Terrain engine update fantasy list

[SirNuke]

and if the tree has more than 1hp you will need to be able to transmit the damage value

[Wiley]

and if the tree has more than 1hp you will need to be able to transmit the damage value

If it were me I might be inclined to make it so if it's in the bomb/rocket/cannon/HE round blast or hit directly by any cannon shell it's down, otherwise it's up, rather than have an HP system for them.  Gives you the efficiency without having guys in Hurri 1's buzzing down foliage.

Wiley.

[Easyscor]

Yes, all that works great in a Battlefield 3 environment, but seriously, you can't tell the difference?

 

[Tinkles]

Skuzzy has got to be wishing he'd used the company line on this one.

427* destroyable trees and man made objects per square mile x 512 x 512 miles equals 111,935,488 destroyable objects. That's almost 112 MILLION objects to track on your FE in real time. I can imagine what would happen if everyone in the arena decided to simultaneously start killing trees and buildings. Oh, the humanity!

*The count is take from ntt0005.til

Tinkles, imho this would need to be all or nothing because the terrain builders would need to manually do what you're asking, and you don't even have Detailed Terrain active now! At least, that's how that jpg looks to me.

That's why I said if possible 

Also, it provoked information that skuzzy hadn't given yet. Further enlightening the overall situation.  I knew it would be a task either way. Just giving benefit of the doubt to the possibility of destructible trees. But I understand that it would be literally too much information going about for many computers to handle, let alone play in.

[Plazus]

My request for terrain engine would probably go hand-in-hand with the graphics engine. I would like to see an improved rendering of objects on the ground (in the air as well) at long distances. For example in War Thunder, you can see roads and trees for many miles away but in Aces High, you have to keep your detail range turned down; else the game consumes massive amounts of resources and overall performance decreases.

Other thoughts on destructible objects in terrains:

1. When a client is connecting to one of the arenas, during the loading screen, include a fast-check of destroyed objects reported by the server. When the client is finally connected and in the arena, all of the data has been loaded and only needs to be rendered when the client is within visual range of the object.
AND/OR
2. Each client will only request updates from the server of destroyed objects that are within 4K range (or at any given range) of the location that the client is on the map.

Also another beef I have is that the sun sometimes shine through mountains. Also if you are flying behind a mountain with the sun on the other side, your plane/cockpit should be darker as there is less light.

[Lone82]

How about just scraping the whole idea of blowing up the trees and make tanks able to knock them down..... run them over..... you see & hear a tree crashing to the ground... ya might wanna check for a tank.

[Tilt]

I am reminded that long ago in a galaxy not so far away we had tree clutter as "could be destroyed" on a scenario terrain.   AH1 Okinawa IIRC.

It worked.....  But then there were no forests of dense canopy.

I would like terrain tiles to be capable of rendering wet, dry, hard, soft, or more accurately
 
Does/ does not leave vehicle tracks
Does/ does not make dust clouds with vehicle passage

On the subject of destroying trees I wonder if a simple approach may be a compromise.

3 standards of tree hardness

1. Small bushes have very low hardness. Impart little if any damage on vehicles crashing into them and offer no impediment.
2. Small trees have medium hardness. Impart some damage component on to the vehicle  (factored from speed  and weight of vehicle  ( speed x k factor to give energy) and the  effect of any damage derived from the existing damage model of the part of the vehicle under impact). The same damage is imparted to the tree but this only destroys the tree if it's hardness is exceeded.   Hitting a tree twice has no cumulative effect. Impediment to vehicle speed would be also influenced by the ratio of energy imparted to energy used to destroy the tree.... Slowing the vehicle whilst passing over the tree.
3. Big trees would have high hardness. Rinse and repeat above...... Hitting a big tree with a jeep  at speed would now impart damage on the jeep ( no more bumper cars!) it may even be fatal damage. Hitting a big tree with alight tank may also impart the sort of damage best avoided. Hitting a big tree with a medium tank may cause the tree 's demise but also impart damage that makes it slightly more vulnerable to the enemy. Hitting a big tree with a heavy tank just leaves tank tracks where the tree used to be.

That's fine for the FE but how would the server handle and record all these trees? I would suggest its uses the tank tracks to model a path behind the vehicle such that the data sent is the track record not the tree status. Then the FE renders the track path and destroys the trees appropriately. If a jeep has not destroyed a tree then it's path has not passed over it.

[Wiley]

Yes, all that works great in a Battlefield 3 environment, but seriously, you can't tell the difference?

 

Not trying to be obtuse, but what is the difference?  The system only needs to worry about what you can see, not the entire map at once.

Wiley.

[Easyscor]

BF3 and it's ilk: Small temporary environment that resets to pristine condition every half hour or so. When you enter, everything looks new and shiny.

AH: Large environment lasting from ~24 hours to a week.

Do you really want to play in a wasteland after all the effort to make it beautiful by adding trees and buildings and other ground clutter to the environment! Are tank battles going to be fun when all the cover is blown out of the battlefield! That makes no sense to me so again...

 

[Wiley]

BF3 and it's ilk: Small temporary environment that resets to pristine condition every half hour or so. When you enter, everything looks new and shiny.

AH: Large environment lasting from ~24 hours to a week.

Do you really want to play in a wasteland after all the effort to make it beautiful by adding trees and buildings and other ground clutter to the environment! Are tank battles going to be fun when all the cover is blown out of the battlefield! That makes no sense to me so again...

 

Why wouldn't they set it up so they respawn like buildings on a timer?

Wiley.

[gyrene81]

Do you really want to play in a wasteland after all the effort to make it beautiful by adding trees and buildings and other ground clutter to the environment! Are tank battles going to be fun when all the cover is blown out of the battlefield! That makes no sense to me so again...

 

that would be a hell of a lot better than the iron trees. it would force people to change tactics and make the ground battle a lot more dynamic.

[SirNuke]

that would be a hell of a lot better than the iron trees. it would force people to change tactics and make the ground battle a lot more dynamic.

seriously I don't see the point of redoing the train just to have indestructible trees again.

[gyrene81]

seriously I don't see the point of redoing the train just to have indestructible trees again.

what does the train have to to with the trees?   





 

[SirNuke]

ok the terrain I meant.

[Karnak]

HiTech was nice enough to clarify some things for us:

The current stuff I am working on has a 660 Foot vertex res, AH currently has 2480 res. I doubt will will go denser then this.

The new system has 16 + 4 base texture types the 16 are base types like rock grass snow ext.... the 4 types are higher res and are things like fields small towns excreta.

There is also a color per vertex that is blended with the terrain textures, along with a detail mask type like rows, rock excreta that is blended in as you get closer to the terrain.

The terrain does cast shadows. I devolved a new system for doing this that is extremely fast. Ill try post a screen or film later today.

There will be a converter for existing terrains , but some clean up would add a lot to the terrains.

Water will be change to have full 3d wave effects.

We are dropping support for fixed pipeline, and will require shader version 3.0 minimum. On last count before we started this, I saw less the 20 accounts that have played in the last year that did not support 3.0 shaders.

Clouds will have a small rework that will improve frame rate because we can depend on shader style implementation.

The terrain editor will remain basically the same for implanting objects. But for the look of the terrain features,textures and tree type features,  it will make much more use of image editing tools.

I very much doubt trees will be destructible. Simple math of approximate 3000 objects per square mile and 512 x 512 miles creates over 1 gig of objects.  This creates many issues with both memory and speed on displaying the status on all front ends.

HiTech