Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Citabria on November 22, 2003, 02:24:25 PM
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this isnt a graphics thing so much as an immersion and accuracy question.
AH is clearly ahead of IL2 in individual aircraft performance accuracy though il2 is gaining fast and in terms of actual flight model il2FB has surpased ah in areas of low speed handling and high speed effects.
will ah2 bring htc back ahead of il2 in these areas?
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Never..HTC doesn't have the staff that Maddox games has. Oleg has got the best business model going. Pay his staff in Rubels and sell his product in Dollars or Euros. Hell- just with Skuzzy's salary alone you could have a dozen programmers in Russia and pay them in equivalent Voka and Cabbage.
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so true...
about the cabbage and vodka.
mmmmm vodka.
I dont think I would call the graphics in il2 that visually stunning. The planes look nice, but the ground is fer poop, and that is what we are always looking at.
I am going to hold off complaining till I see the new damage model. I suspect they are designing the new engine so they can do some amazing graphical stuff as the computers and connections allow. IL2 is not mmpog is it? I think that is really the driving force. Playability. You need a pretty careful balance between playability and ending up with wwiionline, to keep your customers.
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Ground looks much better than in AH2.. Yup.
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I hadnt played il2 since back when the origional was released and found the eyecandy great then but the ai sucked and the flight model was awful.
I just started playing IL2FB and I am quite pleased at the way they have updated the high and low speed stalls and mach tuck all very convincing. landings much more realistic as well.
too bad its an ai game though those get old fast no matter how good they are.
and 32 player arenas are like flying ah in h2h mode (blech)
hope ah2 offers somthing between ah and il2fb.
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Yo Fester check this.
http://www.vow-hq.com
Virtual Online war. Its not mmopg. But realistic settings like no waypoints, no radar eg eg eg.
If u want more info drop me a line.
freeze@9thawacs.com
http://www.9thawacs.com
And for ur original question. It might be capable but not with a 40 MB download.
U cant compare a 2 cd'S Box game and AH
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Originally posted by Citabria
is HTC capable of the level of detail of IL2FB?
Is IL2's online community capable of being anything like AH's?
TBolt
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Originally posted by F4i
Is IL2's online community capable of being anything like AH's?
NO! Thank God!... much of the AH community has degraded over time.
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Freeze, I've found VEF (Virtual Eastern Front) much much better than VOW. VEF is a dynamic online campaign, whereas VOW is just a bunch of co-op missions with no actual campaign in the background.
In VEF the player actions have a direct impact on the ongoing ground campaign. I hope AH2:TOD will be something like VEF! :)
Check out VEF: http://66.114.65.249/vov/site/main.htm Click on the red "Virtual Eastern Front 2" text to see the current map situation. Click the "air superiority", "tactical" and "recon" buttons at the top to see the up-to-minute campaign status. It is updated after every flown VEF mission.
Cit, get Hyperlobby if you haven't already: http://hyperfighter.jinak.cz Thats *the* place to fly online. There are many good dogfight servers, which use the "script", so that players can reset the map by destroying ground targets, planes, etc... Scripted servers are much better than mindless furballing. Try the Virtualpilots 1 & 2, Greatergreen and Mudmovers servers. They're using full real settings or similar.
I just checked my AH stats. Since january, my online AH time has gradually dropped from 60 hours a month to the current 10 hours a month. I play way much more FB than I do AH... Looking forward to AH2, though! :)
Camo
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Hey camo.
Good to hear from u :) Didnt see u in Hyperlobby in the last month.
I am allready signed up in VEF and flying there also.
I am a swinger :aok
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Hehe, didn't notice you're with the 9th. I fly with Anakonda a lot. :)
You can usually find me at the Virtualpilots' servers or VEF missions.
Camo
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U fly with anakonda ? Hehe Good.
Lets try to get a sqaud mtach someday ?
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Freeze only flies La7s though :p
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The IL-2 FB online experience may not be like AH, but i just checked the Hyperlobby homepage:
HL (http://hyperfighter.jinak.cz/)
For a monday evening at 5:30 EST over six hundred people playing FB means something. They are not all in one room but i bet they all have a good time.
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Naaaaaaaaaaa, i take what i get. As a real challange i find 109 Franz's or EMils's
against Mig-3 early Yak's.
