep, the engine already supports high res satellite terrain texture, although the hire texture we're using is generic - we're waiting for the help of the argentinian geographic mapping institutes to provide these material, in the same way their air force kindly is providing all the technical references on Mirage and A-4s etc.

 

The way we implemented it in the engine, means that at high alt we see a hires satellite photo (like Janes USAF), but it gradually and smoothly does a transition to a tile-based texture system (like IL2) for low altitude flying, or else we'd see a blurred satellite texture as these aren't suitable for low alt / high speed flight. But of course the tiles must match the features of the satellite photo for a smooth transition, a thing that doesn't happens at the moment because the satellite photo is just a temporary placeholder.

 

The water at the moment already shows a simple reflection effect, and transparency - in fact it looks slightly like the water in IL2 (in excellent settings, not in Perfect settings), but one of the goals is to implement shaders - for this, we have a programmer dedicated (Gustavo) who will implement bump-mapped sea surface as arb dot3 or pixel shader.

[ApolloFarStriker]

Will JT feature high res satellite terrain textures? What about shader effects (realtime shadows, reflective water, etc

 

Yep, the engine already supports high res satellite terrain texture, although the hire texture we're using is generic - we're waiting for the help of the argentinian geographic mapping institutes to provide these material, in the same way their air force kindly is providing all the technical references on Mirage and A-4s etc.

 

The way we implemented it in the engine, means that at high alt we see a hires satellite photo (like Janes USAF), but it gradually and smoothly does a transition to a tile-based texture system (like IL2) for low altitude flying, or else we'd see a blurred satellite texture as these aren't suitable for low alt / high speed flight. But of course the tiles must match the features of the satellite photo for a smooth transition, a thing that doesn't happens at the moment because the satellite photo is just a temporary placeholder.

 

The water at the moment already shows a simple reflection effect, and transparency - in fact it looks slightly like the water in IL2 (in excellent settings, not in Perfect settings), but one of the goals is to implement shaders - for this, we have a programmer dedicated (Gustavo) who will implement bump-mapped sea surface as arb dot3 or pixel shader.

How does LOMAC achieve that spectacular terrain effect? I know it's sat photos high up, but you nevr really notice a transition to the low alt textures...Simply breathtaking immersion.

 

LOMAC is light years ahead of IL-2 in terms of terrain IMO.