How Come (View Distance)

[Bluedrake42]

In Lock on/DCS A-10/Whatever there's a nearly infinite view distance, but with BF2 there's like... nothing. Does this purely have to do with having optimized LOD's? And if so... why in BF2 do they not have optimized LOD's 0.o

Thanks in advance for telling me =P

[Spec]

Eh, flight simulators normally don't render the interior of buildings etc. In PR, if there's a guy hiding in a window 700 meters away, you still need to be able to see him. You can't have the building turn into a simple block, like you can in a flight simulator, or that guy would be invisible and still able to shoot you. Same with plants and such - you can't have trees look very different on a long distance, you can't have smaller bushes disappear, even grass disappearing already is a problem which is why we have these fancy static fields.

[Bluedrake42]

Eh, flight simulators normally don't render the interior of buildings etc. In PR, if there's a guy hiding in a window 700 meters away, you still need to be able to see him. You can't have the building turn into a simple block, like you can in a flight simulator, or that guy would be invisible and still able to shoot you. Same with plants and such - you can't have trees look very different on a long distance, you can't have smaller bushes disappear, even grass disappearing already is a problem which is why we have these fancy static fields.

But there are probably clever ways to sidestep these issues? For instance I noticed that ArmA 2 if there are players in "Grass" then they actually merge into the terrain, instead of just sitting on top of it uncovered.

Not that I'm arguing with you =P I think I totally understand

[Rhino]

A Flight Simulator are very, very different from First Person Shooters...

There are many reasons why a flight sim can get away with very large view distances which is mainly down to the ways its been made.

Since your flying most of the time very high above the surface, the surface dose not have to be very detailed, in fact, all the terrain is a low rez heightmap and a colour texture on most of them, very few flight sims bother with detail textures and ones that do have one basic detail texture for the entire map. With a FPS you need very high detailed terrain, so troops can hide in small ditches etc which you will not find on a flight sims terrain. This difference in terrain detail is the first huge difference which means that as such, a flight sim can have the same number of polys in its terrain over 10kms that a normal FPS can have in say under 1km.

The next is objects, buildings can be very, very low detail, basically most of them are simple boxes on a flight sim as your not going to be walking upto the building and knocking on its front door like you do in a FPS. As such you only need the very basic shape of the building, no interior and no small details such as door handles, lights, door steps etc etc. Loading all these high detail meshes and textures into the memory for a FPS also takes up a huge amount of memory and the more things your loading due to a larger VD, the slower the game gets and the more chance the user will run out of memory and CTD.

The next being that because your flying so high up in the sky these buildings most of the time are not even drawing until your right up close to them which is fine as when your that high up the terrain's colour texture is that of a city with lots of buildings so it looks like nothing is missing as your looking strait down on the city. If we where to do the same in a FPS, where your standing on the ground, with no horizon of a city which would significantly impact on the gameplay if you couldn't see a city 2kms away from you and you can't fall back on the terrain's colour texture as your looking perpendicular to it and as such, you can't see the terrains colour at that distance unless its a hill going up but even so, it still wouldn't be enough.

We do have LODs (Levels of Detail) on our models but many of the vBF2 models where never designed to go up to 1km view distances which we have in PR and it isn't really feasible to crate new LODs for these objects without remaking them fully from scratch ourselves. All our stuff we make thou we do try and make as optimized as possible for our view distances but the vBF2 stuff really dose hold us back quite a bit but even with super good LODs, there is still only so much you can pull out of this type of engine.

There are lots of other reasons but thous are the main reasons why a Flight Sim can get away with such high VDs and a FPS can not, other than ARMA2 which its engine uses a different system from most games where it loads everything out of the hard drive rather than the RAM, which means things like building LODs don't switch very quickly when you have a slow HDD but dose mean it can have longer VDs. We with PR:BF2 are working with a 6 year old engine here, the more engines and hardware become more advanced, the more you can do with detail and view distance.

But there are probably clever ways to sidestep these issues? For instance I noticed that ArmA 2 if there are players in "Grass" then they actually merge into the terrain, instead of just sitting on top of it uncovered.

Yes, one clever bit of the ARMA2 engine but something that isn't possible with the BF2 engine.

[PoisonBill]

Rhino, I hope you didn't type that entire wall of text yourself, imao. The reason seems pretty straightforward, lol....

no offence questioner.

[Rhino]

Took me about 10mins top, I'm a pretty fast typer

[Psyrus]

Hey Rhino, a quick question in the same vein.

As per this thread:
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f388-p ... ances.html
Are lod 0-3 the only options or are more possible? Reading about your flight sim description it got me thinking that with the vd being potentially pushed out in pr (with the cull distances going to 1000+) having the final lod at like 20-50 polygons (switched at like 300m+) may be of use, especially buildings and such. That being said it would entail a fair amount of work and probably isn't viable, but I am bored here at 1.30 so I thought I'd throw my 2c in.

Further question when I get my laptop in a week or so, should I bother continuing with that lod stuff or have priorities shifted such that it would be meaningless to bother?

[Rhino]

Hey Rhino, a quick question in the same vein.

