Josh Babcock wrote: > What about putting a node in the model xml defining what type of radar > return the object would produce (cross section size and transponder > y/n) and then having whatever code positions the object in the scene > graph also register the radar data in the property tree? That opens > up the possibility of ground clutter and even navigation by ground > radar.
I was thinking about this recently. I think ground radar can come really close just by drawing the existing terrain with special textures. Things like water are flat and reflect the radar beam specularly, and are thus mostly black (maybe with a few fickering dots to represent wave caps). City textures should have lots of bright spots representing the vertical sides of buildings. Forests will be somewhere in the middle, etc... We can play with the existing OpenGL lighting environment to get proper reflectivity from the large scale terrain geometry, and the buildings and whatnot can just be "drawn" into the radar buffer the same way.
It's likely going to be a lot of work, and have a significant performance impact (you're rendering almost all the geometry twice per frame, albeit into a much smaller framebuffer). But I don't see why it wouldn't work...
Andy
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