I tried X Plane

[tkyler 88]

It seemed that no one* was going to give me a simple, straight answer to the question I actually asked, which was "Does OpenGL support gradient blending now."

I'm glad you figured it n4gix, but I have to assert that my explanation after your question did indeed answer the question...though I'll admit that the explanation may not have been simple though I believe it was straight :-)

[tasmanet 0]

I'm glad you figured it n4gix, but I have to assert that my explanation after your question did indeed answer the question...though I'll admit that the explanation may not have been simple though I believe it was straight :-)

Pity you could not give a straight answer to a gentleman who has probably helpedthousands through the years on many FS forums. :(BillIts great to see you interested in XPlane.Tas

[MatthewS 761]

Pity you could not give a straight answer to a gentleman who has probably helpedthousands through the years on many FS forums. :(

That's a bit rough... :(

[maxter 0]

Pity you could not give a straight answer to a gentleman who has probably helpedthousands through the years on many FS forums. :(BillIts great to see you interested in XPlane.Tas

What an illuminating post, and such a valuable contribution to the friendly discussion thats been going on for 5 pages now. There has to be one plonker though...Sad...

[tkyler 88]

tasmanet. Some things about me that might help understand my posts. 1.) I respect everybody's opinion and right to have a different view2.) I keep my rhetoric factual and refrain from subjective opinion and if not, clearly state so3.) I stay away from personal attacks in any form and word my posts very carefully.4.) I don't play games.n4gix asked a question. I gave a proper answer. He did not comprehend the answer and insulted me and Jean-Luc with his insinuation that we were incapable of giving a simple answer. His post is subtle enough to deny my above claim, but I wasn't born yesterday....the post was antagonistic and was deliberately written that way. Note in n4gix final post to the community that even his answer wasn't a simple "yes" but a code example and explanation.I did want not return the insult so I tempered my latest post with the suggestion that perhaps my answer was not simple....and you decided to "jump" on me too. I was trying to be nice while defending my competence in giving in answer. My answer, in fact, was simple and clearly worded, n4gix just didn't understand it yet. I understand that n4gix has helped people in the community for years and such an asset to the community is a great thing....but as point 4 above states, I don't play that. A simple "I don't understand your answer" would have worked. or "could you provide me with a code example"You'll note my answer to the initial question included the phrase "...unless I misunderstand the question..." That was my polite "OUT" for him in case he didn't understand my answer. I didn't want to insult him by saying it's obvious or anybody who can type a google search can find the answer to his question. I extend politeness and get an insult in return. So this is where this post is.This is an x-plane thread in a traditional MSFS dominated community and we have multiple developers posting here so as an x-plane developer I expect a bit of defensiveness though I do not want to perpetuate it. This rhetoric is typical in all forums though, x-plane.org is ripe with it and can be a down right rude place to be...unfortunately that comes with humanity, but when it's directed at me, just expect some type of response.... Finally, note in this whole post, I've insulted no one's character, contributions, competence or abilities and have stuck with point 1 above. I enjoy a healthy debate and disagreement very much because the usual outcome of such is beneficial to all. In my opinion tasmanet, the real pity was your chioce to perpetuate tensions based on the original misplaced aggression by n4gix because I suspect if we met in reality, we'd probably have quite the enjoyable discussions of this hobby. I'm sorry if this seems harsh, but I will defend my actions.I apologize to others for the temporary "turn" of this thread from the original topic. I believe it appropriate for me to refrain from further posts in this forum unless specific x-plane related questions are directed at me. I think it wholly appropriate that new users of x-plane form their own conclusions and discuss their experiences and preferences without my biases.

[RatRace 4]

He did not comprehend the answer and insulted me and Jean-Luc with his insinuation that we were incapable of giving a simple answer. His post is subtle enough to deny my above claim, but I wasn't born yesterday....the post was antagonistic and was deliberately written that way. Note in n4gix final post to the community that even his answer wasn't a simple "yes" but a code example and explanation.

I didn't see any animosity between n4gix, Jean-Luc and you (tkyler) until tasmanet made his troll remark.Neither do I think that n4gix meant to insult you or Jean-Luc. He got confused by the terminology. Hey, a vertex is a point, but not all points are vertices.

[n4gix 4,947]

I'm glad you figured it n4gix, but I have to assert that my explanation after your question did indeed answer the question...though I'll admit that the explanation may not have been simple though I believe it was straight :-)

n4gix asked a question. I gave a proper answer. He did not comprehend the answer and insulted me and Jean-Luc with his insinuation that we were incapable of giving a simple answer. His post is subtle enough to deny my above claim, but I wasn't born yesterday....the post was antagonistic and was deliberately written that way. Note in n4gix final post to the community that even his answer wasn't a simple "yes" but a code example and explanation.

I offered no "insult" or "insinuation."Apparently you didn't read the "Edit" I made less than a minute after the initial post, and highlighted in red text. Since your reply was over an hour after my initial post, the "Edit" was quite obviously there to be read...