As per this thread:
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f388-p ... ances.html
Are lod 0-3 the only options or are more possible? Reading about your flight sim description it got me thinking that with the vd being potentially pushed out in pr (with the cull distances going to 1000+) having the final lod at like 20-50 polygons (switched at like 300m+) may be of use, especially buildings and such. That being said it would entail a fair amount of work and probably isn't viable, but I am bored here at 1.30 so I thought I'd throw my 2c in.

Yes, which is what we try and do for all our new models and when we come to fixing up our old ones, as per this topic here you can see my final lod for this hesco sanger is only 42 tris: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f388-p ... rtant.html

IIRC there is a maximum of 10 LODs including lod0 for BF2, but you want to have as few lods as possible as each LOD step you add increases the meshe's memory and adds another lightmap you need to pack into the map's lightmap atlas. What you need is a good set of steps down so you can gradually lower the objects detail but you shouldn't need that many lods to do that in many cases, unless its a super large sky scraper with huge amounts of detail or something but even that you don't necessary need that many LODs for.

Further question when I get my laptop in a week or so, should I bother continuing with that lod stuff or have priorities shifted such that it would be meaningless to bother?

At the moment that is on hold as I had a shit load of work come up which I'm working on at the moment and I have some more work coming up in a few weeks too and its unlikely one of the other devs will take over any time soon but hopefully at some point in the future we will be able to check and implement that work so if your up for it still it would be good

[DankE_SPB]

More lods is possible, but 4(0-3) is enough for 99% of objects, just the last one should be more aggressive and lod switch/cull distance tweaked.

We're working on things like this, there are things totally fubar in that area, but there is another problem - textures and drawcalls - these are more likely to be our bottlenecks, but are worked on too.

[Psyrus]

More lods is possible, but 4(0-3) is enough for 99% of objects, just the last one should be more aggressive and lod switch/cull distance tweaked.

We're working on things like this, there are things totally fubar in that area, but there is another problem - textures and drawcalls - these are more likely to be our bottlenecks, but are worked on too.

If there's any way for someone like me to help like with the lod stuff for these other areas I'm always game, especially since I wish I was more talented such that I could actually contribute in more meaningful ways.

Oh and thanks for the lod explanations rhino and danke

[Rhino]

Making lods is quite an advanced skill, epically when it comes to fixing up lods of existing objects.

You would be better off learning how to make a new model from scratch first

[Acecombatzer0]

Man, I wonder how many years until a Flight Sim and an FPS is in the same game.
The ultimate modern warfare MMORPG.

[goguapsy]

Man, I wonder how many years until a Flight Sim and an FPS is in the same game.
The ultimate modern warfare MMORPG.

Some people were suggesting HAWX + GHOST.

[SnipeHunt]

If there's any way for someone like me to help like with the lod stuff for these other areas I'm always game, especially since I wish I was more talented such that I could actually contribute in more meaningful ways.

I was enjoying helping with this project, but the thread it was tied to was not updated and seemed to have gotten lost in importance, so I stopped working on it.

Is it still needed?

[Rhino]

At the moment that is on hold as I had a shit load of work come up which I'm working on at the moment and I have some more work coming up in a few weeks too and its unlikely one of the other devs will take over any time soon but hopefully at some point in the future we will be able to check and implement that work so if your up for it still it would be good

^^



.

[SnipeHunt]

gotcha.

I've got a 1 month old baby at home, so my time is spread thin, but I'll pick up on them when I find time.

[Psyrus]

gotcha.

I've got a 1 month old baby at home, so my time is spread thin, but I'll pick up on them when I find time.

When my laptop comes I'm gonna make a google docs spreadsheet so I or we can track what is done and checked and committed so far, much easier than searching through the posts each time.

Expect that in about 2 weeks, hopefully my laptop is already en route.

Making lods is quite an advanced skill, epically when it comes to fixing up lods of existing objects.

You would be better off learning how to make a new model from scratch first

Sorry I should have been more clear, after my last two tries with max, modeling anything more complicated than a cube is off the table for me. I was referring to menial work like that other thread that numbskulls like me can actually do because they require few skills other than an excess of time.

[Rhino]

When my laptop comes I'm gonna make a google docs spreadsheet so I or we can track what is done and checked and committed so far, much easier than searching through the posts each time.

Expect that in about 2 weeks, hopefully my laptop is already en route.

That sounds like a good idea

Sorry I should have been more clear, after my last two tries with max, modeling anything more complicated than a cube is off the table for me. I was referring to menial work like that other thread that numbskulls like me can actually do because they require few skills other than an excess of time.

Ye I understood you but making LODs is actually quite skilful work which dose take quite a bit of modelling knowledge to know how to get something down to its lowest possible poly count while still looking the same. Its not something you can do with basic modelling skills very well.

[Psyrus]

That sounds like a good idea

Ye I understood you but making LODs is actually quite skilful work which dose take quite a bit of modelling knowledge to know how to get something down to its lowest possible poly count while still looking the same. Its not something you can do with basic modelling skills very well.

Oh ok, well as long as we're clear that I don't want to make lods, I'm happy .

totally hijacked this thread though, oops

[sweedensniiperr]

Man, I wonder how many years until a Flight Sim and an FPS is in the same game.
The ultimate modern warfare MMORPG.

Don't you think ARMAII is as close as you can get?