Any way to disable occlusion shadows for all trucks?

Hello.

I'm trying to play MudRunner in stereo 3D using VorpX with my Oculus Rift. It works fairly well. The biggest problem is that the occlusion shadows on the trucks look really funky, so I'd like to find a way to disable them. I've tried editing the truck XML files to rename/remove all tags related to occlusion, but have had no luck.

Most of the modding guides I've seen relate to adding new content. I haven't found one that clearly indicates how to modify the built-in content.

I tried creating a new 'Media' folder, and putting the modified XML files in there. I also tried replacing the XML files inside Media.zip, but neither one seems to have any effect.

Hopefully I'm missing something simple which explains why my changes are not being applied.

However, I suppose it's possible that there's no way to fully disable those shadow.

Thanks very much for any advice.

@hugelarry
Are you talking about the ambient occlusion shadows on the trucks themselves, or the shadows cast onto the ground by the trucks?

Thanks for the quick reply.

The shadows cast onto the ground by the trucks are the ones I'd like to disable. I should have been more explicit about that. Those are the ones that look strange in stereo 3D. I believe they somehow depend on the camera position, so they end up in different places for the left and right eye views.

Maybe those aren't the occlusion shadows, and maybe that's why my XML changes aren't having the intended effect.

Ideally, I'd like to have my cake and eat it too, with the shadows looking correct in stereo 3D, but I figured that might not be possible, whereas just disabling those shadows might be feasible.

Thanks again.

@hugelarry
The lighting of the terrain/map is baked (built directly into the map itself) so you won't be able to change that. I've made over 1/2-dozen trucks for MR/ST, and I always use full occlusion (all geometry generates shadows) but there is (was?) a method to use a simple occlusion map in the XML, which appears to be the section you've been experimenting with (personally, I've only ever used this occlusion section with static map objects like buildings, which don't cast shadows afaik). I think the weirdness you're experiencing has more to do with the lack of any global illumination in the engine (notice the "sun" is ALWAYS in the West regardless of time-of-day?). Sorry for not having a fix, but maybe you can come up with something based on the info above.
Also check out some of the info in the Big Book of Mudrunner Map Making. Not all of it will be relevant, but you might find something else to play around with that does the trick. 🙂

last edited by Mexican_420

Thanks, @Mexican_420

I discovered that I can manipulate the truck shadows somewhat by editing the XML files in 'Media/classes/daytimes'. Specifically, the 'SunDir' option for sun direction has an impact.

However, shortly after discovering that, I found out how to do what I truly wanted to do, which was just disable the shadows from rendering by tweaking the VorpX shader configuration.

When I'm all done, I will share my custom profile with the VorpX community.