Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: DeeZCamp on August 26, 2001, 11:24:00 PM
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Does HTC really think of it.?..
Do they feel like they are behind on the curve? or At equal?
Not even speaking Graphics wise... But The idea of IL2 becoming or having the ability to host 128 players at a single time.(heard that this may be within its future)
As well as an already establishd land/air(sea?) configuration.
Does HTC see anything that they may implement into Aces??
As for the graphics part... is the Aces 3D world expanding in this type of direction?as far as Graphic api's ..possibly opengl support? :D
Just a few questions to understand where And what thier thoughts on Il2 are.
We have heard from many here. What do you guys think?
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I wouldn't mind knowing what Hightech team thinks about it.
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They told me personally because they respect me so much, that's it's the best thing since WWII Fighters.
WWII Fighters had better cockpits, but thats their opinion.
GAd you guys beg for a beating.
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If and when IL-2 can go online at the same scale as Aces High, then you could compare the two. Right now it can't be done. No matter how ya slice it IL-2 is a box game, and no comparison is possible.
Is HTC behind the curve in cockpit models and water reflections? Or is IL-2 behind the curve as a feasible MMOG? Get what I mean?
[ 08-27-2001: Message edited by: Nash ]
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Conventional wisdom for y'all: the IL2 cockpits are in a world of their own. No other sim spends quite as many polygons on the cockpits; and no online sim can afford to. So don't expect to see IL2-quality cockpits in ANY online sim.
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Yes I do. Its nothing but matter of time.
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Il2 and AH are much different games.
Yes they are both flight-sims covering WW2, but in all honesty thats where the similarity ends.
The only time to even begin comparing them would be if Il2 came up with a 24 hour dedicated arena, with historic maps of the east front and with the many options for fighting AH gives.
Until then there is no way to compare the two.
Il2 wins on graphics and cockpit.
AH wins on scale and the dedicated 24 hoyr areana. BTW I find the AH graphics excellent in every way, and this is from a guy who came from Janes WWII Fighters.
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Originally posted by GRUNHERZ:
[QB]Il2 and AH are much different games. QB]
:rolleyes:
You are correct,the better Game is IL-2!
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Possi both games are top in their own area. I like Il-2 but I also find your spamming disturbing.
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IL2 is awsome.
Aces High is awsome.
both in different ways.
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If nothing else, Il-2 really raised the dust ;).
I am beginning to like it more and more.
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Exactly Hristo. In much the same way EAW did a few years ago. It takes time for online games to cath up to box games because it takes time for the average system specs to rise altogether.
The "catch-22" is if we had most of what IL2 does (graphicaly and damage model wise) the min/recommended system specs for AH would sky rocket and so would the host connection requirements.
Westy
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It really is a balancing act. HTC could double the poly count of the planes and make them as realistic as anyone could, but the cost of this would be higher system requirements.
There really is no easy way to just dynamically allocate polys of a 3D model base on the system speed. It could be done, but it might take 10 minutes for a game to initialize, or longer, in order to reconstruct the models, realign textures and so on.
When you throw the network code into the frame loop of a 3D game, you have to give up quite a bit of processing power that could be used in the graphics engine. The more visible players/objects allowed in the game, the more network code has to do.
Balancing all the things a multi-player 3D flight sim has to do is more of an art than a science, if you want the game/sim to run on as many different type of systems as possible.
Comparing AH and IL2 is going to happen. I just thought I would lend a technical voice here :).
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I can honestly say that outside aircraft detail of WB 2.x and ugly but functional cockpits of AH are quite enough for me.
I would rather see any extra performance applied to more planes/vehicles visible, clouds, smoke, condensation trails, and of course more terrain objects and detail (including trees, roads, etc).
As for programmer's time, I would rather have it dedicated to strat then bells and whistles.
Il2 is a brand new game. It would be strange if it was not better looking then the game with 3+ year-old graphics engine.
There was a time when EAW blew everything else off but that did not cause WB players cancel subscribtions.