Thats allways a real nice fight. :aok
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I haven't been able to find any 1.2beta games at HyberLobby. How can I check what version the game is before attempting to enter?
I'd also love to try the only wars. Maybe when 1.2 comes out.
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Originally posted by Octavius
I haven't been able to find any 1.2beta games at HyberLobby. How can I check what version the game is before attempting to enter?
I'd also love to try the only wars. Maybe when 1.2 comes out.
Usually the "game info" screen has the information. If there is no mention, then it is 1.11. The beta is usually referred to as "1.2rc01". RC as in release candidate...
Of the online wars, VEF is still 1.11, but VOW uses 1.2rc01. The official 1.2 patch will hopefully come soon. 1.2rc01 is already an improvement over 1.11.
There are separate rooms for VOW and VEF in HyperLobby. Press the "general room" text in the center of the HL screen, it will open the menu to the different rooms.
Camo
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Hell yes. IN 1.11 Germans where nothing then victims. I dunno what Oleg drank before he changed the 109's flight modell in 1.11. In 1.12 its way better.
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Originally posted by Citabria
this isnt a graphics thing so much as an immersion and accuracy question.
AH is clearly ahead of IL2 in individual aircraft performance accuracy though il2 is gaining fast and in terms of actual flight model il2FB has surpased ah in areas of low speed handling and high speed effects.
will ah2 bring htc back ahead of il2 in these areas?
Fester, I believe the problem lies here: HTC has repeatedly stated they do not want to produce a box game. They want their game to be available via download.
Some of the guys (in this thread) have suggested that Natedog & Superfly can't produce the type of graphics required. That's utterly ridiculous.
HTC simply doesn't want to turn their game into a 600 meg download. Dale has said that numerous times at the con.
curly
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Originally posted by AKcurly
Some of the guys (in this thread) have suggested that Natedog & Superfly can't produce the type of graphics required. That's utterly ridiculous.
I agree. In fact, I'd bet that they start with high res models and cull them down to the game level.
Originally posted by AKcurly
HTC simply doesn't want to turn their game into a 600 meg download. Dale has said that numerous times at the con.
Awwww come on. Who wouldn't be willing to download a beautiful 600 mb game? :)
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I tend to agree with mold :)
600mb is most likely an exaggeration, but for many out there with broadband, a download of that size is a drop in the bucket.
And if you're still on dial up, well, a CD could be mailed to ya.
Just sayin' if HTC is purposely keeping it down for that reason alone, then blah. There's plenty of room to inflate. HT does wonders with code and keeping the size down considerably, but if sacrificing size means easier coding and/or for throwing in other neat effects, then by all means, increase the size. I have a large HD thats waiting to be filled [with other material besides pr0n].
Of course, that ^ is all speculation. I'd like to know HT's take on the matter. For now, I could go either way... Curly can also be correct.
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Just do like Air Warrior used to do - have a low res download to keep it small so the modem guys don't complain and have upgradeable options via download for the eye candy.
Magoo
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They did in fact use to do that but think about it, it doubles the work load on a small dev team.
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Originally posted by Octavius
Just sayin' if HTC is purposely keeping it down for that reason alone, then blah. There's plenty of room to inflate.
It's no problem with subscribed players either downloading or getting a CD mailed to them but those that want to download the game for the 2 week trial might change their minds when they see an extremely large file to download.
Maybe HTC could do what WB used to do (don't know if they still do, haven't played WB since '99) and offer both low-res and hi-res models that can be downloaded seperately.
ack-ack
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It wouldn't be worthwhile for HTC to make a game that was 600MBs.
It has to be downloaded from somewhere, that bandwidth costs money, 600MB x [number of users] = a lot of lost revenue.
HTC could surpass Il2:FB in the FM (IMO, it won't take much beyond improving what they have with the first AH), but to get to the graphical level of Il2:FB would be a huge hit in the package size.
The total size of Il2:FB's 3D models for all objects/aircraft/vehicles/maps plus the map's textures totals 830MB. Thats without adding in downloaded additional aircraft textures and the other files required to run FB.
It really isn't about being capable, HTC is more than capable, its just about being feasible.
-SW
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A large 512x512 aces high terrain is somewhere around 5 megs in size. A wild guess, the Gulf of Finland terrain (the biggest) in IL2FB is probably somewhere around 50 megs in size. The best terrain makers in AH are capable of creating almost as much detail in their AH terrains as is in FB. The limiting factor is pretty much only the amount of work it takes to place all the objects.
