Immersive Interiors Add-on

[DingerDan]

Well, if you're familiar with the mod Immersive Interiors, you will probably know that it makes it possible to look out of windows, onto the street. Well, would it be possible to look INTO windows FROM the street? I feel this would make walking the streets at night far more athmospheric and immersive.

 

What do you guys think?

[snortimer]

It's possible and wouldn't even need Immersive Interiors (hell it's even possible (tough tedious) with Nifskope):

You could just align and merge the exterior and interior meshes, delete a few vertices (some would otherwise peek out of the wall and also for performance) and either

-create new textures with transparent windows (would force people to use your textures then tough)

or

-remove the windows (about two vertices each i guess, if they are flat) from the meshes and create separate window meshes with their own textures

After this you can look through windows and see the rooms, tough all of them are empty and they would probably still need some tweaking on the transitions between interior and exterior mesh.

You could then always add objects directly to the mesh (all houses of the same type would look the same through the windows) or place light sources and objects in the CS (would take quite some and probably be a performance hit)

 

TL;DR: possible, totally independent of Immersive Interiors

 

Also: first time posting on the forum!

Also also: I used quite a lot of woulds.

[DingerDan]

It's possible and wouldn't even need Immersive Interiors (hell it's even possible (tough tedious) with Nifskope):

You could just align and merge the exterior and interior meshes, delete a few vertices (some would otherwise peek out of the wall and also for performance) and either

-create new textures with transparent windows (would force people to use your textures then tough)

or

-remove the windows (about two vertices each i guess, if they are flat) from the meshes and create separate window meshes with their own textures

After this you can look through windows and see the rooms, tough all of them are empty and they would probably still need some tweaking on the transitions between interior and exterior mesh.

You could then always add objects directly to the mesh (all houses of the same type would look the same through the windows) or place light sources and objects in the CS (would take quite some and probably be a performance hit)

 

TL;DR: possible, totally independent of Immersive Interiors

 

Also: first time posting on the forum!

Also also: I used quite a lot of woulds.

 

Welcome to the forums ^^ Although you probably know more of this stuff than I do.

 

Also, yeah I'm pretty sure Immersive Interiors works on the same principle, hence why you can't see NPCs or that, I kind of had the idea of adding the interiors to the same world as the cities themselves, although it would have quite a performance hit, the same kind of concept as open cities. Just an idea.

[MarkInMKUK]

I suggest you try it with a small village someplace, and upload the mod - let others test it and see how it affects fps

[SomeWelshGuy]

I'm really glad you like my mod, but there's a reason I don't do what you're proposing.

 

Firstly the engine simply wasn't designed for doing this. Opening up even a few interiors into the Tamriel worldspace would absolutely slaughter your FPS due to the added furniture, statics, clutter and NPCs. Secondly, every single mesh will need to be re-done in order to have both the interiors and exteriors in a single mesh, which would be a HUGE job for even a large team of modders. Thirdly, this would be impossible anyway due to the exterior and interior meshes not lining up. I'm not talking like a bit bigger or smaller, some of the meshes are easily 25% bigger on the inside. You'd never be able to physically fit every interior mesh inside their exterior counterparts; even if you're just trying to create the "impression" that you can see inside, it simply won't work due to size differences.

 

Lastly, the ground under the exterior meshes isn't lined up properly. There's hills, giant ditches, even bits of water under the exterior meshes, Bethesda didn't bother making these flat and smooth because you wouldn't see it in game. You'd need to practically re-do the whole landscape under every home or hut, which just isn't feasible.

 

So unfortunately, this isn't possible. Maybe something for Skyrim, eh?

[DingerDan]

I'm really glad you like my mod, but there's a reason I don't do what you're proposing.

