Aces High - Gameplay Gone to Crap - Help?

[715]

Actually WB3 uses D3D only for PCs but does use OpenGL for Macs.

[hitech]

highflyer: Once again you are talking about things you know nothing about.

A simple statement like you tried WB3 and it ran smother with OGL? Makes me call your creditbility into account. Did you even download it?

You know nothing of graphic API saying glide was a play off OGL is again totaly false.

Ive written code for all 3 api's and all 3 work very simalar in the items that glide had implemented.


HiTech

[highflyer]

I guess the world of Hi end graphic application developers have been wrong this whole time, Perhaps we should all convert to the wonders of DX.

All of those CGI artists, all of those animators/modelers and VR systems developers are looking at 3d graphics with the wrong Idea.

Ya want to talk about standards? What Graphics API has been here longer, stronger, and more prodominant among all computer systems?

OpenGL is a cross-platform standard for 3D rendering and 3D hardware acceleration. The software runtime library SHIPS with ALL Windows, MacOS, Linux and Unix systems.

Wheres DX in all this?

Direct 3D is Windows only while OpenGL is cross-platform


heres a few info tidbits:

OpenGL is stable.
High End 3D workstation & supercomputuer users have been enjoying OpenGL since 1992. Today, OpenGL is also the most popular and powerful 3D solution for Windows, Mac and Linux-based computers, for professional and consumer use.

Again wheres DX in this?

Professional 3D graphics & effects: OpenGL is the 3D power behind all of the incredible 3D graphics & effects you see on TV and at the movies. (think Star Wars). Hardware that uses OpenGL makes possible the compelling 2D and 3D graphics in broadcasting, CAD/CAM/CAE, entertainment, medical imaging and virtual reality. All leading 3D modeling, rendering & animation and visualization software use OpenGL.

Again, I say... Where is Direct X in all of this?  

As far as some really dumb debate about CARD MANUFACTURERS NOT SUPPORTING OPENGL take a look below to see who supports/supported the api.

3Dfx Voodoo, Voodoo2, Voodoo Rush, Banshee, Voodoo3, Voodoo3 3500TV, Voodoo5
3Dlabs Permedia 2 and Permedia 3
ATI Rage 128, Rage 128 Pro, Rage Fury MAXX, Rage Pro, Radeon
Intel i740 and i810
Matrox G200 and G400
NVidia Riva 128/128ZX and Riva TNT/TNT2/GeForce1&2/Quadro1&2/GeForce3
Rendition Verite 2200
S3 Savage3D, Savage4, and Savage2000
+ many many more

As far as Poly pushing and other details, Im sorry but Aces High Pushes NOTHING compared to that of  Quake 3 nor those of other common games/Simulations of todays' Higher LOD models/Environments and yet runs just as smooth as those witht he Higher LOD/poly counts using openGl as the translator.

Take MS combat Flight sim 2 or better yet IL2 for example, overall much higher level of detail(poly counts per plane) as well as more of a dynamically lit, higher texture res per model along with higher LOD terrians yet yeilding same as / or higher Frame rates with OpenGL as the api.

Notice I said that SAME or HIGHER Frame rates with OpenGL.

Every SINGLE PROGRAM that Has run on any machine I have tested runs with Higher Frame Rates when using openGL

All professional video boards and almost all consumer video boards released since 1999 support OpenGL

heres a funny article on how "GL"ide looks at the opengl32.dll as one of its own.
 http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q194/9/85.ASP

[AKSWulfe]

GLIDE is not even OpenGL.

GLIDE is to 3Dfx what RRedline was to Rendition.

There's a difference between supporting and easy of programming to.

Then there you go comparing QuakeIII to flying games.

You do know it's easier to produce better results (higher detail, more polys and sprites) in a small room rendered larger than a large arena rendered smaller?

OpenGL might be great and all, but it requires more direct coding to the cards.
Direct3D is easier to use to ensure 100% compatibility.

I have all sorts of funky graphics anomalies on Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo3 and Voodoo5 in Quake III using OpenGL.

Hardware T&L can be done in both D3D and OpenGL, and you do know that depending on how it's implemented you can have either a)better performance because lighting is done by the GPU or b) crap bellybutton performance that you would immediately squeak about how T&L speeds everything up.... Well it doesn't unless it does it a particular way.

As for this line of nonsense:
"Professional 3D graphics & effects: OpenGL is the 3D power behind all of the incredible 3D graphics & effects you see on TV and at the movies. (think Star Wars). Hardware that uses OpenGL makes possible the compelling 2D and 3D graphics in broadcasting, CAD/CAM/CAE, entertainment, medical imaging and virtual reality. All leading 3D modeling, rendering & animation and visualization software use OpenGL."

Okay, I'll think Star Wars for a second here... You do know it took them up to 2 days to render one frame using a super computer?