I'm sure that with the new more detailed textures, the terrain team will be cranking out some pretty damn nice terrains for AH2.
Graphically, the biggest differences between IL2FB and AH2 are IMHO the lighting, sky, water and weather effects. Improving the lighting effects alone would make a huge difference in AH2.
Camo
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Originally posted by LLv34_Camouflage
Graphically, the biggest differences between IL2FB and AH2 are IMHO the lighting, sky, water and weather effects. Improving the lighting effects alone would make a huge difference in AH2.
Camo
precisely...if you could take a look at some of the old posts on the ah2 forum where lighting effects were added...the difference is astounding...
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damage ffects are also getting insanely realistic in il2 future release of BOB from them is gone over the top and modelled the entire internal structure of the airplane lol.
talk about attention to every last detail.
ah2 has a serious competitor in the realism department. AH used to be the most realistic flight model in my opinion as well but this opinion is changing as well especially after flying the horid ah2beta fm which i hope is not what will be used in ah2
(http://www.il2sturmovik.com/forgotten_battles/devupdate/21nov/Hurry_dam2.jpg)
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That thing can fly...........oh yea thats realistic:D
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Originally posted by Citabria
damage ffects are also getting insanely realistic in il2 future release of BOB from them is gone over the top and modelled the entire internal structure of the airplane lol.
Now, THAT seriously kicks ass. I think that, from a theoretical perspective, such detail should be feasible in an MMP game like AH, as well. These kinds of calculations are done client-side, anyway, so the fact that there are hundreds of other players should not be a limiting factor on the damage model (or on the flight model). But, perhaps such detailed modeling takes a lot of computing horsepower, and perhaps HTC doesn't want to limit the scope of the game to only people with fast P4's--such a concern might be less applicable to a boxed sim.
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mold offline boxed single player games have a similar problem to ai games in terms of numbers. for each ai drone in the game requires hundreds upon hundreds more calculations the more detailed the ai the more processing required.
with online games the human brain does all the ai drone processing and the game keeps track of damage position azimuth and speed without such a complex need for detailed ai algorithms.
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In answer to your original question.
No, not with the current business model.
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Originally posted by Citabria
mold offline boxed single player games have a similar problem to ai games in terms of numbers. for each ai drone in the game requires hundreds upon hundreds more calculations the more detailed the ai the more processing required.
with online games the human brain does all the ai drone processing and the game keeps track of damage position azimuth and speed without such a complex need for detailed ai algorithms.
Yes, but there is still a need for far more complex communications processes.
-SW
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Originally posted by Citabria
mold offline boxed single player games have a similar problem to ai games in terms of numbers. for each ai drone in the game requires hundreds upon hundreds more calculations the more detailed the ai the more processing required.
Good point! Yeah, actually the MMP sim should have less computational load per client. The damage calculations are distributed.
Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Yes, but there is still a need for far more complex communications processes.
-SW
I disagree. There may be need for higher bandwidth, but not much more complexity than the current mechanisms. Even bandwidth shouldn't be that much more. Now we presumably have messages like "wingtip got 500 pts damage". In the new model, we'd have "rib_1 for 200 pts,rib_2 for 100 pts, rib_5 for 200 pts".
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That kind of fidelity is probably possible but probably not within the reasonable download footprint. I also wonder how many people would want to upgrade to a PIV 2.5 to run the game.
It is something of a fine edge sword with online video games. An update for IL2FB with new aircraft requires at times a 75-110 meg download, larger than the entire code for AHII right now. I am not sure how many of us are willing to wait for that kind of update. I can imagine how long new terrains would take to download.
It's not a bad idea but I think we all would need broadband to both play it and to download it. I don't want to alienate the non Pentium IV gamers out there. AHII pushes that barrier now, to have IL2 as a Massive Multiplayer would probably take them out of the picture.
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Originally posted by wklink
That kind of fidelity is probably possible but probably not within the reasonable download footprint. I also wonder how many people would want to upgrade to a PIV 2.5 to run the game.
Within a year a 2.4 P4 will be so stale that you can use it to kill birds in flight. Even now a 2.4C is only about $160. I'm sure that soon enough the local PC store will have 2.4 P4's or 2500XP Athlons in their $300 machines.
