I've started a spinoff thread as this request is not easy to implement at the moment but is important to do eventually, to get different types of dashboards looking correct.

Quote from Flame CZE :

Would it be possible to have an option to turn off the “backlight” effect for the clock texture? It would be useful when using a custom backing texture for old cars which don’t have backlit gauges.

As an example, I've attached a gauge for my HADRAPLAN mod I'm trying to replicate. The bottom cutout is a regular texture and the inner part with the numbers is a backing texture.

This ties in (to some extent) with something else on one of my note papers. In that case, I noted that the system materials are fixed in their settings, with an example that s_plate_alp is always ALPHA and material settings have no effect.

The idea for improvement is that there should be system *textures* instead of system *materials* and then the user would be able to set material settings in the normal way. I'm talking about the internally generated or live textures like number plates, the info texture and dashboards.

How this ties in with your request: The various s_clock_x are also hard coded as materials rather than simply textures. As a result, user settings (like matt / shine) have no effect at all on these materials. There is no good reason for this now, but LFS has developed from a simpler era and this was how it was implemented to suit our needs at the time, and this part hasn't yet been modernised. In order to support your suggestion by this method, in addition to changing the system materials to be textures (as they should be) I think a new material setting may need to be added, a "self-lit" option.

Currently this proposed self-lit option is forced on dashboard textures but is unavailable for any static textures. So that option would be set, in the material settings of the cutout editor, for all existing uses of s_clock_x pages (and I expect MATT would also be set for existing cutouts).

If this is the way forward, I'm not yet sure yet how the self-lit option should be implemented. Would it be a separate switch, still allowing the other material options, or would it be a separate material type in like MATT/CSHINE/etc?

I've had a look at how how self-lit things are done in the track editor and see if it could be consistent with that. This brings up another point. The self-lit things in the world environments, e.g. the lens of a street light or a lit logo on a shop front, actually receive light from the environment, or can be self-lit. This is done by setting a switch on the *mapping* (or colour) rather than in the material settings.

So it seems there are 3 main types of self-lit status.

1) Not self-lit - just like all static textures in the game
2) Totally self-lit - like a computer screen, and current LFS dashboards
3) Lit by environment and also self-lit - like traditional dashboards

I'm not sure yet how these 3 options should be supported, or if there are other types in this category.

Maybe...

2) above is a material setting (currently it is in LFS although the user cannot control it)
3) above is a switch to be enabled on mappings/colours (as can now be used for track editor objects)

I think that for now is too complicated to change the new graphics to support this and to also implement it in the old D3D9 engine. I think it would be best to do it when there is only one version of LFS. So what I have done is added the note about clocks, to my existing notes regarding the other system textures. But this thread is open for discussion.

I don't want to tell you what you need to do. But I think dashboard lighting is something that makes sense when it's nighttime. And nighttime is planned for the dev version with graphics and physics. And probably it will look different with the new shaders and bloom effect and that will have to change again. Specially if its not easy to implement. So maybe it's better to do the dashboard lighting on the development version?

That's what I said, in the final paragraph.

But it's probably not clear: "I think it would be best to do it when there is only one version of LFS."

Oh, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.
I just thought so because there was a link from the test patch thread.

No problem, it's just because Flame commented on this in the test patch thread, which is somehow connected because of dashboard updates. I thought it may be worth discussing more but not on the test patch thread.

Automatic = On when ignition is on / vehicle is on. Off when opposite.
Automatic 2 = Depending how dark area is sensoring, adjusting by %.
On = Always on when switched.
Off = Always off when switched.


Also, there are adjustments of how bright/dim dashboard is, excluding emergency switch, which is in some vehicles, always bright.


EDIT: About what self-lit should be.

EDIT2: I just noticed I misunderstood this thread a bit, my bad. Although not completely off.

Quote from UnknownMaster21 :

Automatic = On when ignition is on / vehicle is on. Off when opposite.
Automatic 2 = Depending how dark area is sensoring, adjusting by %.
On = Always on when switched.
Off = ALways off when switched.


Also, there are adjustments of how bright/dim dashboard is, excluding emergency switch, which is in some vehicles, always bright.


EDIT: About what self-lit should be.

I think it's just a on and off switch.

Automatic modes can be made in LFS Editor optionally with a switch between the first and second option. But not both at the same time. Because the first automatic mode simulates electric lighting. And the second one simulates luminous paint like on dashes on old cars.

Edit: Although there are probably cars with dashes that have luminous paint and an electric lighting at the same time, but it still for LFS Editor.

Thanks for creating this discussion thread, Scawen.

Quote from Scawen :

So it seems there are 3 main types of self-lit status.

1) Not self-lit - just like all static textures in the game
2) Totally self-lit - like a computer screen, and current LFS dashboards
3) Lit by environment and also self-lit - like traditional dashboards

These three statuses make sense to me.

I think the self-lit status should be independent of the environment map / shine type. I can imagine a shiny self-lit material, like an LCD. It would make it easier to combine the shiny part with the backlight without having to model separate triangles for the shiny part. Does that make sense?

I also like the idea that the self-lit property should be disabled automatically once the ignition is off. But I guess that should be an option of the cutout, because there may be cases where you wouldn't want a pre-lit texture to turn on/off with the ignition.

Quote from Scawen :

1) Not self-lit - just like all static textures in the game
2) Totally self-lit - like a computer screen, and current LFS dashboards
3) Lit by environment and also self-lit - like traditional dashboards

Seems good

Quote from Flame CZE :

I think the self-lit status should be independent of the environment map / shine type.

Yes, please And this option could be enabled for other materials too (if it is not too much work). It will enable many new graphical options.

For example here is my older test with a completely cartoon mod (LFS 0.7D without post-processing shader, everything is done using geometry and materials) where adjustable colors use a tiny cutout from the s_clock_white texture to remove shading. Unfortunately colors are darkened for some reason (the grey car is defined as white) so I did not finish it as a mod.