Graphics

[Kweassa]

Better graphics are part of gameplay.

 If HTC suddenly decides to give us "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat" level of graphics and announces will increase various levels of game play in turn, would we accept that?

 We played those old games in those old days because there was no other option then.

 Now, we have already tasted the fruits of current technology, and there's no turning back. Our standards have gotten higher, so we would accept current level of AH graphics as the absolute minimum. If we'd get anything worse than that, no matter what kind of new and improved gameplay the makers would offer, we would turn it down. That's how the paradigm and dialect of technology works. Two essential features do not remain mutually incompatible forever.

 Either graphics will permanently embed itself to one's definition of "gameplay", or at least influence people's evaluation on gameplay greatly. That's how the current game industry is going. It is only matter of time until that becomes so.

 So the question is, will AH be ready by then? Or will there still be people saying "I prefer gameplay over graphics" even then?

 At current rate, I don't think the future's all that optimistic. It may not be doomed, but at least not as optimistic as it used to be.

[LePaul]

Originally posted by SFRT - Frenchy
Some can play in 640x... or 800x600 or 1200 x ..., can't they?
Isn't it possible to have the same thing for your plane texture/colors?

My thoughts mirror yours

Ever other game I have on this system allows me to crank in more or less details, resolution, etc.  

I'm not saying force higher graphics on those proudly totting P3 500s and Voodoo 3's.  But give the power users, and we sure dont know how many of them there are, that option.

I upgraded for better frame rates.  I got em.  Throw me some more details and such for my new system to chew on  ;-)  I upgraded cuz of Aces High and other games.  No regrets.  Now let's push the new system a bit  

[Fangio]

Why is it assumed that an update to the graphics engine would automatically eliminate the existing graphics engine.

I see no reason why the same game, being played in the same arena could not have different players utilizing different graphics engines.

You can offer a cutting edge graphics download that allows the game to be played by those with cutting edge hardware and lets HTC win in the screenshots war and lead the graphics pack. This would bring in more customers.

You can also leave the old graphics in place for people who cant/wont upgrade. They may not see planes, terrains, effects that are as good looking as the high end guys, but there is no reason the two cannot play together in the same arena.

This is the challenge...     Dominate the industry by offering both options and building it so that its all integrated. Right now AH is excluding potential customers in its effort to cater to other customers. The guys with cutting edge hardware (or even 2 year old cutting edge stuff) who want top quality graphics are being excluded so that AH can get the lower powered hardware guy. The risk here is that someone comes along with better graphics and equal gameplay ect and begins to take away market share. Perhaps WB3 will get its act together (im not betting on it).

Why not go after ALL of the customers and offer both options?

I also agree that this would be a pretty serious undertaking with far reaching ramifications. Can AH's servers and hosting infrastructure handle arenas with 1000's of players on at a time? Would the cost of infrastructure increases coupled with the cost of graphics development bring a short term cash crunch that represents too great a risk? What type of marketing and at what costs would be required to maximize the market impact of the graphics upgrade? What is the ROI and its time threshold? Serious evaluation would be needed here. (call me,  I have done consulting on this type of thing).  Does HT really evaluate things like this or is it more of a "seat of the pants" managment style?

Fang
JG26 (WB.... where I have no account)
GPL GROWL WORLD CHAMPION    come race with us!

[muckmaw]

I really am trying to se your point of view, here Wulfe. Honestly.

From my point of view, AH is my only real hobby. Wife, Kids, House, Career take precedence, but when the time came, I forked over the $2000 to get a top line system. Granted, I could still run AH on my old system, but I wanted a better gaming experience from my one hobby.

Someone else said it best. It's only a matter of time before someone who already has the graphics engine in place comes up with the gameplay to match.


People's first impressions are always based on visuals. Be it in gaming, or in dating.

Now, what HT does with his business is in fact, his business. But I cannot imagine how expanding his business can be detrimental. Think about all the multinational corporations that dominate their industry. They all started small. Mcdonald's, Cicso Systems, Microsoft, Dell, AT&T. The list goes on and on.

Where would these companies be if they never took the chance to expand? Cisco would still be a husband and wife team working out of their Garage. McDonalds would still be a burger joint in the midwest.

As far as a short term cash crunch, I've got news for you. HTC has already sold a  stake in the company to an outside, private investment group. (I imagine this was done for start-up, or expansion capital). Depending on the details of this transaction, it may be possible for HTC to do a second private palcement, or even an initial public offering to raise more capital. HTC, once again, depending on the situation, may be able to maintain a majority stake in the equity holdings of the company by keeping the bulk of the offering as Treasury Stock. There's no shortage of companies, mine included, who would be willing to underwrite the issue, if the numbers are viable.