Time moves on. Computers get faster and cheaper. Games should get better too. There's a ton of room for improvement. Why stop now, after all these years of forward progress? The same thing could've been said 10 years ago, and then where would we be...
Originally posted by wklink
It is something of a fine edge sword with online video games. An update for IL2FB with new aircraft requires at times a 75-110 meg download, larger than the entire code for AHII right now. I am not sure how many of us are willing to wait for that kind of update. I can imagine how long new terrains would take to download.
Even 35 megs is painfully slow on a modem. 100 megs shouldn't be all that much more pain, due to diminishing marginal effects. :D Besides...is there anyone reading the thread that wouldn't download 600 megs or more for AH2? Yeah, there are others out there...but my guess is that anyone who is into AH either as a game or as a plane buff will be quite willing to download anything of any size to play the game.
As far as in-game bandwidth requirements...it would take a bit more, but I don't think it would require broadband. Who knows, until it's tried with an optimized protocol.
Net connections aren't as Moore's Law-ish as computers, but fear not--cheap ethernet to the home is coming soon. I hope. Then perhaps will come the death of stone age voice-band modems.
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Originally posted by 214thCavalier
They did in fact use to do that but think about it, it doubles the work load on a small dev team.
but the up side is if they did put the time in for a his res version.. they would win over all those IL-2 flyers that fly that sim due to graphics. I wish they would consider it.
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Mold, IMHO probably the P4 2.4 wont be the average CPU in the next season, but I'm worried about the P3-1Ghz + GeForce2 standard chosen by HTC months ago .... and AH2 looks still .... alpha?
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Originally posted by mold
I disagree. There may be need for higher bandwidth, but not much more complexity than the current mechanisms. Even bandwidth shouldn't be that much more. Now we presumably have messages like "wingtip got 500 pts damage". In the new model, we'd have "rib_1 for 200 pts,rib_2 for 100 pts, rib_5 for 200 pts".
I didn't say bandwidth, I said "processes". The AI takes up quite a few CPU cycles to compute what it is going to do.
The Networking side of things, which does all of the communication interpretation and packaging, will take up more CPU cycles than the AI will.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
I didn't say bandwidth, I said "processes". The AI takes up quite a few CPU cycles to compute what it is going to do.
Thought we were talking about damage models, not AI... Yes, the collision detection will take more CPU power with finer granularity, but if IL2 can do it so can AH2. IL2 has to collide hundreds of planes, while a single AH2 client has to collide only a couple planes.
Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
The Networking side of things, which does all of the communication interpretation and packaging, will take up more CPU cycles than the AI will.
How do you figure?
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Originally posted by mold
Thought we were talking about damage models, not AI... Yes, the collision detection will take more CPU power with finer granularity, but if IL2 can do it so can AH2. IL2 has to collide hundreds of planes, while a single AH2 client has to collide only a couple planes.
You should probably go back and follow what I was replying to, then read my reply, then read your reply. Cit said that AI calculations do not need to be done, and I said thats true - but the far more complex networking side needs to be done.
Originally posted by mold
How do you figure?
Because the data communications takes up a lot more cycles than the AI does. Theres a lot more to data transmission than just sending out a simple speed and heading packet, or what is damaged packet, or recieving one.
AI goes by a fixed set of simple rules and use an extremely simplified flight model which doesn't require many CPU computations at all.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
You should probably go back and follow what I was replying to, then read my reply, then read your reply. Cit said that AI calculations do not need to be done, and I said thats true - but the far more complex networking side needs to be done.
Oh ok. Slight confusion there. Anyway, even if you leave AI out of the picture, AH2 should be able to do what IL2 is doing, for the reason I stated above.
Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Because the data communications takes up a lot more cycles than the AI does. Theres a lot more to data transmission than just sending out a simple speed and heading packet, or what is damaged packet, or recieving one.
Well, I guess we really can't tell unless we know for sure what the AI is doing. Anyway, leaving aside AI, I think the additional communication requirements are very doable from a CPU load perspective. It is the additional required bandwidth that might be a question, but even that I deem achievable at modem speeds.
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What Il2:FB is doing right now with it's damage model is what AH does - just with additional incremental steps between no damage and full damage, with varying degrees of flight performance being effected.
