shaders are just hard to learn, lol.

i'd love to be able to build shaders, but i just cant get my head around them. I don't know what alot of the terms means. Does anyone have a list or something that explains/defines a lot of the graphical techniques used in games.

I see terms like ambient occlusion or PSSM or something like that and dont have a clue what people are on about.

well shader sintax and such for me are easy, the thing is the math part to calculate what we want...

Now there is alot of terms i can't tell what means.. but hey google it.

changed the shader to 2.0 and no joy i can`t figure why this will not work. is it possible to get atmosperic efects useing ffe`s?

Exactly, there are A LOT of great articles about nearly everything. And a more comfortable way which sums up the important things without much research (which is still a great thing because you get to know quite a bit) are books. I think the only two series which I know are ShaderX and GPU Gems.

i don't know whats wrong with it, could be your card driver? this is not very complex shader, and my card is a weak and it goes fine.

Sorry, maybe its what slin says, dirty code. Maybe he could help, he seams very exprt in shaders.

weird this, i stuck in a new planet mesh and now the shader works, but still not on the origanle model for some reason. it totaly kills my fps though.

when you used my demo (you downloaded) it did not worked? thats weird.

do your version supports shader at least?

well i don`t get the cloud effect like you do but the atmosphere glow is there plus a dark side of the planets as well.

i doubt i could play a game with this shader running thoug has it kills the framerate

hey jigalypuff, now it worked? what you did? The glow is exatly that. so the effect is working, now you should adjust the fallof color you you want. The cloud effect is not made by shader(since not every planet has clouds :P), but its part of the entSkin1 texture!!!

The frame rate drop is weird though... it don't happen with me, could be drivers? Tell me your PC Hardware. And the Fps you get. Thanks
Note: Your using 2 high poly spheres, with 2 shaders that could be a reason to a drop. usually planets are more apart though.

drops to 7fps when i get up close to the mesh single planet in level, i would not call them high poly btw only 2000 with a 1024 texture map. ship has three textures diffuse normal and lightmap.
my grapics card is geforcefx 5200 running xp sp2