"High End 3D workstation & supercomputuer users have been enjoying OpenGL"

If only we all had high end 3D workstations and/or supercomputers we could all benefit from OpenGL....

OpenGL is stable.

So is Direct3D. I've had 0, none, zilch, graphic related problems since I first ran AH back in 1.03.

"Ya want to talk about standards? What Graphics API has been here longer, stronger, and more prodominant among all computer systems?"

Actually, GLIDE was the most prominant from the getgo. OpenGL became popular when more cards capable of rendering what the original Voodoo1 could render hit the market place. They were known as 2nd generation video cards.

If you want to use Unreal as an example, it runs 2x faster in GLIDE than it does in either OpenGL or Direct3D.

I guess that we should all use GLIDE now... I mean it *IS* the fastest.
-SW

[highflyer]

Its funny how you forgot to mention IL2  

Gee I wonder If I get the same, and if not higher FPS in IL2 compared to Aces with a comparison in LOD.  

Oh as to the Idea that you think quake is rendering a simple small area. (which is actually quite humorous) I think you should take a look at some of the larger more intensive maps.

Hey even better ever hear of a game called Serious Sam?

Well Serious Sam has extensive outdoor scenes on a large scale, of which comprise nearly 3 times as many polygonal surfaces and individual moving characters. All of this of wich runs in higher detail, just as smooth as well as smoother using OpenGl.

In short. overall Graphic complexity of Aces Is behind the curve when it comes to graphics of todays sims/action3d shooters(air,land/sea) and yet the frame rates are either meeting the standards of the Higher quality(lod wise) or falling short.

[highflyer]

quake, maxpayne, xplane.. do not have anywhere near as many MOVING objects to render.

This has to make me laugh everytime I read it.

I suggest you take a look at sacrifice, or even something as simple as Solider of fortune.  

[AKSWulfe]

I said a smaller area, and yes it is quite a lot smaller.

Hmmm, how many miles can you see in AH? How many in Quake III... How far out does the terrain distance go when you are 20K in Il-2?

It ain't no where near as far as the AH terrain.

Anyway, I give up. You simply do not understand 3D processors or their APIs, you only give us information that was used by the creators of the APIs to hype them up.

It isn't about speed, it's about compatibility and ease of programming to a wide variety of cards.

And yes, first person shooters ARE different in how much distance they show than flight games.

You are showing your ignorance of computer software Deez, you really should shut up about it and not use your "experience" (anyone with a little time in a CAD can make 3dmodels) as your foundation for these false facts you are spreading about.
-SW

[SKurj]

DeeZ? +)

go play Xplane pleez

SKurj

[Skuzzy]

There is a world of difference between games that are single user/limited multi-player versus a game that supports hundreds of players at a time.
No matter what API you use for graphics, there is some very real overhead with the network side of the game.
Do some simple math.  If you are getting a frame rate of 60 (for the sake of argument and to make it simple), that means you have roughly 16.6ms to;
1) get and process all the network data
2) update the information about all objects in your view area
3) process the sounds
4) process the input from the local client
5) process the output data for the network from the local client
6) draw the frame

All this in 16.6ms.

You see, the stand alone apps can do whatever they want with LOD, as they do not have to run real-time.  

Now about T&L.  Nice buzz word.  It has the potential to make graphics faster, however, it can slow down graphics as well.
The use of T&L makes a lot of sense when you are talking about using it on a 200Mhz CPU.  Why?  The CPU just does not have the power the T&L card does to process all the data.  But, if you have a 1GHz CPU, then the T&L card may not be able to process the data fast enough.  I used 2 extremes here, obviously there is a break even point.  It will vary with the GPU.
Simply stating that using T&L will make it all better is oversimplifying the issue.  
There was amention of Warbirds.  Well, in any graphic enviroment there are tradeoffs to be made.  They made thiers in the detail of the terrain.  This is pretty obvious.  They also require faster CPU's and higher end video cards to get near the performance of a lower end system will in AH.  The AGW board is repleat with players complaining about not being able to play the game on thier 550Mhz systems with 128MB of ram.  If you get the same performance in Warbirds 3 versus AH, then I would bet your system is spending more time in other areas than in the CPU or graphics card.
HTC could easily spew forth a verion of AH that would choke a Cray.  It would be beautiful, but not playable.

I will again bring up the problem with OpenGL.  Not all versions of OpenGL support all the options that are available in DX.  I do not particularly care for DX, but it is one up on OpenGL in the area of wider support for more graphics cards than any other API.
As far as cross platform compatibilty goes, that is a pipe dream.  The OpenGL driver for Linux, for instance, is not supported on the ATI Radeon card under Maya.  Then there are older cards that do not support the new interface standard for OpenGL, but those same cards work fine under DX.

