Fade in/fade out on scene changes

[Algiark]

It's a small thing, but I think a fade in/fade out for whenever the scene changes (for example, when entering VAB/SPH from the space center view & vice versa) could do very much to give the game a polished feel, as well as masking the loading times.

[Kerbart]

That should be optional, some players will perceive it as making the game slower.

[steve_v]

8 hours ago, Algiark said:

masking the loading times.

So long as "mask" ≠ "extend". IMO, during a loading period the machine should be devoting all available resources to loading, not rendering a fancy effect. If it can be done without impacting load-times (e.g. on an otherwise idle GPU) cool.

[Algiark]

How much resource can a simple fade in/out take, anyway?

[Mjp1050]

17 hours ago, Algiark said:

How much resource can a simple fade in/out take, anyway?

Well, during the actual fade, you'd be rendering the VAB plus the black screen. The actual transition would be when the screen was completely black, which is basically the current loading screen. So you'd add about a second to the loading times for a cosmetic trade-off.

Personally, I wouldn't go for this, because I spend a fair amount of time switching between the Runway and SPH testing stuff. It would just be a hindrance for me.

[_stilgar_]

5 hours ago, Mjp1050 said:

Well, during the actual fade, you'd be rendering the VAB plus the black screen.

No, the current view could be saved to a texture. You then fade out a static image. Next scene could load in the background, because there is no need to render current one during the fade out effect. 

Same could be aplited to some fade in effects (VAB always looks the same when you enter in, or it looks exactly like you've left it. You can fade in to static image and then render the scene, when it's loaded. 

So, both effects could be displayed when the scene is loading and it shouldn't noticeably increase loading time.