This thread has gone well off topic. (Mostly my fault). The point is the most simple of business creeds.

If you're not growing, you're dying.

[Blank]

Some can play in 640x... or 800x600 or 1200 x ..., can't they?

Answer frenchy is yes look at Operation Flashpoint you can change texture detail, LOD level and all sorts of other things.

In the newest add-on 'Resistance' the graphics have been upped again, I dont have OFP Resistance but i'm guessing they must have added 512x512 or 1024x1024 texture maps to get the improvements.

This is an example of same game with an added patch which gives new mission, new vehicles AND a graphical improvement.

Heres the selection box in advanced to change texture detail:

[AKSWulfe]

Apar, reread, then reread, then reread again everyone of my posts.

I said I speak for myself when it comes to what I want. I also said poll all of the customers to find out what they have.

Easy enough, that's not speaking for anyone and is attempting to get everyone's input.

Frenchy and LePaul- not at all, resolution size has nothing to do with creating different artwork for each. It's all the same.

As for the options idea, how many times do I have to repeat myself? You are effectively doubling, possibly even tripling, the workload for the art guys, of which there are only 2 of them. It's just not feasible.

You want more high poly count models, need two sets of models. You want more detailed skins, two, or more, sets of skins. You want more detailed this, that and the other thing, well you get the idea... it leads to a huge increase in workload.

Muck- I don't know why you are trying to convince me that making HTC bigger will make it better, I don't run the company. However, none of those companies, w/exception to MS, are software companies that have to market to people with a wide variety of hardware and peripherals. In the case of MS, the company may be big, but it's divided into divisions. Each one producing different products. Of course, the MS OSs are among the most unstable OSs on the PC market. So, if you want to use that as your benchmark for a successful company... be my guest, but I wouldn't. Not to mention ALL of those companies do something a lot of people need.

MMOG flight sims are a very small niche market. The customers you get, you pretty much have to keep.

"If you're not growing, you're dying"... like I said, WB3.. they grew and now they are dying.

Using any other company to compare to HTC is rediculous because there are only so many companies that produce online combat flight sims... and those are the only companies you can use to compare to AH.

In the case of FA3, the majority of people that play there play in the easy mode arenas... of which AH does not have. That's VR1's target audience.

But let me repeat this one more time for everyone in this thread:

I AM NOT AGAINST A GRAPHICS UPDATE, CURRENTLY IT WOULD PROBABLY NOT BE FEASIBLE UNLESS THE MAJORITY OF USER'S HAVE HIGH END MACHINES WITH HIGH END GRAPHICS CARDS IN THEM. YOU CAN NOT KNOW WHAT THEY HAVE UNLESS THE ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE IS POLLED. IF YOU WANT THE GRAPHICS UPGRADE, YOU NEED TO POLL THE ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE TO FIND OUT WHAT THE MAJORITY HAS. IN THIS INDUSTRY KEEPING THE MAJORITY OF CUSTOMERS SATISFIED AND THUSLY CUSTOMERS IS WHAT MAKES OR BREAKS YOU. MAKING A SEPERATE GRAPHICS OPTION WILL DOUBLE, TRIPLE, OR QUADRUPLE THE WORKLOAD AND THUSLY TIMELINE FOR EACH UPGRADE. THIS IS NOT A WORTHWHILE VENTURE FOR HTC OR FOR IT'S CUSTOMERS. IF YOU THINK I'M WRONG, CHECK OUT HOW MANY TIMES PEOPLE ASK "WHEN'S THE NEXT PATCH/UPGRADE COMING OUT." MMOG GAMES ARE A FAR DIFFERENT BEAST THAN ANY BOXED GAME YOU'LL EVER BUY, SO DO NOT COMPARE THEM. ONE MORE TIME, I AM NOT OPPOSED TO A GRAPHICS UPGRADE, I DO NOT THINK THAT NOW IS THE TIME, UNLESS THE MAJORITY OF HTC'S CUSTOMERS HAVE THE NECESSARY HARDWARE AND ONLY POLLING THE ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE WILL ARRIVE AT THAT ANSWER.

I'm sure that some people will still not understand, but that's fine. I am through trying to explain it. You are a business major Muck, I'm a computer information systems major. So if your degree makes you qualified to state how to run a business, then my degree makes me qualified to comment on... well what I've been saying all along.
-SW

[SFRT - Frenchy]

Originally posted by Blank


Answer frenchy is yes look at Operation Flashpoint you can change texture detail, LOD level and all sorts of other things.