Edit: after re-reading the thread and the code snippets, it appears that there was a bit of "language barrier." It took awhile for me to realize that what GDI refers to as a "Point" is called a "Vertex" in OpenGLSpeak... :(

I even added a "blush" at the end to emphasize my embarrasment... :( Aside from adopting the wearing of a sackcloth and ashes, I honestly cannot think of any further way to abase myself... :(

[n4gix 4,947]

I didn't see any animosity between n4gix, Jean-Luc and you (tkyler) until tasmanet made his troll remark.Neither do I think that n4gix meant to insult you or Jean-Luc. He got confused by the terminology. Hey, a vertex is a point, but not all points are vertices.

Well, at least one person actually read and understood my "Edit..." remark. It was quite obviously a result of a "code language barrier" in that I didn't make the necessary correlation between "point" (GDISpeak) and "vertex" (OpenGLSpeak)...As a 3d modeler, in my working vocabulary "vertices" are what define the boundaries of polygon objects in 3d space. As a C\GDI+ gauge programmer, "points" are used to define boundaries in 2d/3d image space. I had no background from which to make the connection between "points" and "verticies" when refering to vector drawing code.In any case, I've made as much of an apology as I intend to, and that should be the end of the matter. I may later change my mind, but for the moment this has soured any interest in further persuing my investigation of X-Plane. :(

[Murmur 3,941]

I may later change my mind, but for the moment this has soured any interest in further persuing my investigation of X-Plane. :(

If this "incident" had such an effect on your interest towards X-Plane, I cannot even imagine your reactions the first times you had tried to treat with Austin and his notoriously, ehm, "peculiar" personality! :( Marco

[virtuali 4,421]

As a 3d modeler, in my working vocabulary "vertices" are what define the boundaries of polygon objects in 3d space. As a C\GDI+ gauge programmer, "points" are used to define boundaries in 2d/3d image space.

That's right but, in OpenGL there's no such thing as a "2d" drawing. Everything is 3d: when you want to draw "2d" in OpenGL, you just define a special view matrix and a non-perspective ( =parallel ) projection, but you are still creating 3d objects so, a rectangle or any other polygon or even lines, can be created with a series of vertex commands, the thing that define if you want to draw a polygon, a line a triangle strip, fan, etc, is what you put in the glBegin command but, after that and until glEnd, there's always a vertex list.It's just that, for convenience, there are versions of the commands that use only 2 coordinates (it would be pointless to always pass 0 for one of the parameters), so you have glVertex2f or glVertex3f, depending if you are drawing "2d" or "3d" but, from the point of view of the graphic accellerator card, you are always drawing in 3d. Even something that has always been associated with 2d, like font rendering, is made in 3d in OpenGL: unless you want to use bitmap fonts (which might be fast but they usually look bad and can't be scaled nicely), any vector font is first converted into polygons and/or display lists, with the help of some utility functions like WGL (only on Windows), and then sent to the graphic card as a collection of polygons.This is quite different compared to GDI+, which is a 2d engine without any notion of a 3d space.regards,Umberto Colapicchioni - VIRTUALIhttp://www.fsdreamteam.com

[Guest JeanLuc_]

This is quite different compared to GDI+, which is a 2d engine without any notion of a 3d space.

or in fact it is very the same, which is a 2d engine assume a z coordinate of 0 and use ortho projection? :(Bill: I didn't feel offended. Mind you, a point is a vertex with 2 coordinates in 2d, and a vertex with 3 coordinates in 3d. Both are points, and both are vertices. As for the gradient, you can have the OGL hardware do the blend for you in just setting the poly vertices colors, however, it will be linear gradients only (LERP). For more advanced gradients, like radial, or non-linear blends (say slowly ramping from black to red over 50% of the width then quickly from red to grean over 12% of width) then you'd need to use shaders (or fragment programs). Mind you, rendering the gradient in a texture and scaling it on screen is not too bad at all with OGL and gives very nice results.

[n4gix 4,947]

Mind you, rendering the gradient in a texture and scaling it on screen is not too bad at all with OGL and gives very nice results.

Thanks, Jean-Luc. I just wanted to satisfy myself that I could reasonably expect to achieve something like this using OpenGL before I allocate any of my very scarce time getting up to speed... :(

[Geofa 108]

Thanks, Jean-Luc. I just wanted to satisfy myself that I could reasonably expect to achieve something like this using OpenGL before I allocate any of my very scarce time getting up to speed...

:( I sure hope so cause after a 3 hour flight today where I tried to compare the two sims in my mind xplane is closer...except it needs more stuff like your pictures above... :(

[rightseater 0]

Can I assume than Geoff that you might recommend I grab a copy of X-Plane for my Baron re-creation flights? I know FSX has its shortcomings, the underpowered Baron being one of them, but I never really thought about trying X-Plane.

[gman! 1]

That is one very nice panel n4gix. This should be an example of how detailed most panels should be!