CPU thrifty way of adding forests

[Zigrat]

and that smoothing code was run successfully along with graphics on 266 mhz p2s so i dont know why all of you guys think it uses so much overhead.

[Rude]

I've always enjoyed listening to folks critique other folks businesses.

Zig...what do you do for a living....just curious.

HTC is successful...others speak from time to time of their competition...what competition? Warbirds? IL2? FA3?

Whats really amusing to me Zig, is how you find fault with AH and at the same time think in such a small box. Do you really believe that HTC has not already thought of what you speak of? Do you not understand that they most certainly have a business model which they are following? Do you really think that they would discuss future plans in any detail with any of us....it's none of our business as consumers. They offer a product...we make the choice to consume it or not.

If Dale is ever at the courthouse filing for bankruptcy, I doubt seriously that the prominent thought at that moment will be..."if I just would have listened to Zigrat".

I know first hand what it takes to run a successful business...what it takes to make payroll....cover operating expenses...to grow a company one step at a time.

Talk is cheap Zig...sittin outside the ring telling others how it should be done is at best, common.

I'm sorry, but I just don't have the stomach for crap like that....offering suggestions to HTC is fine...arguing with them on this board regarding issues which THEY feel are important to THEIR success is, at best, pathetic.

[Purzel]

... now you are still discussing if ppl with a 56k con would mind Dl'ing hundreds of MBs.

Just wait till their slow connection has loaded this thread entirely and they can respond

[Lance]

MMOG's graphics are always a couple of years behind their single player equivalents.

[Zigrat]

Rude I am an aerospace engineer. What are you?

As for the rest of your topic I will not respond because your lack of objectivity shines through.. you have proven youself to be a cheerleader in the past and you will likely remain so in the future. You should go over to the simhq boards and join the Oleg worshipers, they are hewn from the same block as you are. I do not understand cult worship of video game developers. When there is a shortcoming in a product its your right and responsibility as a customer to point it out. Every business has a suggestion box, whether they listen to the suggestions is the business' perogative.

[AKDejaVu]

Originally posted by Zigrat
and that smoothing code was run successfully along with graphics on 266 mhz p2s so i dont know why all of you guys think it uses so much overhead.

Didn't say it was much overhead.. just saying it was.

Now.. when you start forcing mega graphics operations... is it possible you could affect something like the smoothing code?  As you ad requirements for more and more processor use in order to run the game... what might those effects be?

It doesn't seem to me as if you've actually given it much thought.  Too many things are being flippantly dismissed.

AKDejaVu

[Rude]

Originally posted by Zigrat
Rude I am an aerospace engineer. What are you?

As for the rest of your topic I will not respond because your lack of objectivity shines through.. you have proven youself to be a cheerleader in the past and you will likely remain so in the future. You should go over to the simhq boards and join the Oleg worshipers, they are hewn from the same block as you are. I do not understand cult worship of video game developers. When there is a shortcoming in a product its your right and responsibility as a customer to point it out. Every business has a suggestion box, whether they listen to the suggestions is the business' perogative.

There is a huge difference between making a suggestion and arguing with what the game developer deems correct for his product. The assumptions you make regarding what we currently have, compared to what you feel should be the norm, displays a simpleminded mentality. To your suprise and yours only, do not you think, that perhaps HTC already understands what might be the most practical path for them as a company to follow...that Dale might have already given hours of thought and experimentation to ideas and concepts mentioned by you, as well as ones which you have yet to even recognize, coming to conclusions, all backed up by years of hard data and experience?

You may certainly call me a cheerleader if you choose to do so...I personally would agree with you. What is there not to cheer about? This product offers many things to many people, of which a very very small percentage complain, all for the ridiculously low price of $15.00 per month. I can overlook aspects of this product which I might find less than optimum, mainly because I have faith in the company based on it's track record.

Now, your occupation, in relation to the skills necessary to compete successfully in business, might or might not be relevant. I am not your judge, however, it requires much more than a slide rule to succeed in business.

