Oolite Bulletins

Yesterday I got a cheap 1gb Asus Geoforce 210 graphics card (Nvidia chipset) for my PC - Windows 7 64-bit, 8gb quad core 3.2ghz

At first there didn't seem to be a huge improvement in graphics speed etc., even if I ran nvidia's tweaking utility to up its processing speed. But then I looked at the game options and enabled shaders, and things seemed to become a lot better - smoother animation and better clarity generally, and graphics look more realistic, even without upping the speed. So assuming that this isn't my wishful thinking, I'm guessing that it's working.

I quite like the current default ship graphics and BGS and don't really want to change them, but is there anything else I should look at replacing or adding? My current list of add-ons that use graphics (really wish there was an easy way to list this):

DTT Planet Express
DTT Heart of Gold
Cargo Wreck
Thargorn Threat
Ship Storage Helper
Torus Stations
Coluber HUD
new cargoes
system features rings
system features sunspots
Thargoid Wars
Asteroid Storm
Waypoint Here
Torus To Sun
additional planets sr demux volcanic
additional planets sr others gas giants
aliens
Star-jelly
additional planets sr base
additional planets sr pack redux
glare filter
Background Graphics Set
Common Core Library
Planetfall
Pods
Second Wave
Thargoid Swarm
Extra Thargoids
Interstellar Tweaks
Distant Suns
Auto Crosshairs

Thanks!

The biggest advantage you now have with that card when running Oolite (besides the shaders and smoother animation, etc) is the extra graphics RAM. This means you can use more (and larger versions of) texture files, without adversely affecting things.

Since you like the core ships, I'd suggest getting the full set of latest Griff ships.. these look the same as the core ships, except they're chock full of shadery goodness, which means they'll look even better than they do already.

I'd also suggest you try out PovRay Planets, for the awesomely detailed high-res planetary textures. (You don't need to download the full set (4GB!) at once.. you can get just the set for the chart you're in. Custom Shields is another OXP that's well worth a look.. NPCs get shields that glow when you hit them, (as does your ship when you take hits, the colour indicates shield strength) and visible fuel leaks that you can scoop.

The other thing you'll notice with your new card is that when things get busy, with lots of ships and objects around you, the framerate (and hence the game itself) won't slow down by anywhere near as much, if at all.

Diziet Sma wrote:

The biggest advantage you now have with that card when running Oolite (besides the shaders and smoother animation, etc) is the extra graphics RAM. This means you can use more (and larger versions of) texture files, without adversely affecting things.

Since you like the core ships, I'd suggest getting the full set of latest Griff ships.. these look the same as the core ships, except they're chock full of shadery goodness, which means they'll look even better than they do already.

I'd also suggest you try out PovRay Planets, for the awesomely detailed high-res planetary textures. (You don't need to download the full set (4GB!) at once.. you can get just the set for the chart you're in. Custom Shields is another OXP that's well worth a look.. NPCs get shields that glow when you hit them, (as does your ship when you take hits, the colour indicates shield strength) and visible fuel leaks that you can scoop.

The other thing you'll notice with your new card is that when things get busy, with lots of ships and objects around you, the framerate (and hence the game itself) won't slow down by anywhere near as much, if at all.

All of the Griff's ships retextures that come up on the menu have noshaders in the title - are they the right ones?

Use these OXPs - get 'em all! Then go track a Moray up-close - beautiful!

ffutures wrote:

All of the Griff's ships retextures that come up on the menu have noshaders in the title - are they the right ones?

Ahh.. no. Griff's shader ships are not currently available as OXZs.. see the download link as provided by Cody - specifically, in the folder titled 'Core Shipset for Oolite v1.80'.

Also, for easier management of all the individual Griff OXPs, I suggest you create a folder in AddOns called 'Griff-ships.oxp' (or whatever.. so long as it ends in .oxp) and place them all in there. Oolite will still find them all, but your main AddOns folder will be tidier.

Cody wrote:

Then go track a Moray up-close - beautiful!