In the newest add-on 'Resistance' the graphics have been upped again, I dont have OFP Resistance but i'm guessing they must have added 512x512 or 1024x1024 texture maps to get the improvements.

This is an example of same game with an added patch which gives new mission, new vehicles AND a graphical improvement.

Heres the selection box in advanced to change texture detail:

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeet!

Hey SW, maybe our favorite graphic guroux already have the skin made with high textures and downgraded them to fit current HTC policies?

[AKSWulfe]

Maybe, but then you'd have a lot more artifacts on the bmps... of which there are currently none.

Of course, I dunno... I only skin planes using larger textures in other games.. clean lines is not exactly something that decreasing the resolution of textures produces.
-SW

[muckmaw]

I'm sure you are extremely qualified in your field Wulfe.

Here is an article I picked up, that you might find interesting. Granted, it is not a poll of the AH community, but a much larger poll of the online gaming community from the makers of Half Life and an ISP. Please note, this article is almost a year old.


SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 3, 2001--Broadband service provider Speakeasy.net has teamed up with the creators of Half-Life and Counter-Strike, Valve Software, to survey the systems of competitive online gamers around the country.
The survey will give Valve specific information on how they can develop future games to maximize the abilities of their customers' hardware and allow Speakeasy.net to continue the development of their network to better serve their gaming customers.

Included in the latest update releases to Half-Life software, the survey requests validation of the user's system, thus ensuring highly accurate data collection. Since its launch last Wednesday, the survey has had over 300,000 participants, and is expected to continue compiling data for the next few months.

The survey is a fascinating look at the online gaming community's average hardware and Internet configurations. While the results clearly put the online gaming community high above the average consumer, they also show that there is much room for upgrading of hardware and Internet connections within the space. Main points of interest are:

INTERNET CONNECTIVITY Over 60% of those surveyed indicated that their Internet connection was greater than 256kbps, 20% of participants had near T-1 speeds, and it could perhaps be officially declared that the age for 3D gaming via dialup connectivity is over
COMPUTER SYSTEM MAKEUP Over 50% of participants have between 256 and 512 MB RAM installed and the average CPU speed of those surveyed is between 700-800Mhz
VIDEO CARD The most popular video card features Nvidia's GeForce2 chip; Nvidia just released their GeForce3 chip this past spring.

Survey Results
1,048,949 USERS have submitted this survey. Thank you.

 Network Connection
  number            percent  
NONE 129384     12.3  
SLOW 786            0.1  
28.8k 8099           0.8  
56.0k 119018     11.3  
128k 68275          6.5  
256k 171149      16.3  
384k 1                  0.0  
512k 289119      27.6  
608k 1                  0.0  
1.1M 263115      25.1  
FAST 2                  0.0  




 RAM
                         number     percent  
Less than 16M     7               0.0  
Up to 32M         3181            0.3  
Up to 64M         92612          8.8  
Up to 128M     421002        40.1  
Up to 256M     353371        33.7  
Up to 512M     160606        15.3  
Up to 1024M     17572          1.7  
Greater than 1024M 598      0.1  




 CPU SPEED
                               number percent  
Less than 200MHz     2196   0.2  
200MHz to 300MHz 16448    1.6  
300MHz to 400MHz 61731    5.9  
400MHz to 500MHz 136081 13.0  
500MHz to 600MHz 120328 11.5  
600MHz to 700MHz 109367 10.4  
700MHz to 800MHz 156958 15.0  
800MHz to 900MHz 148732 14.2  
900MHz to 1000MHz 82600 7.9  
1.0GHz to 1.1GHz     65478  6.2  
1.1GHz to 1.2GHz     16092  1.5  
1.2GHz to 1.3GHz     34834 3.3  
1.3GHz to 1.4GHz     33581 3.2  
1.4GHz to 1.5GHz     35543 3.4  
1.5GHz to 1.6GHz     13909 1.3  
1.6GHz to 1.7GHz       7426 0.7  
1.7GHz to 1.8GHz       4829 0.5  
1.8GHz to 1.9GHz       1577 0.2  
1.9GHz to 2.0GHz         957 0.1  
Greater than 2GHz       282 0.0  




 Video Card
                        number   percent  
Riva TNT2         230451    22.0  
GeForce2 MX    215993    20.6  
Microsoft Corporation GDI Generic 186315 17.8  
GeForce2 GTS    66226      6.3  
Intel 810            55742      5.3  
Voodoo 3           42296      4.0  
GeForce 256      28181      2.7  
Riva TNT             21352     2.0  
Rage 128           19902     1.9  
GeForce3           18370      1.8  
SiS 630              15915      1.5  
Intel Intel Solano 13530 1.3  
S3 Savage4        12704 1.2  
Rage 128 Pro      10849 1.0  
Others                111123 10.6


Once again, please keep in mind, this survey was done almost a year ago, and polled people that use their system primarily for online gaming.