What do I do? I am the Director of a $180,000,000.00 real estate development company. The fact that I have been involved directly in the development, aquisition and operation of real business for 25 years, might or might not speak to you. However, one thing has always remained very clear to me...Dale has earned the right to follow his instincts regarding the growth of HTC...you have the priviledge to complain about it, not the right.

I'm along for the ride...cheerleader you say...I'm ok with that. I just choose not to crap on what I feel is an excellent effort. Make suggestions? Ask questions? I have had many conversations with Dale, offering what I thought would be wise to implement. He has always been gracious and always listened. What more can a customer expect than that? You mentioned you would not be around if AH did not change to suit you...that is your true perogative.

[airspro]

My two cents ,

I think Ace's High is the best damn Flight Sim . I am with HT as long as he will let us contiune on his "road trip" with him . It's been a nice ride so far .

HTC , your doing one hell of a job !

spro

[715]

Originally posted by AKDejaVu
Actually 715.. it does add cpu overhead.  Every aircraft in sight is subject to a smoothing code that somewhat predicts the aircraft's path between updates to make the flight appear smoother.

AKDejaVu

That's true, but it doesn't involve polygon count; it is scaled by number of planes in the vicinity.  (And note that this task already has a clever level of detail routine built into it: planes far from you appear to follow very coarse paths while planes near you have much finer representation of the actual path.)  This task would be no different if the terrain has more polygons and each plane had more (there is also, I assume, a LOD routine for plane rendering meaning that far planes are rendered with only a few polygons).

Those that say, in effect, that "we don't need no stinkin polygons" might note that, with plane models anyway, HTC is already increasing the polygon count.  Look at the latest screenshots in the News section: the engine nacelle of the F4 is made of 12 sides.  This is reaching the level of detail of other sims, like IL2.  Old planes in AH, like say the C47, have much fewer polygons- the engine nacelle of the C47 is a boxy looking hexagon.  All we're suggesting is that the terrains evolve in this manner as well.  It might be that they already have increased in detail?  The current CT terrain is very nice looking (although I suspect that comes from extremely clever use of textures and not necessairly more polygon detail).

Finally, the initial issue of this thread was increased ground clutter for GVs to hide in.  That increases screen polygon render overhead, but it doesn't really increase download size much.  Afterall, the terrains don't save each polygon of each tree- all the trees are identical and only the tree x,y,z location is saved along with a single copy of the tree polygons which is cloned all over the place for forests.  It might even be possible to decrease download size by placing trees etc using a deterministic mathematical algorithm that would have each FE place them on the fly at the same place as everyone elses FEs.  Maybe that's the way it's done already?

[Chairboy]

Er, that's not...  entirely correct.  I wasn't suggesting adding more ground clutter, I was suggesting a method that would provide GVs with some cover WITHOUT the processor overhead that adding more ground clutter comes with.

My suggestion was that in areas determined to be 'forested', there should be a single polygon hanging 30 or so feet above the ground with transparency set as the background color and a simple texture representing forest being opaque and applied across the texture.  This would have the benefit of blocking (or showing) GVs as appropriate to aircraft without having the massive CPU impact that forcing all planes to render trees from far away would have.

Minimal CPU hit, minimal code change, etc.

[NUTTZ]

I can do what you ask In the terrain now!!! The way HTC's program works I could DO this easily with very minimal to probably NO frame rate hits. IT is pretty easy but would require HTC to do 1 minor thing ( a one mile square would take about as much frame rate hit as 4 tree clutter objects), I would bet it wouldn't take Pyro 20 minutes to do and there would be NO additional downloads, and NO additional coding from HTC. It also would look good from ground and air.  I discussed this In the TE forum over a year ago, and from working with the TE, and the way Objects are 1 way ( invisible from the bottom side) this would work PERFECTLY!!!

