It's just over 2000 polys which was the hard limit I was setting myself so some optimising will need to be done, especially as I want more detail on the pylons.
It'll either need to have several sub-objects or wait until the next release which apparently is removing the poly limit - although if it does I'd heartily recommend a LOD system that draws objects over a certain distance away as a single pixel.
As for the canopy, it'll either need to be a PNG transparency done either as a proper 24-bit mask or 8-bit chequers - assuming Oolite supports either.
Or, more likely, good, old fashioned, flipped polygons so it draws behind the pilots
Eta2 Absolutely! That's why I'm not keen on it. I LOVE that design, it's one of my favourite starfighter designs ever - but I want to do something different, which is why I'm not really happy with it.
I have never said that before and am perplexed that I say it, just mentioning that raising the poly count that high will lead to a sort of performance hit that it will no longer be possible to have a lot of ships in with models with such counts
Seriously people, if I start saying this, it's the case
.. who cares about framerate when you can have stuff like Griff Boas flying around Trade Outposts?
Normally, that's my line to say here
But, if the needed specs for all that start going beyond the 2GB RAM/2.5GHz dual core needed limit, I start getting nervous, too.
Seriously, I start having this issue with my OSE WiP now ... thinking about demanding 4GB RAM. Question is, if this doesn't leave nearly everyone behind who wants to have it specs-wise, and anyone doing something with a 600+ poly count will have to face that question, too.
Perhaps I should just think "Moore's Law" again and relax, though.
Giant battle mechs flying it? (The Viper is 55 metres long.)
To be a touch more charitable (but a lot less funny), you could scale it down and make it a funky escape pod, or nix out the people, replace with darkened glass and you can get around the scale issue as is...
I don't have 4 gb ram, and I'm running Oolite on a top spec iMac from a year ago!
I do have 4 GiB of RAM, and I’m also running Oolite on a top spec iMac from a year ago. Well, a bit more now. It only cost about 1/15th of what the computer did. :-)
