[REL] Alternative Ships Reflections
 

Hi, after all these years of taking I've decided to give something back to community ;). My modding skills are very limited but I think I've managed to make ships reflections on water a little bit more realistic. I also fixed reflections for some vessels that were either lacking them or showing only half of the hull reflected on water like tugs, trawlers, sampans etc.:

old yamato:

http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/1002/yamatoold.jpg

new:

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/2014/yamatonew.jpg

old mogami:

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8837/mogamiold.jpg

new:

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/2340/mogaminew.jpg

old armed trawler:

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/6...trawlerold.jpg

new:

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/9...trawlernew.jpg

This mod was created based on TMO 1.9 with RSRDC v502 so I guess it might not be compatible with stock/RFB. The only modified files are the ships' *.dat files. Oh, and it's JSGME compatible :]

Download link:
http://www.filefront.com/16077223/Al...RSRDC-v502.7z/

Let me know if you'll find it useful and if you think that I mucked something up, let me know as well ;)

Miszak

EDIT: Oops, i forgot to add [REL] in thread's title :oops:

Looks neat! I'll give it a try.
Thanks for making it & sharing.

I hope you'll enjoy it mate! To tell you the truth you'll kinda be betatesting it coz I'm not even sure if this will work on other hardware setups. I've got an ATI 4890 so i don't know about nvidia graphics, if they handle the game's engine differently or not...I remember that long time ago there were some issues with sun and ATI cards, so who knows? All you Geforcers let me know if you can see any improvement, OK? ;) If this mod will work for you guys and gals and there'll be some interest among the crowd, RFB+RSRDC, GFO+RSRDC versions might follow :yep:.

Very, very, very nice work mate :up:
Would you do that for RFB+RSRDC and/or OM+OMEGU please ?

Glad you like it! All it took was some hours spent editing dat files for EVERY ship (150 or so :D) and changing the minvisdim and maxvisdim parameters in waterreflection nodes. Couldn't have done it without Skwas' excellent Silent 3ditor! :up: Actually I think that i'll try to tweak "detailed' reflection further to make them stick for longer distances when viewed before falling back to 'lower lod' (currently they only show up when the camera/viewer are quite close to a ship), then I'll make a version for RFB+RSRDC as well :yep:. Not sure about OM+OMEGU since these add hell of a lot new ships and it crashes the museum which is my primary 'viewer' I use to check the changes I make :(.

Now I don't want to make any promises but I SHOULD have a RFB version ready by next weekend. Question is whether I'll have to reedit ALL dat files for RFB+RSRDC from scratch or not (as compared to TMO+RSRDC), anyone?

thanks man, great work:yeah:

You would need to use the DAT files from RFB, which you are free to use. I'd definitely like to have a version of this mod to integrate into RFB. :)

Thanks! I'd feel honored if you integrated this into RFB!:salute:. Same applies to TMO, if you're reading it Ducimus ;). Next version will contain readme with instructions, permissions, credits etc. Gosh, I'm so new to this :oops:.

Hi, what a nice environnemental mod :salute:

The good surprise is that i noticed a significantly drop in FPS. As i use to play sh4 on a laptop with just an nVidia 9200M GS grahic card with 512 Mb, this is very appreciated !!!

So, if i leave my SH4 grahics settings (very low, you know :D) as they were before applying this mod, average FPS drop from to 17-22 FPS to 25-30 FPS !!!

How did you do that, Miszak ?:yeah: You're a magician ?

Regards

You mean you've actually gained fps after installing this mod? That's an unexpected side effect :o. I would rather expect the opposite, are you sure this mod hasn't made your graphic worse, hence the fps gain? Btw, I'm no magician, more like a beginner alchemist ;).

I am also using this mod and I can appreciate all the work modifying every ship in TMO & RSRDC. That was a huge undertaking. However, while I was testing it in different types of weather conditions, the ship's reflection in the water seems to appear before the actual ship does in dense fog. I have seen this before with different environmental mods.

Samples:

http://i968.photobucket.com/albums/a...g?t=1271026654

http://i968.photobucket.com/albums/a...g?t=1271026739

This is not a show stopper for me, and love the realistic looking reflections despite this one issue.

BRAVO ZULU

Hi Miszak,:salute:

I confirm a gain in FPS, and be sure that graphics don't getting worse.

As i said previously, each time i test a graphic mod, i don't tweak any of my last graphics settings. Secondly, i always try them with the same training mission : the first one, with porpoise, because there are some different boats, one plane, and a big island...(a lot of 3D objects at the same time, that's the reason why).

At last, the sea seems to be nicer with your mod. But at this step, i didn't see any reflecting bugs with ships yet.

Keep goin' !!!

Arnahud2 - well then, I'm glad that you like it and that you can enjoy this game even more now :up:

Nbjackso - dammit that was going just too smoothly, I should have know thre'll always be some trade off :(. The fact that reflections are not obscured by fog might be an indication of game engine's limitation, prehaps? Unfortunately while digesting DAT files I havent noticed any reflections/fog related entries, so maybe someone skilled in programming shaders might modify the VolumetricFogPS.fx shader file to amend it? It's surely beyond my humble skills and comprehension :/. And for next version of the mod I'm planning on making the detailed reflections appear from even longer distances so this might only magnify the issue...But if it's not a show stopper then maybe you'll be able to enjoy it despite this issue, until somebody more competent will deal with it as well, no?;)

I really appreciate your input fellas! Keep it coming!:yep:

Any updates to this mod? Was wondering whether I could use this for TMO 2.1?

If you look at the reflection nodes and extract their 3D model you'll see that the reflection is using a very simplified 3D model of the actual 3D model. If you want to have really detailed reflections use the actual 3D model of the unit vice this simplified model :yep: