Simviation Forums

I haven't had much success with alpha channel etc to make a functional rear view mirror for the Spitfire model.
An work around could be a reduced size "view" window.

It would be great to be able to integrate this feature into the model.
Anyone else attempted something similar that they want to share.
ken

I've got a couple of rear view mirrors in my current project but unfortunately I haven't been able to get the mirrors to show much more than a moving pattern that turns into sky colour when the aircraft rolls.

If you want them to be functional it would be difficult using the Alpha channel and the window idea would work but I have no idea how you could set the window for 'back view'........

Onno van Braam has a flat mirror tutorial for 3DSMax that should be applicable to gmax.


http://www.onnovanbraam.com/index.php?m ... flatmirror

I'd be very surprised if Gmax can use the flat mirror process that's used in 3dsMax. You don't see the effect until an image is rendered, and Gmax has no rendering tool. I just checked - flat mirror is a special kind of material in Max - and it's not available in the Gmax material editor.

When I was at Eidos, working on Flying Nightmares II, I asked the lead programmer how hard would it be to do mirrors, since the Harrier has a lot of them. He said it would cut the frame rate in half because it would require the engine to draw the environment twice for every frame, once for the regular view out the window, and once for the image in the mirror.  I know racing sims have car mirrors that work, but the world they deal with is pretty flat when compared to the world of flying.

But surely once in FS it will show as a mirror 'effect' object. The mirrors my project has could never be used as a mirror would because the image appears very blurry, but the effect looks good and doesn't appear to eat too many frame rates as there is no fine edge detail appearing in the mirror reflection.

OK guys, if the material and textures are not viable ( yet!) what about re-sizing a window to sit over the "mirror" in the 3D cockpit......
Any ideas/comments.
ken

In theory this will heavily increase the frame rate as its displaying double the normal detail. Not sure whether it's possible to have a back view as the normal view are top down, spot, tower, and the forward view.

Personally I'd suggest using a texture with an alpha channel using DXTBmp saving as 'DXT3 with Alpha'. Apply this texture to the part (not sure about Gmax, but it doesn't reflect anything in FSDS2) put the model in FS and the part will reflect something, just not great detail.

I hope this helps.