Using what a camera sees as an image

[Morpheus]

I remember seeing this (maybe on old DXE forums) but it was something I wondered if it could be done, take what a security camera sees (the image on the security computer that is linked to the security camera) and use it as a texture on a brush of a TV screen to show what the camera sees. Would it be possible? Or could you do it with a mesh of a tV and have the texture for the screen, what the security camera is seeing?

[DaveW]

I would have thought this would be impossible in such an old engine. Modern engines would render the camera to a texture, say a 512X512 image, and use that texture on a mesh. That's how Half Life 2 and UE3 do it, anyway - you can tell because of how blurry and pixel-y it is. You could try using a portal but I doubt it would work very well.

[~DJ~]

AFAIK What Camera sees is all done on a window, not some texture.. so it's.. not gonna sum up.

[Neveos]

Well they are making head-tracking now, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

and so since Deus Ex is set in the future, using zones could actually be appropriate to show scripted events on a surface.

[DDL]

There is actually a way to theoretically do this, but it involves scripted textures, and is basically guaranteed to turn even a modern machine into a slideshow, because the unreal engine has really shoddy garbage collection routines.

So pretty much, no.

I did try once to see if using a zone to display a camera view would work (sort of like a skybox, only in a tv-shaped brush with a zoned off screen, with the zone linked to the camera). It was..not good. Half the time the zone would leak, so you'd get a big mess of cameraview spreading out over the room, and of course ultimately, it wasn't a flat rendered image, it was an actual viewpoint, so moving around the room while looking at the screen gave you different angles of view, rather than increasingly flat images of the same view.

[Morpheus]

I did try once to see if using a zone to display a camera view would work (sort of like a skybox, only in a tv-shaped brush with a zoned off screen, with the zone linked to the camera). It was..not good. Half the time the zone would leak, so you'd get a big mess of cameraview spreading out over the room, and of course ultimately, it wasn't a flat rendered image, it was an actual viewpoint, so moving around the room while looking at the screen gave you different angles of view, rather than increasingly flat images of the same view.

I played a mod once (no idea what its called) but it involved the president and at the start you had to watch a TV and on this TV is showed two NPCs talking about something related to the story but I can't remember what and it seemed to work, not sure if it was the way you mentioned, but I remember there was a room created and it was a zone portal and had the NPCs there and the TV was not a big TV so the zone fitted in the TV properly so it all fitted, possibly a warp zone? It gave a fixed view of the whole room on the TV as if what was happening was being broadcast live from the room. Not sure how it was done as I can't remember the mods name. I think I remember a Bob Page NPC in it though.

[[FGS]Shadowrunner]

Not sure if it helps, but check out DXPZ_Cybris by Mantra, it's unprotected and available for mappers to LOOK at. There's a mover which relays realtime back to a security computer window. I think it is meant to be like cameras in IW.