Camera/Display connection

[Barnack]

It's quite simple, Client-side only:
Allow to connect a camera to a display. That display will change its screen side texture to render the viewport of the camera, with the lines effect and the text (if any) over it.
to not impact performance players can chose the minimum distance from a screen before the client replaces the texture wit connected camera's viewport.
An extended and more complex version would be allowing to connect a camera to a screen in another entity (like WiFi blocks) from even 1 sector (no more because of loading issues). Rendering multiple viewports is still client side only. If the camera is from a different adjacent sector, it will not be shown unless the host computer has enough resources to do so.

in game usecases:

• control room for inner cameras in a station.
• control room to manually lock/unlock ship docks doors that will show ships docked to each dock (possible now by docking an entity in the control room for each camera, with the camera built above dock door, far from the entity dock/core. This would let stations save on entity amount
• remote watchtowers, small stations with multiple cameras, connected to the main station, possibly from 1 sector of distance. The main station will be able to see approaching
• scout ai ship or scout forwards propelled rocket. A big ship would check what is in a close sector by launching a scout and watching the camera. If the scout goes too far the display will stop receiving images (software wise it translates to the fact your computer won't load farther sectors so it cannot render them
• (for when command seats will be added) a seat connected to the core will give control of the ship (as said in the under-development suggestion) while keeping the view from a commander seat. A ship could have a commander seat in the main deck, exposed with visibility through glass, and another seat in the core room (or just entering the code), and still controll the ship from that view by seeing multiple viewports in different displays in front of him. It'd make combat interesting if i could fly my ship from the deck, seeing what's in front of me through the glass, and having displays around me that show my sides, behind, etcc

 

[EricBlank]

This is a really interesting idea and I would love to hear whether schema thinks it would be possible to implement

 

[Barnack]

This is a really interesting idea and I would love to hear whether schema thinks it would be possible to implement

i don't know specific starmade implementation, but in an average 3d game it would be quite trivial to do. Many games draw multiple surfaces that are later combined in the final result that gets shown in your screen (think of a shader applied to a 2d water texture, then the water surface is placed on the 3d world, the texture on which you rendered the shader is applied to the water surface, and finally the 3d world including your water with its perspective is projected to the main view/actual screen).
Btw thanks for the support!

 

[OfficialCoding]

i'm thinking this might cause some serious lag if people had a lot of display / camera blocks so defo be able to turn it off but yeah cool

 

[Barnack]

i'm thinking this might cause some serious lag if people had a lot of display / camera blocks so defo be able to turn it off but yeah cool

thats why i suggested an option for individual players that dictates the minimum distance from a display before any connection to a camera is taken into account, and also disabling it when the client doesn't have enough free resources to load the second viewport in case it's in a neighbouring sector

 

[OfficialCoding]

thats why i suggested an option for individual players that dictates the minimum distance from a display before any connection to a camera is taken into account, and also disabling it when the client doesn't have enough free resources to load the second viewport in case it's in a neighbouring sector

yeah. Would be cool. Also idk how long it would take for Schema to develop this but if it were simple I would def like to see this

 

[kiddan]

Nice idea! There's a few more performance improvements that come to mind:

• Display module video resolution, as a setting in-game
• Max number of rendered video feeds, as a setting in-game

 

[OfficialCoding]

Nice idea! There's a few more performance improvements that come to mind:

• Display module video resolution, as a setting in-game
• Max number of rendered video feeds, as a setting in-game

sounds good to me. This should be a client setting, not a server setting though

 

[StormWing0]

hmm this sounds interesting. Why not also allow for the connection the other direction as well linking a display to a camera(s) to display text on the screen when viewing through the camera(s) in question. Also connecting 1 camera to a collection of displays could spread the image of the surface of multiple displays.

 

[EricBlank]

Iirc this exact thing is possible in the source engine, like in the Half Life II games and specifically Gmod; you literally could have alternative viewpoints from camera entities displayed on an objects surface like a texture. Any of the points where you could see other characters on a video screen in the HL2 campaign, like doctor breen welcoming you to city 17, there was a real character object/animated model in a hidden room on the map and a camera linked to that screen. It's possible theoretically, in a different game engine. So it's theoretically possible in this game engine. Just have to take the time and effort to actually do it.

And having multiple adjacent screens displaying as one enormous screen sounds exceedingly awesome and I have ship designs that deserve that treatment

 

[OfficialCoding]

Iirc this exact thing is possible in the source engine, like in the Half Life II games and specifically Gmod; you literally could have alternative viewpoints from camera entities displayed on an objects surface like a texture. Any of the points where you could see other characters on a video screen in the HL2 campaign, like doctor breen welcoming you to city 17, there was a real character object/animated model in a hidden room on the map and a camera linked to that screen. It's possible theoretically, in a different game engine. So it's theoretically possible in this game engine. Just have to take the time and effort to actually do it.

And having multiple adjacent screens displaying as one enormous screen sounds exceedingly awesome and I have ship designs that deserve that treatment

I feel like this would take a long time for a kinda gimmicky feature that is cool af but isn't really needed atm. I mean if it were really easy to implement of course go for it but Schema is working on the Universe Update and I feel that he should just focus on that for now.