CPU thrifty way of adding forests

[Skuzzy]

Uh guys, you are all thining about the last mile for the download (i.e. your end of the Internet connection).  There is a real cost for downloads from the ISP side.
You already knows what happens when HTC does a release, now multiply the download problem by several magnitudes.  A single DS3 can barely handle the downloads and give resonable download rates.  Double the size of the download and suddenly we need to have 2.5 DS3's.
Now we are talking about hurting HTC financially.  When you talk about other products that are huge in comparison, most of them sell the product as a box, and/or have higher subscription rates, and/or are not massive multiplayer games.

HTC would be forced into one of three possible decisions, in this case.  

1)  Eat the costs of the additional bandwidth.  This would effectively put them out of business, in my opinion.
2)  Raise the monthly subscription rate accordingly.  I know many of you would pay more, but many would not.  I think this would effectively do the same as number 1 in the long run.
3)  Sell the game and increase the monthly subscription rate, but not as much as number 2.  This would hamper thier growth as one of the main attractions to AH is you can try it with no risk or obligation.  For the client who has had cursory thoughts about trying a game like this, it would serve to deter them from even considering it.  So subscriptions would drop and we are back to number 1 again.

There are really no good solutions to this problem.  At least, none that would not require extra costs that HTC would have to eat.

From what I have been able to determine, HTC is one of the few companies in this genre who may actually be doing well at it, from a financial point of view.  One the prime reasons is the download size.  While they do eat the costs of the download pipes, they can keep the pipes resonable and in tune with the growth of the customer base.
Ther are no services available on the Internet today where they could place thier files for downloads that would not cost them an arm and a leg, save the few players that use thier personal Internet service for mirrors.

More and more ISP's are moving to bandwidth pricing schedules for commercial entities and even for personal use.  This type of pricing pretty much mandates HTC keep the download as small as possible.

HTC cannot afford to think about today, without thinking about tomorrow.



Now, as fasr as video options go, the same problem as above applies.  To offer the high end guys options to allow higher poly counts and nicer eye candy, HTC would double the size of the download, at least.  The art would have to be revisited and it would take probably twice as long to get a version done than they do today.
Remember how impatient everyone got about 1.09?  Double the time and ask yourself, would you have waited?  Many would, many would not have.

You guys need to understand that eye candy costs.  It costs in file download size, time to release, and support.  Nothing is free when it comes to 3D graphics.  There is a price to pay for all of it.

[Eagler]

HTC, just send out CD's like AOL does - one about every 45 days

I promise I won't use it as a coaster

[Skuzzy]

While you may be joking Eagler, you bring up another point I missed.

Sending out CD's to everyone is not cheap.  Who eats the costs of the CD?  The cost of shipping?  The cost of the additional man power to handle the logistics of this?

How do you solve the above problems without bankrupting HTC?

And they still have to deal with the new downloads, as you just cannot blanket the world with a ba-zillion CD's  (AOL not withstanding, but if HTC had the revenue stream of AOL,..well a bunch of things become possible then).

[Zigrat]

skuzzy,
well like i mentioned in my post i said bandwidth of the download might be a consideration. but htc is ging to face a problem in a year or so. for right now i am content with the current graphics etcera. but i can guarantee you that at the end of 2003 if the terrains here are still comprised of a total of 5 256x256x256 bitmaps i wont be here. at that time 3 ghz machines will likely be standard.. so why should we be playing a game that runs well on 600 mhz???

hitech has talked about adding infantry etcera in the past, but they would be laughable without a terrain mesh that is at least an order of magnitude larger than the current one.

i own il2 and just the patch for that game to fix some bugs was 60 megs..

as for the cds well a cd costs less tan a dollar and media mail costs like a dollar so if there are four updates a year it costs htc mabye 6 dollars per customer to send em out. out of the 180 bucks we pay em a year this isnt that bad really -- like 3%. It might be cheaper for them than wasting the bandwidth.

[popeye]

If the goal is to make GVs harder to spot from the air when they are in a forest, just turn off their (enemy) icons when they are in the trees.  Maybe make the dot harder to see, too.  Don't know if it would be easier on the CPU, but it wouldn't increase the D/L size.