This is doable on any current PC, works quite well on my machine with full graphics - online or offline against AI.
Now what they plan on doing in BoB is up in the air, all we have seen are screenshots of the underlying structure of the plane's being made. This is not the underlying damage model (as to how a plane gets damaged, which is never seen), but instead the visual model - so we can atleast assume that there will be a skin that will be slowly holed up or blown away. Beyond that, its anyone's guess. This would lead to a lot of data communications, rather than rib1 destroyed - we now have 1x1cm hole input into area 56x 22y, and multiply that by the number of times bullets enter the skin. This would lead to a lot of data being transferred on a lowly 32player game, let alone several hundreds.
This is without even figuring in the actual computations to derive the visual model, so not only do complex calculations for the damage model need to done - now a lot more stuff is being put into packets, or atleast being transferred in multiple packets. This now requires more CPU cycles to recieve, decode, place on the plane, and so on for each plane that is being visually modelled. Then a group of planes from somewhere else on the map become visually modelled, (for sake of argument are damaged), all of their damage has to be displayed and thus communicated... and now your system has to go recieve all of this while still maintaining the usual communications processing it typically does (like what the current AH does).
I doubt how much data can be transferred at once would really be much of a factor, so long as everything can be packaged into small packets and transferred at high rates.
The real problem is with all of these graphical features will occupy a great deal of the computers work load, and then adding in the networking aspect of something this detailed for a scale this large (400 players) would require the state of art computer of two years from now to run it well.
In the case of the current FB, offline I can have combat of up to 32 AI planes on ace level with lots of AI ground object scattered around and achieve the same framerates as playing online with only 16 people with some AI ground objects.
Theres just so much being communicated that the CPU spends the majority of the time sending/recieving/updating locations, object damage/status and each player's aircraft state that something has to give - and thats typically graphics (or sound depending on the sound engine).
Keep in mind that BoB is designed to run on the top of the line computers when it is released in 2005.
-SW
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With a very complex damage model, bandwith would be affected noticeabily. When you see a plane, you see the visible damage, so, that information is being sent and distributed by the server. Our actual visible damages are:
2 wing roots.
2 wing tips.
2 ailerons.
2 flaps.
2 elevators.
up tp 2 rudders.
oil x n engines (up to 4).
fuel.
radiator x n engines (up to 4).
fire.
up to 3 gears.
tail section.
26 bits, a single 32 bit word seems enough to transmit our actual visible damage for any plane. Adding much more visible damage will imply the transmission of much more data with the corresponding impact on communications.
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Now what they plan on doing in BoB is up in the air, all we have seen are screenshots of the underlying structure of the plane's being made. This is not the underlying damage model (as to how a plane gets damaged, which is never seen), but instead the visual model - so we can atleast assume that there will be a skin that will be slowly holed up or blown away. Beyond that, its anyone's guess. This would lead to a lot of data communications, rather than rib1 destroyed - we now have 1x1cm hole input into area 56x 22y, and multiply that by the number of times bullets enter the skin. This would lead to a lot of data being transferred on a lowly 32player game, let alone several hundreds.
Yes, I agree. This is too much for modems, and possibly even cable modems until backbones get upgraded. :) I was speaking rather of the non-visual damage model. When Fester posted his pic, I immediately thought of how individual bullets and shells might damage that structure--not how the structure would look in the game or how bullet holes would look. Actually, see the original post. It ain't about the graphics.
Without the eye candy, the communication and CPU requirements are lowered.
Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
The real problem is with all of these graphical features will occupy a great deal of the computers work load, and then adding in the networking aspect of something this detailed for a scale this large (400 players) would require the state of art computer of two years from now to run it well.
Perhaps. When the time comes, the graphics can be filled in. Furthermore, I believe you underestimate the power of current processors. I think some of this can be done now. Especially if it is appropriately scoped and filtered, so that you aren't creating in real-time polygon meshes of torn sheetmetal for planes that are 10 miles away.
Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Theres just so much being communicated that the CPU spends the majority of the time sending/recieving/updating locations, object damage/status and each player's aircraft state that something has to give.