Definitely! An angry shadered Griff Moray up close is truly a sight to behold.. screenshots just can't do it justice. For that, a video would be needed. (Now there's an idea, Cody.. with your fancy new rig, it shouldn't be too hard to make one! )

(If you want to see some screenshots of it though, I posted a few nice ones here. Some of them show off the Custom Shields effects as well.)

Diziet Sma wrote:

Now there's an idea, Cody.. with your fancy new rig, it shouldn't be too hard to make one!

I was kinda planning a movie, once I could make use of nVidia's Shadowplay - but you gotta have the whole GeForce Experience package installed to run that, and me and GFE do not get on! In my opinion it's bloatware, and I've known it to screw with driver updates, among other things - it wants to control, and I ain't having that.

I'll perhaps look into other vid-capture software one day - but it's gotta be unobtrusive, which many ain't!

Cody wrote:

I'll perhaps look into other vid-capture software one day - but it's gotta be unobtrusive, which many ain't!

VLC might cut it right with being unobtrusive, although you'd need to do some tune up to get nice video grabbing out of it. But it should be the fastest way to have it done.

... of course, there is the "other way", bribing cim & co. to hook up some video capturing library to the game, a la DosBox

Commander_X wrote:

... of course, there is the "other way", bribing cim & co. to hook up some video capturing library to the game, a la DosBox

Test or nightly builds allow you to take screenshots from JS, so you could do that in a frame callback (to take one every frame / every N frames) and then use avconv to convert them into a video. You'd need a big chunk of disk space for the stills, and a fairly powerful PC to not have the screen-capturing slow down the game too much, but that's the "built-in" way for now.

</me following the intertubes of aegidian.org to figure out how could the bribing had happened so quickly. Oh well, this internet banking ...>

Hehe, now that was fast!

Diziet Sma wrote:

ffutures wrote:

All of the Griff's ships retextures that come up on the menu have noshaders in the title - are they the right ones?

Ahh.. no. Griff's shader ships are not currently available as OXZs.. see the download link as provided by Cody - specifically, in the folder titled 'Core Shipset for Oolite v1.80'.

Also, for easier management of all the individual Griff OXPs, I suggest you create a folder in AddOns called 'Griff-ships.oxp' (or whatever.. so long as it ends in .oxp) and place them all in there. Oolite will still find them all, but your main AddOns folder will be tidier.

Cody wrote:

Then go track a Moray up-close - beautiful!

Definitely! An angry shadered Griff Moray up close is truly a sight to behold.. screenshots just can't do it justice. For that, a video would be needed. (Now there's an idea, Cody.. with your fancy new rig, it shouldn't be too hard to make one! )

(If you want to see some screenshots of it though, I posted a few nice ones here. Some of them show off the Custom Shields effects as well.)

Do I leave them as the zipped files or unzip them all?

ffutures wrote:

Do I leave them as the zipped files or unzip them all?

Standard OXP procedure - unzip and install into your AddOns folder.

Cody wrote:

ffutures wrote:

Do I leave them as the zipped files or unzip them all?

Standard OXP procedure - unzip and install into your AddOns folder.

Thought so, but it never hurts to check.

later - OK, I guess they're working, can't honestly say I notice a huge difference - maybe I'm just not getting close enough to other ships in my usual "run away towards profits" manoeuvrings.

ffutures wrote:

maybe I'm just not getting close enough to other ships in my usual "run away towards profits" manoeuvrings.

Yup - close quarters dogfighting is where it's at, for best viewing..

Cody wrote:

Diziet Sma wrote:

Now there's an idea, Cody.. with your fancy new rig, it shouldn't be too hard to make one!

I was kinda planning a movie, once I could make use of nVidia's Shadowplay - but you gotta have the whole GeForce Experience package installed to run that, and me and GFE do not get on! In my opinion it's bloatware, and I've known it to screw with driver updates, among other things - it wants to control, and I ain't having that.

I'll perhaps look into other vid-capture software one day - but it's gotta be unobtrusive, which many ain't!

You could always try out Open Broadcast Software, it's free and can be used for just recording rather than broadcasting. Although you could do that too.

OK, finally got to see this properly tonight - got jumped by three very aggressive pirates with no fuel left, had to dogfight them off. They really looked amazing up close, I can definitely see the difference.