Screen Shots for next version

[Cornflake]

Why bother? It would probably take a lot of effort to code and it seems pretty pointless. I don't knwo about you but if I'm using orbiter then I am sure as hell not using it to fly 500m above the water.
IT's a spaceflight simulator, so if I were Martin I'd want to concentrate on improving aspects of the simulator related to spaceflight, not atmospheric flight.

Don't freak out. You know how long water shaders have been around? For a very long time, and it's not so complex that it would take Martin all of his time and effort to complete.

The only challenge to adding a shader effect to the water is adding boundaries where land ends and water begins (the planets just have one big texture on them). I wouldn't imagine this would be hard... just make a simple "water map" that defines where water is. Kind of like a height map, only not.

I think that developing a water shader effect would be a simple yet effective way to really boost the graphical appearance of Orbiter.

 

[computerex]

Don't freak out. You know how long water shaders have been around? For a very long time, and it's not so complex that it would take Martin all of his time and effort to complete.

The only challenge to adding a shader effect to the water is adding boundaries where land ends and water begins (the planets just have one big texture on them). I wouldn't imagine this would be hard... just make a simple "water map" that defines where water is. Kind of like a height map, only not.

I think that developing a water shader effect would be a simple yet effective way to really boost the graphical appearance of Orbiter.

Honestly though, I think Simon is right. It's all "easy" to do until you actually start doing it yourself...

 

[Cornflake]

Yes, I realize that. But I was hoping to get Marin's thought on that as I saw he started posting in this thread a little while ago.

Actually, now that I think about it - Orbiter has specular reflections for the water already (which stops when looking at land). So really the framework looks like it might be set up; just draw a water shader in the same places the specular highlights show up but cease to draw them at a certain height (I'm not saying it's easy, just saying doable).

Orbiter, admittedly, has somewhat dated graphics. Three fairly major things that I think would improve it quite a bit is bump mapping, specular reflections and ground textures.

Bump mapping would look quite nice on old beaten up spacecraft, or perhaps the Space Shuttle ET.

Specular reflection would look excellent on windows or maybe the water.

Well it looks a bit dated because it's running in DX7 which doesn't really support normal / bump mapping. And I don't believe Martin will be the one coding the new graphics engine; that will be up to whoever wants to take on the task.

And there actually is a wonderful looking OGL client for Orbiter partially developed. It's got dynamic shadows and uses OpenGL to render. It's useable to some extend (Viewing the cockpit with panels causes crashes though. Obviously an issue to overcome). You can check it out here:

OGLA Downloads

Which of course requires the most recent Beta snapshot:

Orbiter Beta Packages

And remember, you have to use your Orbiter_NG shortcut with the "start" box pointed to the main Orbiter beta directory

 

[Star explorer]

cool finally after two years the new orbiter is coming out soon can't wait. though on the website id wish they would show pictures of how the spacecrafts are going to look and the new details of the launch sites