homepage Forums Read Only Forums Read Only Forums Jane's Longbow Series (Read Only) To close the day ...

Here I found all I needed at he moment:

web page

However big disapointment that for the sake of playabillity the LB-2's AH-64 pit doesn't resemble the real Thing.
And, what we are all to do now!?
How about that we make 2D cockpit like in LB2 , but Virtual C as the real one?

I guess you could try that, but the instruments are going to be pretty small I would think. There's a bunch of stuff in your FOV that's not presented as an instrument in the Sim, like the analog clock, hydraulic pressure gauge, RMI, etc.
I can see why they presented it as 2 MFD's, but give it a try and see. I personally always fly with the left MFD in ASE mode, so I can see how you might be able to add the ASE data as a new (smaller) instrument and pull it off.
That link you found to the .jpg of the cockpits was excellent, bro. I wonder if the guy has some bitmaps that are higher resolution then what he posted? The text got pretty degraded during the compression.

I second that...I dont have much time or many skills, but if you need people to beta-test these things, let us know! id be happy to help!

Just a small note: since cockpits are stored in SHP format, we're limited to 256 colors, probably using a specific palette (not sure about this yet). To convert new cockpits into Longbow, we can use a special color to mark transparent sections of the image or have a black-and-white auxiliary image with transparency information. The latter seems less useful to me, since semi-transparent values aren't supported by the SHP format, but it's also possible.

I can come up with a SHP compressor after i sort out some TEX details, unless someone wants to have a go first.

Mario

So what you are saying is that you do not see any chance for 32 bit format. Indexed and perhaps even fixed How can we check THAT?Since that SHP compressor is needed for the files to be back in game.

I did not have a chance, but have anyone tried to run the game with all files detre'ed and shp converted to bitmaps. Because isn't shp just the wrapper too. I know that it is minute probability that we could pull that off, but IMHO we should try it.

As far as auxliary transparency file this is going to be just like in Gunship!. I like this solution better because it gives semitransparency as well as ... whatever.
Where this additional pic will be stored and how?

Someone else .... ? You are da Man and the only Man.

Rocky let us gather resources. I remember you were posting some shots of AH-64 pit before. But also take look at the link I gave up above. I think that thing really is most decent material I've seen todate. It should rally be used as some sort of template or start for other cockpits too. As EL advises, let us see if the author has higher res.

Let us really try to make this Project with full attention to detail, realism and aesthetics. I know that you are the man for just up to such a task.

Others are most welcomed because it looks like lots of work is opening.

Nice! As mentioned, our's isn't near accurate.

Polak, the pics from this page ar more like the sim... go figure

http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/news/jawa/jawa001013_1_n.shtml

maybe we could get larger and more detailed ones

Polak: The issue is that SHP compression doesn't support semi-transparency, so this information would be lost if black-white maps were used. Ultimately, there's no real advantage in a separate alpha map.

Mario

Thanks for the link, Blind Faith. Yes, that's an AH-64D with the "Glass" cockpit, which is what we have in the game. Polak's link is to an AH-64A with a "traditional" cockpit.
http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/boeing/ah-64_apache/ah-64d-longbow09-cockpits.jpg
http://www.vtol.org/pdf/crew59.pdf

Thanks to HCl's utylity and when assembling the templates, I noticed that the component textures are 1 pixel short on some edges. That would explain that tiny grid 3x3 I have on 2D cockpits. Hopfully this will be corrected now, but wonder why it happens?

Maybe in game, they compensated or there was a math error, that somehow hid this anomaly.

"the component textures are 1 pixel short on some edges."
Yes, that was the only thing that made sense looking at it. That's going to be any easy fix of an annoying problem then, agree? Somebody at Jane's missed the last row/column when they were dragging an image, and the hardware of the day didn't show the error because of low resolution?
I work in an old app that makes something like that a real possibility, and have done it myself a time or two.
I think there may be a terrain texture or 2 like that, also, I see some pixel popping between tiles once in a while when flying. Those may be a lot harder to find.
Good work, Polak.

I have a question here:
On my Radeon card, when I enable FSAA, the cockpit (2D) overlays turn black. Is everyone experiencing this, and what do you think causes it? Any known fix for it? Do NVidia cards allow FSAA without this problem?
The terrain looks a LOT better with FSAA, it would sure be nice to have since we have more than enough horsepower to run it.

I also have this when I turn on AA. No big deal, I just run it at 1600x1200.

One hint that this may be a palette issue, is press forward or side view. Notice for a split second that it draws properly? So the texture is being drawn, just somethings making all black!

Yes, it displays fine for a second, then gets corrupted and diplays as black. I have a hunch that the AA step modifies the 2D texture file color into something that can't be displayed correctly.

What's interesting is that the cross-members in the center of the canopy (both pilot and CPG cockpits) and the margin around the radio frequency/target panel stay visible. That should be a clue as to what the solution is. Something is different about those, or there is a problem with the lighting algorithm in the game. It appears that the textures that disappear may not be receiving the light map with AA on.
I'm guessing here, can you tell?

+G, do you have a Radeon too?
8xAA is sweet on my 6800gt. No artifacts except the horizontal and vertical transparent lines in the 2d pits.

Looks like that ATI's may have issues with AA and the Glide wrapper.

Okay, an update on this: the portion that remains normal is the area overlaid by the IHADDS, which I'm assuming gets addressed and updated, while it appears the 2D overlay is only called once (when changing views), then isn't updated again and gets corrupted.