If Il2 is so good, many of us will buy a box and continue playing AH.
miko
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Skuzzy, Minko... have you guys tried Il2? yet???
It runs extremly smooth using opengl, like in Quake 3.
It also supports T&L so alot of the calculations for all the bells and whistles are done by your graphics card.
(assumine that now a Geforce ddr is a standard)
The Qulaity of net connections that ive seen so far are amazing, and the LOD for everything else is insane without a FPS hit.
For the LOD and/or the way the imagery is displayed, nothing comes close. I have heard rumor of 128 player cability.
Anyways.. all the calculations are done on the players PC then just transmitted like in aces. So should be same connection when larger scale.
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DZ, I was not knocking the game at all and yes, I have played it. It is quite nice. The graphics are superb, and I can see some of the tradeoffs made, but they wre good tradeoffs most people would not notice.
T&L, by the way, can hurt performance or help it. When you use T&L, you make the assumption the GPU can do it faster than the local CPU. In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.
OpenGL vs DX is a no biggie. Just another API. Either can be coded to outperform the other.
Net connects are another story. The more objects you have to deal with the more data must be sent/received to/from the server. For instance, when you damage an object, you must send that information to the server (depending on whether or not the damage modeling is server or client side), then the server must notify all clients in visual range of that damaged object of the damage.
The amount of data to deal with a real time 3D sim/game can get quite high, very quickly.
This directly translates into more CPU overhead.
These are simple unavoidable facts. Note, I am not saying anything about whether it can be done or not. I am just saying there is a lot of data involved with online play.
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I agree with ya Skuzzy for the most part :D
I have heard however that 3-5k is about the max that is going to be needed for massive multiplayer trasmitted data.
3-5k frankly aint nothing in todays world of cable/dsl modems ;)
About the Gpu thing though... The entire purpose of the gpu is to off load the calculations from the processor yes? So with T&L support =Faster High quality imagery (givin good bus speed of the memory and bandwith ) the cpu will have no problem dealing with the other components of the sim,netcode,and others overall
:)
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Do they use icons? :p
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I think HTC is having trouble dealing with Il-2. You see, until now, they were the only flight sim on the market. They didn't have ANY competition. Now they do.
I suspect that they will see the futility of their efforts and in one mad attempt to grab the cash and run, they will bump up the monthly subscription fee to $10,000 and shut down the next day... retiring to the Bahamas in one final attempt to get Pyro laid.
Deez... you'd better cancel your account and run while you still have your cash. HTC's realization of futility will pale in comparison towards the vengance directed to the person that brought it to light.
AKDejaVu
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3-5K of what?
3,000 to 5,000 what?
Or is it 3 to 5KB?
That's per update most likely if it's 3 to 5KB. I download roughly 15MB of information in 3 hours of Aces High.
How much do you download in 3 hours of a constant 32 player game?
That would be interesting. The fact that the host and client must send up to 4x the data rate to communicate the damage decals and damage to apply it might get bogged down very fast with only 60 people online if they ever publish a MMP version.
The world itself doesn't communicate. Only player position updates. But supposedly there are a lot of AI units in the online portion... or you can load a lot. Now, how many AI objects are allowed to spawn and how many player controlled objects are allowed to spawn at the same time?
I know it's limited.. is it still limited to 16 live players and 16 AI controlled objects?
There's a reason for that... therefore I don't see a MMP version of IL-2 comin' 'round the mountain no time soon.
-SW
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What are the min requirements for IL-2 anyways?
I can play AH with my Pentium Pro 200mhz, 16meg Creative Labs Graphics Blaster.
Don't get me wrong, from what I've played so far, the IL-2 demo is pretty good. Until IL-2 can offer what AH can, it's just a boxed game that looks good. My idea of fun is online, and I don't mean 8 or 32 people. 128 is close -- but a bunch of dogfighting with no other real reason to fly except to dogfight is not my idea of fun anymore (had enough of that at FA). Good for a change of pace, yes, but not as my primary source of fun.