[Skuzzy]

Zigrat, you are talking about a year down the road and comparing that to today. No one has said HTC would not improve the graphics.  They have done so over the last 3 years.
HTC does a good job watching the market to get an idea of the men average CPU and codes appropriately for it.  This is just good business sense.

I have not seen anyone from HTC say they would not improve the graphics and have seen them improve the graphics over the last 3 years.

I will tell you that IL2, which seems to be what everyone wants HTC to do graphically speaking, could not support 500 players in a single arena today.  The physical costs for the Internet and servers would be astronomical and would require every client to have a full duplex T1 to do it,..today.
Tomorrow, who knows?

Zigrat, if you really beleive HTC is not going to do a thing about the graphics quality in the next year, then why stay?  I do not mean for that to sound harsh, but people keep talking about improving the graphics without realizing the costs for doing so,....today.  You cannot have IL2 graphics in a 500+ arena.  It cannot be done without sacrificing something,...today.

Now, if you want to know what HTC is going to do tomorrow, ......don't hold your breath.  It would not be in thier best interest to let the competition know what they plan.

HTC has talked about adding some first person shooter stuff, but I have not seen it, nor has anyone else.  With that, I have to conclude we will not know what it will look like and it is rather pointless to try to 'guess' what it will look like.  When it is doen, we will either like it, or not.  Simple.

On CD pressing, it would costs them about the same for the pressings as a month of download service, but ther associated costs of adding another person to the staff to handle the logistics of the CD operation would put the costs over the top.
If it were cheaper to do than using the Internet, HTC would have done it a long time ago.  Would it be cheaper if the file size was 200MB's+,...probably.  But to get the game to that size, and support it in the manner everyone is used to, would double or triple the manpower costs, which would negate any savings and in fact may add the overall costs significantly.

One of the things HTC is well known for is the ability to get out timely releases and updates, which keeps the game/sim intersting and fun to play.  If they went to annual or semi-annual releases, would they be as successful?  Maybe,...maybe not.

[Zippatuh]

Originally posted by Saintaw
IF they DO implement this, I smell nasty 'U'NOE flying

This seems to be off where the subject is going but… Exactly

20 feet, I can get under 20 feet.  Hell under it, what would it look like if you were flying in it?

[AKSWulfe]

Well, I'm a 56K user and I appreciate that the downloads are small.

Mostly because my internet connection decides to randomly quit and disco, this makes downloading a large file difficult if I can't monitor it.

Sure, I could use GoZilla.. but then that's another download.

Besides, AH is the only program that has impressed me with what it does while being extremely small.

And to say that HT will leave it stagnant in terms of graphics is a joke.

You've been here long enough to remember the texture overlay introduction, individual clouds, cloud banks, storms, sunrise/sunset, and static ground clutter all being introduced as part of the game...

None of those existed in the beginning when a PIII 300Mhz machine was the standard.
-SW

[Glasses]

ASW have you considered Download accelerator? much better than gozilla go download it small too :-D

[AKSWulfe]

No Glassess, I've heard about it though.... I thought you had to pay for it?

I'll start checking for it... thanks!

EDIT: Found "DAP" Download Accelerator Plus- free. This the one? The other ones I found cost $29.95.
-SW

[straffo]

having a 50H/month Account ....
Il-2 made a 8 hour ponction with the last patch ...
Great I 'll fly less

[Glasses]

Aye m8ey it's free although the other plus thingie dunno what it does but the reg version is free.

[AKDejaVu]

Chairboy... that is what Il-2 currently does.

It looks pretty neat from the air... but it looks very bad from the ground.

And... I have to agree with everything that Skuzzy is saying.  Its too easy for us to make decisions/criticisms regarding things directly affecting HTC's bottom line without weighing all the impacts.

Increasing download sizes drastically is a bad thing.  Especially for an on-line only type of game.  Especially if it can affect gameplay itself during those download periods.

AKDejaVu

[fats]

zigrat,

You want the mesh to be bigger ( dimensions ) or denser ( resolution )?


// fats

[Chairboy]

AKDejaVu, my suggestion would specifically NOT have a large size impact on the game, either in performance or file size.  The suggestions that would dramatically increase the size of the downloads were the ones that involved radically re-writing the engine to support super fine ground detail.

Using this method, we could get the benefits without hardly any of the costs, assuming the HTC engine doesn't render hidden polygons.