[Speed-dreams-devel] osg and normal maps / track variants

[Simon S. <si...@sc...>]

hi dev team,

i have some questions for future track designs. 

first, topic, osg shading:
does/will SD with osg support normal and/or specular maps? if yes, how can i include them to tracks? if planned/WIP: from a designer's point of view, it would be nice to do this without having to touch the geometry files, e.g. work with a naming scheme (like texture1.png, texture1_norm.png and texture1_spec.png, all using the same uv and only the first being mentioned in the ac-file, the latter being optional). Also looking at existing tracks, this way would simplify the upgrading process, as new files can be created+added piece by piece. there is a gimp plugin to create normal maps; i played around with it a little and it looks promising to me... managable effort for alot of (graphical) realism.

second topic, tracks with multiple variants (sharing the same data/geometry):

there are these new v5 keywords "start x" (,y, z), min and extent xyz, but first, i'm not sure how to use them and second, they don't seem to have any effect with my 2.2.1 installation. Should they, or do i need a version compiled from trunk to try them?
-start is the center of start/finish-line?
-min and extent are with or without border? are they needed or is it enough to have the same start coordinates along different variants?
-what reference system? same as the ac file? 

as to file management, i entered the (relative) path of the full track's geometry in the sub-track's xml (e.g. "../test_full/test_full.ac"). For the texture files, i created symbolic links to the originals in the sub-track's directory. is there a more elegant way telling the engine to take the textures from another folder?
third issue is to (graphically) indicate where to drive on junctions. a quick&dirty way with the above structure would be to link to different files for some textures; e.g. using a fully transparent texture for the left branch's barriers when driving the right branch and vice versa, but this would be cheatin' around; better would be to have one file containing common geometry and one for each variant containing additional barriers, curbs etc. Is this possible yet?

regards
simon-2