Now, How do I go about asking HiTech nicely, without being demanding or pushy?
OK, here's the gameplan...
Monday EVERYONE send HiTech a bottle of craggenmore, and we need to send Pyro, Ronni,Natedog,Superfly,and the sweet voiced "bases are under attack Lady,,Yankee" a bottle of thier favorite brew, OH, and a few pizza's I figure about 4ish they should be pretty mellow and then I'll called the offices. Unless anyone has some Pics or dirt we can extort HTC with???

NUTTZ

[hitech]

It's not that simple NUTTZ, you are forgeting a few issues.

[NUTTZ]

What getting you guys n gals Mellow in the middle of a work day? :)or The issue with the Gv cover? Hitech, you've always been straight up with me and given my limited knowledge of "issues" i do not or cannot understand that effect the "code".  BUT, i'm sure as HOW the TE works with objects, now I am almost certain this could be done with NO frame rate hits and looking first class!  I am Used to your Simple NO's as an answer and again don't want to Ruffle your feathers. IF you would Like I could fire off an e-mail to you explaining ( with visual's how to do this) Then by all means you can reply with a simple NO, and My feeling wouldn't be hurt.

I have a feeling what The "issue" is ( different Alt's in the vortex's within 1 tile clipping it) and it would be no problem. In fact, if errored it would show up in the Error log. LOL, you know your getting my E-mail, whether you read it or not is completely up to you:)


NUTTZ

Originally posted by hitech
It's not that simple NUTTZ, you are forgeting a few issues.

[715]

Originally posted by Chairboy
Er, that's not...  entirely correct.  

Ah.. I realize that Chairboy.  But as others have pointed out, IL2 does it exactly that way and it does look quite good from the air (which is OK as IL2 is an air only game).  But, again as others have pointed out, it looks horrible from the ground level.  And from the tree top level- it can entirely disappear.  I have found that out to my detriment: and yes, you can run into those texture layers and blow up  

I was referring to creating ground cover by just adding more trees to the forest.  Sorry- I should have made that more clear.

[Sclew]

I think one thing that you overlook Zigrat is the fact that HTC hasn't put any serious DirectX 7+ effects or use of advanced libraries into the game yet.

By this I mean of course Lighting effects. The engine in AH still does all it's own the way it did when I looked at it 3 years ago. One of the updates that has to be coming up will be a move to DX 8.1 (winXP standard) and the resulting effect that AH will have more lighting effects in it.

I have seen you ask before for Particle effects and such, well the truth is AH is currently in limbo land to do these. It doesn't seem to have any way of utilizing the GPU (besides what the GPU picks up automatically through DX anyhow) and as a result uses polygons for everything- right down to sprites for hit flashes and poly based tracers.

Now I think it's safe to assume HT isn't a dummy. And he works like crazy as any look at HTC's progress with it's current staff shows.

My question to you Zig, is imagine AH with lighting effects for hits, explosions and flashes. Imagine replacing sprites, bumpmaps and poly's wherever possible with lighting effects. Imagine the sun effect you see in Il-2 here (it's a simple trick- almost all DX games do it).

Would you suddenly consider AH to be VERY state of the art again?

The fact is that I think this is where HT is headed. It just is the only path that makes sense. Offloading more work to the GPU can finally be an option for him since almost all cards for 2 years have had one integrated. Of course such a major upgrade to AH would need allot of work, bug checking and programming.

I open my crystal ball and what do I see? I see a few small plane & terrain updates this summer to flush out the plane set...  and a major release to upgrade the graphics ability this fall/christmas.

That would be a probable dev path. But one way or the other- you can hardly blame HT for not wanting to discuss it. He won't want to talk about any features in case they don't end up appearing and look like promises. He might be struggling with the update and find this kind of thing an annoyance? And finally letting WB or TK know his dev plan in detail of any sort would allow them to play havoc with his business.

I reccomend not being a fanboy- but rather just enjoying the game as you have...  and if your unhappy stepping out until it comes back to the point you enjoy it again.