 

Firstly the engine simply wasn't designed for doing this. Opening up even a few interiors into the Tamriel worldspace would absolutely slaughter your FPS due to the added furniture, statics, clutter and NPCs. Secondly, every single mesh will need to be re-done in order to have both the interiors and exteriors in a single mesh, which would be a HUGE job for even a large team of modders. Thirdly, this would be impossible anyway due to the exterior and interior meshes not lining up. I'm not talking like a bit bigger or smaller, some of the meshes are easily 25% bigger on the inside. You'd never be able to physically fit every interior mesh inside their exterior counterparts; even if you're just trying to create the "impression" that you can see inside, it simply won't work due to size differences.

 

Lastly, the ground under the exterior meshes isn't lined up properly. There's hills, giant ditches, even bits of water under the exterior meshes, Bethesda didn't bother making these flat and smooth because you wouldn't see it in game. You'd need to practically re-do the whole landscape under every home or hut, which just isn't feasible.

 

So unfortunately, this isn't possible. Maybe something for Skyrim, eh?

 

Wow, you are a hero to me. Your mod increased Oblivion's immersion tenfold. And yeah, once you think about it, vanilla oblivion is REALLY mod unfriendly, however, this would be amazing - A collaboration project to redesign oblivion's landscapes (a HUGE task, I know, doing just the cities would do for now) using some of the ready-made overhauls such as Open and Better Cities as templates, and working from there, to make things like that possible. It probably is quite irresponsible hardware-wise (we're talking up to, if not exceeding 70% FPS drop) as well as just a vast underestimation of the workload, but, it's a goal on the horizon. We could call it something like 'Better Oblivion', making it an easy platform for modders to work off of, increasing mod intercompatibility as well as... A feel of community, something different from the whole 'freelance' thing most Nexusers have going on.

 

This'll probably sound like a stupid idea the next time I read it over.

[Deleted1848331User]

You could tcl out of the building inside and take a screenshot (disable the NPCs first) and then screen it. Then make a plane in Blender or something, and apply the texture to it. It wouldn't be hard really, it would just take FOREVER. There's so many buildings...

 

But, its possible. And you wouldn't have the empty room thing. It would also reduce how much lag you'd have with older computers, since there's not a lot of new vertices, if you use a plane (only 4 more times the amount of windows).

 

And to SomeWelshGuy, maybe look into this for a new release? :P (I'm a fan of the mod too haha.)

 

edit

I just remembered, but if you've seen the Immersive Sewer Exit mod, when you exit and look behind you, you "see" into the sewer, but its a screenshot attached to one of those sky circle things. I think that if you do something similar with a plane it will be very good. Except you can't change it with the light, but you can change the mesh perhaps to detect what type of weather it is and change the mesh accordingly. Won't kill FPS, but it will be a lot of work.

Edited June 12, 2011 by Guest

[MarkInMKUK]

Being a teeny bit more practical...

 

Window glass (up until the advent of float glass) was pretty poor stuff. Now add in the usual interior light level for an Oblivion-style building...

 

Trying to look through it in daylight, when the interior is way darker than the outside, and see an interior with any kind of useful information would be nigh on impossible unless you were VERY close. So you can, more or less, ignore daytime for immersion unless you have your nose pressed against the window.

 

Nights are a little different.With back-lighting, using a mod such as the AWLS, you would expect to see several effects. To begin with, the windows should flicker as candles or primitive oil lamps always do. Next, at random intervals, you would see shadows pass across the window, as people moved around. However, unless they were pretty close to the window, then you'd have a tough time distinguishing gender or size. Finally, if the occupants tunred in, the lights probably should go out.

 

While heavy on scripting for the light on-off section, and using animated meshes to give flicker, the first and third point MIGHT be do-able. Not sure on the second - the shadows.

 

Over to someone who knows how to mod.

[DingerDan]

I'm really quite set on making this happen. I'll help any way I can, (although I am a complete modding newbie, I'm gonna look up some tutorials to get me started) and I would happily collaborate with anyone else interested in this.

[Deleted1848331User]

@MarkInMKUK

Maybe start with something more simple :P Sounds even more complicated than I thought.