The day that IL-2 can run as smooth as AH on my system, with 200 people in the room, and some resemblance of strategy -- then there will be something to talk about. For now, HTC has nothing to worry about with IL-2.
Just my opinion.
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DZ, if the GPU is not able to perform faster than 50% of the CPU's capability, then thier is no gain in anything. The GPU only needs to be about 50% faster at calculations then the CPU as they calculations are done in parallel with the CPU, thus to get more performance, it only needs to be half, or better, as fast than the CPU at the same calculations.
Now, that is just the calculation side. To perform these calculations the video card must have all vertex buffer data stored on the video card for the given object tobe rendered correctly.
If the card runs out of memory for all the vertex data (which can be very significant), then the card can either unload memory to load the new object or operate over the AGP bus to modify the data directly in CPU ram.
Either of the above can be expensive.
This is why most T&L cards come with at least 32MB of ram.
I can tell you, as I have tested it, the GF2 MX 32MB cards in a 900+Mhz CPU will perform much slower with T&L enabled versus no T&L.
And on all GF2 cards (have not yet tested the GF3), if there are more than 8 light sources, the performance goes into the bit-bucket with T&L enabled. This is usually not an issue for a flight sim, but worth noting.
One of the misunderstandings about T&L, is one you brought up. It will not enhance the visual quality of a 3D image. It only serves to move current operations from the CPU into the video card. In fact, it can have a detrimental effect on the quality of the image, depending on what lighting algorythm is used on the card.
I am speaking from an experience point of view as I have written a lot of code to test the various impact hardware T&L can have and not have.
The GF2 cards are more L than T in thier hardware implementation, while the Radeon is pretty balanced between the two. GF2 cards really did not add anything for the T side to enhance anything other than basic texture management, where the Radeon actually added cubic environment bump mapping.
Anyway,.. I guess that is enough for right now.
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Fury I'm glad there's a sim which gives some work to do to my CPU and GPU.
Otherwise I would feel I've wasted money for nothing.
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What Miko said.
Bells and whistles (perdelki i pischalki :)) are good to attract new users, and definetly are nessesary for an offline sim. Many WB pilots that play with us use 2D mode, even having systems that run 3D perfectly smooth in hi res.
As for MMP in IL-2 - at Moscow Air Show, where Russian Warbirders (members of Flying Barans squad) won 4 top places in IL-2 beta tournament, Oleg said there will be only 32 players option. But I am not sure it's true: from some other sources I heard that MMP code is being worked at. Oleg is an interesting person, extremely self-confident and "sebe na ume" - not showing much of his real ideas, as we learned since we first met IL-2 crew in Feb, 1999. So I will not put my bet on any possibility.
If IL-2 will have MMP feature, even with subscribtion fee - it will be the first game that has nice offline gaming to train before entering the cruel online world.
Maddox Games was famous for their previous product, ZAR, a nice offline/online FPS.
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Originally posted by SWulfe:
3-5K of what?
3,000 to 5,000 what?
Or is it 3 to 5KB?
That's per update most likely if it's 3 to 5KB. I download roughly 15MB of information in 3 hours of Aces High.
How much do you download in 3 hours of a constant 32 player game?
I run IL-2 beta servers a lot. We can rarely gather a lot of people, but we fill up the game with AI planes and tons of ground objects.
So, here are the pretty basic and not very accurate benchmarks.
MP game with 14 human and 18 AI opponents (12 Ju-87's, 8 Bf-109's and 12 La-5FN's), plus about 70 tanks engaged in a ground war, about 20-30 pieces of flak and a few artillery batteries. We played for about 1.5 hours, during which I sent 2.7 Mb of data and received 2.3 Mb. I figure the numbers were pretty much the same on the client side.
That's about 4 kb/s downstream and upstream, roughly - but it was spikey as people were entering the ground battle area, and getting down as more and more got shot down and switched to watching the action. I'd say in the are between 3 kb/s to 5-7.