I think that over a million respondants would qualify as a valid cross section of the online gaming community.

[AKSWulfe]

That does nothing to tell me what the customers of AH have... and that's all that matters.

How many of them bought pre-made computers? A lot? Some?

Many of those have shoddy video cards, ranging from old Intel to old S3 chipsets and the majority being old SiS chipsets.

Anyway, if I continue typing I will only end up repeating myself.

So from now on, my standard reply to this thread will be: "Read one of my other replies in this thread."
-SW

[LePaul]

Polls?

Golly, I dont recall a poll when we went from DirectX 6.x to 8, or when 1.05 came out and required a bigger video card to support the ships, etc.

So, we shouldn't dare desire better graphics because its just a big hardship for the guys at HTC and not fair to those who can't/refuse to upgrade?  

Oh bruther.

[Apar]

Wulfe:

They are overworked in the sense that they do a LOT more with a much SMALLER team than any other development team out there. They spend most of their time building stuff for the game. Besides that, HiTech said from the getgo he wants his team to remain small. Needlessly hiring people just for a temporary upgrade may not be something he wants to do. This isn't his first time building a computer game, he did WarBirds afterall.

Did HT send you an e-mail or any other notification on being overworked or that his staff capacity has reached the limit??

If not, you are making assumptions.

Plp launch ideas about whishes they have, which you obviously don't want. Doesn't mean that these whishes are not worth anything to HT because you assume he doesn't have any capacity to work em.

If that is the case we better stop suggesting anything until HT asks for it.

[muckmaw]

Now your just ignoring facts Wulfe.

First you say the poll is too small. Now I give you over 1 million repondants from the online gaming commmunity, the pool within which Aces High draws its customer base, and you say it's invalid.

Now you're just ignoring the facts, because they don't suit your position.

This has become an exasperating waste of time. My point is made. So MY future response to this thread will be, DO THE MATH.


Oh, BTW, I flew the snapshot last night, with Nimitz as Flight lead. He's a hell of a good commander. You're squad is fortunate to have him.

AKNimitz

[AKSWulfe]

Apar- "Did HT send you an e-mail or any other notification on being overworked or that his staff capacity has reached the limit??"

Hmmm, I said this: "They are overworked in the sense that they do a LOT more with a much SMALLER team than any other development team out there. They spend most of their time building stuff for the game."

Stop taking my words out of context, nothing aggrivates me more than that and having to repeat myself.

"Plp launch ideas about whishes they have, which you obviously don't want."

Reread one of the several other replies I have in this thread. I so do not want to repeat myself, yet again.

"Doesn't mean that these whishes are not worth anything to HT because you assume he doesn't have any capacity to work em."

Again, reread one of my other replies in this thread. I do not want to repeat myself again.

Did I say not to suggest it? No. I suggest you go back a reread one of my many replies in this thread. Or all of them, it's quite apparent you either did not read them or do not understand them.

LePaul- DX is a free upgrade. New computer systems cost money. I can run DX8.1 on a Pentium 166 with a 4MB VGA card.

As for the rest of your presumptions, reread one of my other replies in this thread, I would really hate to have to repeat myself until you finally get what I'm saying.

I'm not the one who needs to know what every user has in their system, HT is. You want new graphics? Do a poll and get every customer's system config. Give it to HT. Bet you he'll either tell you he's about to do a new graphics pack, or isn't based on the results of that poll.
Easy enough, try to understand it this time.
-SW

[AKSWulfe]

Originally posted by muckmaw
Now your just ignoring facts Wulfe.

First you say the poll is too small. Now I give you over 1 million repondants from the online gaming commmunity, the pool within which Aces High draws its customer base, and you say it's invalid.

Now you're just ignoring the facts, because they don't suit your position.

This has become an exasperating waste of time. My point is made. So MY future response to this thread will be, DO THE MATH.

The facts are you got a poll of people who do not play AH. This is not representative of AH. That's the poll you need, and it needs to be of the entire customer base. THAT'S BEEN MY POINT ALL ALONG.
-SW