Oolite Bulletins

Hi everyone,

Old-school Elite player here, looking to hop back into the cockpit. Quick question: Are the "Griff's Normalmapped Ships OXPs" now a part of the standard Oolite 1.80 distribution, or are they still better than the standard textures? I've seen a couple of mentions that seem to imply that Griff's textures were made the official game textures at some point in the past, but I can't find anything definitive. Thanks!

Hi and welcome

Griff's models are indeed now part of the core game in version 1.80, but they use the non-shaders textures variant created by CaptSolo. It's a kind of hybrid combining high quality ship models with great textures that do not require excessive GPU/CPU power to run. You can still install Griff's full shipset over the core one, if you want to have also normal maps and full shaders usage.

Hi Graywing, and welcome.
As A_C says, the Griff models are now the game's defaults, but for those who really like the old ones, retroRefit OXZ is available via the manager which simply puts the old ones back.
Also I am working on a shipset OXZ which takes the old models and designs and gives them a serious kick into the 21st Century, although this is still a work in progress - details are here. I'm hoping for a release early in the New Year if all goes well.

another_commander wrote:

You can still install Griff's full shipset over the core one, if you want to have also normal maps and full shaders usage.

Don't use Griff's all-in-one shipset though, as it's slightly broken - use his individual OXPs for 1.80 instead.

Should I still use the Griff_Shipset_Replace OXP to replace all the original textures, with the individual 1.80 OXPs?

No, those OXPs are standalones, and the list includes a suppressor OXP to remove the core textures.
For stations and rock hermits, get this bundle (which I believe still works okay with Oolite 1.80).

This might be a daft question, but what are shaders?

Shaders are a display technology introduced in the OpenGL 2.0 standard (and DirectX something or other) and supported by most graphics cards made since 2007ish, but not most older ones, which allows the rendering of objects to be extensively customised in software, but retain the hardware acceleration of the graphics card.

In an Oolite context, the default shaders allow specular and normal mapping in addition to the basic "this ship is this colour". Griff's ships do some other fancy things with them like random colour schemes and decals. You can also do some more complex things with them - the planetary rings, or the shiny docking/hyperspace tunnels from BGS, use appropriately set up shaders to make an object which looks very little like either its model or its texture input files.

The Oolite core is still intended to support OpenGL 1.x graphics cards, as older hardware, especially old laptops, won't support any better. So the default texture set for the Griff models in Oolite core is a non-shader texture specially developed by CaptSolo which gives most of the benefits without requiring shaders.
(Shaders can be used in Oolite core objects provided that the result without shaders still looks good but for technical reasons the original Griff shaders and textures aren't suitable for including in the core)

Thanks for the detailed answer! I quickly tried the Griff shader Coriolis station and saw that the docking bay is green with much sharper glidepath lights on the back wall. I think the nightside window lights are brighter but I still see lights without the shaders so I assume Oolite allows emissive textures anyway.

It would be good if the shader ship textures could be gathered back up into a single working (but big!) OXP. I guess this is the prerogative of the owner.

streb2001 wrote:

I assume Oolite allows emissive textures anyway.

Basic ones even without shader support, yes. Better with.

Cody wrote:

Don't use Griff's all-in-one shipset though, as it's slightly broken - use his individual OXPs for 1.80 instead.

Cody wrote:

No, those OXPs are standalones, and the list includes a suppressor OXP to remove the core textures.
For stations and rock hermits, get this bundle (which I believe still works okay with Oolite 1.80).

And if, like me, you'd like to keep your AddOns folder at least semi-manageable, instead of having some 37 or so individual Griff-ship OXPs sitting in AddOns, you can just make a folder in AddOns called Griffs-Shipset.oxp (name doesn't matter as long as it ends in .oxp) and stick the whole lot of them in there. Oolite will still find and use them.

G'day Graywing, and welcome to the boards, btw!

streb2001 wrote:

Thanks for the detailed answer! I quickly tried the Griff shader Coriolis station and saw that the docking bay is green with much sharper glidepath lights on the back wall. I think the nightside window lights are brighter but I still see lights without the shaders so I assume Oolite allows emissive textures anyway.

Both is actually on my todo list for my project. The default stations use the normal resolution textures, while Griff had also stations using hires textures and the greenish glow seems to be a shader thingy. I'm looking into bringing them to a noshader universe as well.

Anyway. if your gpu supports shaders Griff's ships look best.
welcome aboard greywing