I simply do not think that is true. I have done some multiplayer programming before, and the CPU is not spending the majority of its time in these tasks. Communication is filtered by the server, so that each client is being updated only with the closeby planes with any great frequency. Furthermore, even full 400-player updates would not be so bad on the CPU--it is the network that would suffer from this. Hell, that is exactly what a boxed sim does, and boxed sims have been doing this for a long time! I remember this boxed game, Out of the Sun--tons of AIs, and no problem updating their positions and states.
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26 bits, a single 32 bit word seems enough to transmit our actual visible damage for any plane. Adding much more visible damage will imply the transmission of much more data with the corresponding impact on communications.
no it wont...what gets transmitted is data on whats hit...the actual graphical display of the damage is done by the users computer...there will be more data...but not so much as to crap out the connection
why do you think a half hour .ahf file is less than 1 mb...all the data it contains is just locations of planes type of planes when someone fired what that firing did and what the map it was recorded on looked like...all the graphics and stuff are stored on the computer and are called at the right time...and im assuming that this is the same sort of data thats transmitted while flying online (with the exception of the map)
but then again i know damn near nothing and this is all speculation...
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vorticon, think on the following scenario:
You aproach to a friendly stuka, and, as result of close observation, you notice it is lacking left gear, right flap and aileron. The server is sending not only the position, bearing, angle and speed of the friendly stuka, but also info about its current damage so your client can represent it.
Now imagine the same situation, but, as well as the mentioned damage, you notice five 20mm holes in the stuka's left wing, several small cal holes in the forward canopy glass, rear machine guns destroyed and a section of the tail teared off. Surely that stuka is sending much more data about its damage to the server so that your FE can represent all of them accurately.
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With a very complex damage model, bandwith would be affected noticeabily. When you see a plane, you see the visible damage, so, that information is being sent and distributed by the server. Our actual visible damages are:
2 wing roots.
2 wing tips.
2 ailerons.
2 flaps.
2 elevators.
up tp 2 rudders.
oil x n engines (up to 4).
fuel.
radiator x n engines (up to 4).
fire.
up to 3 gears.
tail section.
26 bits, a single 32 bit word seems enough to transmit our actual visible damage for any plane. Adding much more visible damage will imply the transmission of much more data with the corresponding impact on communications.
Using one bit exclusively to store the status of a single component is rather primitive.
Using a complex damage model need not increase bandwidth at all.
A 32 bit word could theoretically hold 2^32 (~ 4 billion) different damage "states".
Obviously using a massive lookup table with 4 billion entries is unfeasible (it would consume all addressable physical memory), but you get the idea. There are many tricks you could use to keep the required bandwidth down without placing too much additional stress on the client computer.
You might break the aircraft damage up into three "blocks" of 8 bits, each storing 256 states, and reserve the remaining 8 bits as simple 0-1 flags, like what you did above, for important pieces of information that may reduce computations if known quickly. For example, if an entire wing is gone, none of the components in the wing need to be checked.
No need for much more bandwidth.
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Originally posted by mold
I simply do not think that is true. I have done some multiplayer programming before, and the CPU is not spending the majority of its time in these tasks. Communication is filtered by the server, so that each client is being updated only with the closeby planes with any great frequency. Furthermore, even full 400-player updates would not be so bad on the CPU--it is the network that would suffer from this.
I'm not sure what type (different types place different requirements on a computer system) of multiplaying interface you programmed for - but in the case of a flight sim there is a lot more that goes into the networking side than simply communicating, packaging (encoding/compressing and decoding/decompressing) packets, theres also quite a lot of client side computations to place the aircraft in a certain course relative to its last heading/speed/attitude (with more information no doubt being in the packet). Which is one reason why "stick stirring" leads to jumpy aircraft on connection speeds ranging from 28.8K (pretty much the minimum for MP gaming now a days) up to cable. It is due to both lack a steady communication of an object's state (.1 difference in all categories of movement) and because the program figures the plane will be doing something so much but the next packet is a vast difference so a smooth movement turns into a snap movement in the blink of an eye. 400 player updates still make a vast difference over a 32 player game, because updates (no matter how rare - once every 10 seconds with only updating what sector and what countries the numbers are in) still make a difference in what is going on "behind the scenes".
Anyway, the point I am getting at is that: Yes, HTC COULD do that - but its just not sensible unless we want one plane every month or two. As far as the program's size I may be the exception, but I refuse to download anything that takes longer than 6-8 hours of sleep(56K modem).