There is a very large difference in a graphics program used to design 3D models and the games that use 3D models. You can never make any type of comparison there as the design goals are at extremes with each other.
You also cannot compare a FSP game to an online flight sim, as there are many differences in the way the two need to work.  FPS has limited distances.  You ever played any big open maps in Quake or Unreal?  It is a slide show, on even the fastest systems, or at least a stuttering nightmare and those big open maps are not nearly showing the distance that a flight sim has to deal with.
You bring up IL2.  It is a nice peice of work, but, it does not have the network code to allow a couple of hundred players to play in one area.  That network code takes time to process.  If they add it, you will see some slide shows, I can be pretty sure of that.

In all game design, you are stuck with time slicing everything to make sure you have enough bandwidth for the whole system. If you do not have to worry about updating the position of a 100 other objects, then it is easy to use that extra CPU power for better graphics.  Think about it.

It really does not matter what API the game uses.  There are still issues well outside the API that have to be dealt with in a massive multi-player online game.  And all these things take time away from generating the graphics.

[Raubvogel]

Wow...back to the original topic:

Nimitz, I had the same problems until I unchecked the enable mip mapping box in the video options. System was freezing for a second or 2  everytime I switched hat views or pulled the trigger. Unchecked the box, smooth again. I also limit the FPS to 60...it seems to make everything smoother. It stays maxed at 60 pretty much all the time at 1600 res and 32 bit color.
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System:
Athlon 1.4ghz-266FSB
Asus A7A266
512mb PC2100 Crucial RAM
Creative Annihilator GF2 GTS-32mb DDR oc'ed@220/350
SB Live! X-Gamer
20GB Maxtor 7200rpm/ATA66
Win98SE
Dx8.0
Antec SX-830 tower-3x80mm intake, 3x80mm exhaust

[715]

Skuzzy: as a devils advocate I would point out that if the work of 3D geometry is off loaded from the CPU to the GPU, then the CPU has more time for handling the network (and physics, and ...)    

[Skuzzy]

Quite true 715.  Although the trade-off could be reduced frame-rates, which could lead to other problems.
There is a condition that can occur in a 3D graphics engine, when doing real-time graphics, that is generaly called "stalling".
This situation occurs when the graphics card cannot keep up with the data coming at it.  In this scenario, odd graphic anomalies can occur (i.e. flashing, alpha blend problems, frame tearing...).
One of the things I failed to mention about the use of T&L is this;  to use T&L a graphics engine must give up its own texture management and allow that to occur in the API level.  This can have some rather odd effects itself.
While the graphics engine knows exactly what textures must be loaded at into the graphics card at any given frame, the T&L usage forces all textures to be loaded into the graphics card.  If there is not enough memory for all the textures the game engine will be using, then system memory is used.  This can cause some frame rate loss as the texture data is being moved from/to the graphics card via the system bus.  In an attempt to minimize this problem, the card manufacturers put 64MB of video ram on the cards.  Some have 32MB, but these cards also have other restrictions.

You also can get into trouble very quickly using T&L is you need multiple light sources.  The NVidia cards are efficient in the L part of T&L when up to 4 lights are used, the Radeon takes it to 8 lights.  If you get past that number of light sources, performance goes into the bit bucket.  If you only have one light source, there is not much, if anything, to be gained by using the L part of T&L.
 
The biggest potential gains in performance and quality of graphics is just around the corner.
The new hardware pixel/vertex shaders have the potential of really enhancing the quality of 3D graphics, without sacrificing performance.  ATI's new "True Form" technology in its new Radeon engine also has incredible potential for higher quality graphics without performance loss.

The current T&L designs were a first pass at trying to improve the speed of 3D graphics, and for some applications it can.  It works quite well in non-real-time applications, but for most 3D games it just has too many limitations.
This is why you do not see a plethora of games using the technology.  The basic idea is very sound, but the current implementations are very awkward and limiting to the 3D game designer.

I did write some code to see what T&L could do, and found it can improve performance if there are very few objects being rendered, but the more objects and different textures needed caused stalling issues to come up.
Another thing I noted is NVidia's GF2 series of cards do not do T&L very well at all, while the Radeon seem to be much better.  I did not delve into it far enough to find out why the differences.

One other thing, I noted the use of some marketing hype in this thread to support some API.  I find this odd.  I always assumed (yes, I know) that anyone with a modicum of intelligence would take marketing hype for what it is designed to do, while ignoring more subjective data.  Very odd.

[airspro]

Gelforce tweek home page

Nim/Larry : This has helped get my system speed back to were it was with my Radeon 64 DDR card . I have a Gelforce256Pro 32MB card in now .

reapers building me a new tower and using my new v card in that so have been back using my old stuff again .

gl
spro

PS: I also uped the blue with this . Now the sky is almost as blue as with the Radeon card .