The New Terrain Engine that is Coming

[MachNix]

I saw the announcement on the new terrain engine that is in work and watched the video.  Looks very nice and I'm sure the GV'ers will like it.  It is a little too bright near my computer monitor right now to be sure but the lighting looked way too hard (too strong of a contrast between sun and shadow).  The shadows look nearly black as if there was not enough ambient light.  But that is nether here nor there so on to the questions.

1.  Are system requirements going to change to maintain playable frame rates?

2. When we got more ground detail in the past, people could alter the amount of detail they saw that would give them an advantage while in a GV.  I believe that has been fixed and I recall shooting at an enemy GV and having the round detonate before reaching the target and not realizing that there was a clump of grass between me and the target.  Are there going to be any issues with setting ground details?

3. Is it going to change how terrains are made such as higher resolution in terrain vertices?

4. Any new objects like airfields or CVs coming too?  I have a new MA terrain that has been sitting for years but have not submitted it because I'm not satisfied with the look of the small airfields that sit on my atolls.  I could also use a pontoon bridge that can be destroyed and repaired.

Thanks.

[715]

On my monitor it looks fantastic, the shadows do not look too dark to me.  To me it appears to be a huge step forward from the current terrain engine.  I especially like the wide range LOD that gives super detail up close and the smooth LOD transitions.  Also the smoother altitude resolution is way better than the current flat triangle world look.  I hope it has higher resolution alt.bmp, but it may just be using sophisticated interpolation/smoothing.

[Easyscor]

I have only one request in anticipation of the new TE.

Please provide documentation for the ac3d plugin, htcac3d.p, or maintain the current backwards compatibility for ac3d objects converted with Object Editor 2.15 Patch 3.

Thanks

PS. That jpg looks fantastic.

[Greebo]

My guess would be the same vertices resolution as now. HT has said the current engine supports double this resolution now but it isn't used as it would screw FPS on lesser PCs. Unlike the new high res textures, increased vertices couldn't be turned off by players with older PCs.

I agree it would be great if HTC could take this opportunity to add some new stuff for MA terrains: bridges or bridge bases, forward airfields with no ordnance or even no hangars, just a reload pad. Maybe an AT bunker with a 17 pdr that could be added to any field or town's defences by the map designer in a similar way to a SB. Or just some clutter objects like ruined factories, wrecked ships and the like that could be dotted around the map to add visual interest.

[CASHEW]

this is such a huge change that rather than adding new terrain and planes and gvs and infrastructure they oughta stake it one step at a time so theres not 100s of bugs