-SW
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
I'm not sure what type (different types place different requirements on a computer system) of multiplaying interface you programmed for
Actually, it was a flight sim. Not industrial grade, but I do have some idea of what's required... :)
Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
but in the case of a flight sim there is a lot more that goes into the networking side than simply communicating, packaging (encoding/compressing and decoding/decompressing) packets, theres also quite a lot of client side computations to place the aircraft in a certain course relative to its last heading/speed/attitude (with more information no doubt being in the packet). Which is one reason why "stick stirring" leads to jumpy aircraft on connection speeds ranging from 28.8K (pretty much the minimum for MP gaming now a days) up to cable.
No way. This is not caused by CPU limitations. If that were the case, then boxed sims would also display jumpiness. The CPU is extremely fast and can handle all of these things with ease.
Stick-stir jumpiness is caused by latency, which is not necessarily related to bandwidth (which is why both the 28.8 and the cable are subject to it). Latency is largely a product of per-hop delays in the transit to the server, i.e. the public internet...not the "local loop".
Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
400 player updates still make a vast difference over a 32 player game, because updates (no matter how rare - once every 10 seconds with only updating what sector and what countries the numbers are in) still make a difference in what is going on "behind the scenes".
Not for the CPU. If you had full state updates for all 400 players, yeah there would be some serious lag, but not because the CPU couldn't handle it--rather because the network couldn't handle it. But any con that is not a dot does not have to have it's state transmitted at all, and any con at long dot ranges can be once every 5 secs or something. The server has enough information to do this type of culling. How many planes are within icon range at any given time?
Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Anyway, the point I am getting at is that: Yes, HTC COULD do that - but its just not sensible unless we want one plane every month or two.
Well, that's another issue... Yes, it is true that there would have to be more modeling and programming to make this happen.
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Originally posted by mold
No way. This is not caused by CPU limitations. If that were the case, then boxed sims would also display jumpiness. The CPU is extremely fast and can handle all of these things with ease.
I didn't say CPU limitations, but its due to how the program interprets the set of packets to place the object smoothly because it is not getting updates that would allow the object to flow smoothly through the virtual world. This comes down to having to allocate some of the CPU to do the calculations for this which would mean that the CPU is in fact doing work to place the aircraft along a predicted flight path by estimating its next point by the previously recieved data. It isn't recieving a constant flow, so there is a lot of work on the user's PC to give the illusion that there is in fact a steady flow of constant position updates which are real time when in reality there aren't but it appears that way because the CPU is using an algorithm to give this end effect.
Originally posted by mold
Not for the CPU. If you had full state updates for all 400 players, yeah there would be some serious lag, but not because the CPU couldn't handle it--rather because the network couldn't handle it. But any con that is not a dot does not have to have it's state transmitted at all, and any con at long dot ranges can be once every 5 secs or something. The server has enough information to do this type of culling. How many planes are within icon range at any given time?
All contacts are being updated all the time, how often and what kind of updates the client PC is recieving depends on where the contact is located. If this weren't true, you wouldn't have any dar bar, dot dar, or knowledge there were anything outside of what you see. Thats where the 400 players come into play, because you are still recieving some form of update on their status whether you see them or not.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
I didn't say CPU limitations, but its due to how the program interprets the set of packets to place the object smoothly because it is not getting updates that would allow the object to flow smoothly through the virtual world. This comes down to having to allocate some of the CPU to do the calculations for this which would mean that the CPU is in fact doing work to place the aircraft along a predicted flight path by estimating its next point by the previously recieved data. It isn't recieving a constant flow, so there is a lot of work on the user's PC to give the illusion that there is in fact a steady flow of constant position updates which are real time when in reality there aren't but it appears that way because the CPU is using an algorithm to give this end effect.
Yes, I do understand that...I have programmed this kind of thing myself. What I am saying is this is a fairly small burden for the CPU. It's not "a lot of work".
Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
All contacts are being updated all the time, how often and what kind of updates the client PC is recieving depends on where the contact is located. If this weren't true, you wouldn't have any dar bar, dot dar, or knowledge there were anything outside of what you see. Thats where the 400 players come into play, because you are still recieving some form of update on their status whether you see them or not.
An extremely low update frequency suffices for dot dar, and darbar has even lower requirements than that. In fact darbar could be communicated on a per square basis which would also save BW.