Al Basrah - 5000m View distance!

Surround · Post by **Surround** » 2007-03-29 09:27

I just want the game look better. I dont really dont mind if i have to lower my setting for longer view distance, because thats the biggest thing what disturbes me in pr/bf2.

Maybe they would increase the view distance unless wouldnt have this minority who doesnt want it to be increased.

Top_Cat_AxJnAt · Post by **Top_Cat_AxJnAt** » 2007-03-29 15:00

Well on maps like Operation Greasy Mullet, even with a draw distance of around 300m, i struggle massively to:

- identifiy moving infantry at distances past 150m
- hit units past 100m

This partly due to the extremely grey terrain, combined with the semi camoflage uniform of troops and finaly the BF2 engines inability to draw any decent level of detail at distances.

This means, even though the map is massive, engagements almost entierley take place at 100m or less. If this is not a waste of a decent map in terms of size, what the hell is???????

So inconclusion, i put it to you that, it is not draw distance totaly that increases the lengths at which engagements take place, but a combination of various factors, including terrain design, so it would be asburd to become totaly fixated draw distance and draw distance only.

El_Vikingo · Post by **El_Vikingo** » 2007-03-29 15:23

It's not only about engagement, it's also about observing movement.

I now understand why BF2 is such a fast paced action bunny hoppng instant prone shoot'em up!

The View Distance. With 150 mtrs of visibility, you don't have time to use proper tactics. (e.g. Helicopter flying at 5 mtrs)

Top_Cat_AxJnAt · Post by **Top_Cat_AxJnAt** » 2007-03-29 15:29

El_Vikingo wrote:It's not only about engagement, it's also about observing movement.

I now understand why BF2 is such a fast paced action bunny hoppng instant prone shoot'em up!

The View Distance. With 150 mtrs of visibility, you don't have time to use proper tactics. (e.g. Helicopter flying at 5 mtrs)

I have too totaly agree.

Questions to DEVs: can the level of detail drawn on objects at distance be increased and decreased???

Becuase, it is often this detail that means objects, espcialy infantry stand out at long distances (100m - 300m), whether moving or standing still and presently i think it is too little. Unless an increase in detail can be implamented, only tanks and aircraft will feel any great benifit of a draw distance increase, even when on armour levels, 60% + of players are infantry.

El_Vikingo · Post by **El_Vikingo** » 2007-03-29 15:35

Plus, we can put a use to binocs!

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » 2007-03-30 00:40

'atps[swe wrote:']How would the bullet act if you fired on that distance? If PR is said to bring the realsim to the game the bullet shuold drop several feet (depending on the rifle/ammo). A 7.62 or 5.56 would never be able to reach the target, a .50 cal perhaps (In the swedish army they use the .50 up to 1300m)

Is there a winddrift factor i PR? I mean that´s the beauty of snipers; their ability to calculate winddrift, distance and so on..

All of the weapon scopes would need to be redone and bullet drop would need to be reworked. The proper formula as a function of time is 1/2 * t^2 * 9.81 meters per second, and although the gravitation constant does vary, it only varies slightly at the altitudes (with sea level being 0) that people experience on earth. Hopefully that will help the developers.

Top _Cat the great wrote:the BF2 engines inability to draw any decent level of detail at distances.

The Battlefield 2's engine is able to draw anything at any given distance. It is only that you have not seen it do that yet. There is a video on YouTube of a person being a sniper in vanilla Battlefield 2 with the viewing distance increased by what appears to be orders of magnitude and it is both beautiful and extremely detailed.

Post by **eggman** » 2007-03-30 01:33

Actually ..beyond 500m you start to run into some problems with view distances. Some objects draw sooner than others .. so you might park your vehicle behind a building and one or the other is not being drawn. We're doing some work on that to see if we can get it right.

I can guarantee you that frame rates will suffer. I have 2gb of RAM and a 7950 GX2 and I can dip into the 40s on Basrah *when running around alone*. Add in players and vehicles and .. well..... we're gonna have to do some testing.

We may very well land in a place where we'll have some large maps that are system intensive and some folks simply wont be able to play them (without an upgrade). But we'll also have smaller maps that should work well on just about any system.

But we do want to stretch the capabilities here to try and get the realism factor boosted a notch. And if your PC played BF2 decently when it came out 2 years ago .. well... it's prolly time to upgrade (if you want to play on the larger more system intensive maps).

Right now we are testing out stuff on a map with ~17sq km of terrain and nearly 1km of view range. Compare that to Basrah which is ~4.5sq km of terrain and 350m view distance. Yer into a whole new realm of combined arms capabilities with that size of terrain and engagement ranges .. and that's where we want to go.

Bullet drop is hopefully not too difficult to tweak, just need to do some testing to get it right.

trogdor1289 · Post by **trogdor1289** » 2007-03-30 01:51

In other words upgrade yea mortals or face the immortal wrath of the developers quest for realism justice.

Post by **fuzzhead** » 2007-03-30 01:57

Weve made some recent discoveries in terms of view distance / object view distance and will be testing this in the next test builds.

acadiancrusader · Post by **acadiancrusader** » 2007-03-30 15:02

great news fuzzhead!

El_Vikingo · Post by **El_Vikingo** » 2007-03-30 15:10

Eggman wrote:Right now we are testing out stuff on a map with ~17sq km of terrain and nearly 1km of view range.

Are you shiting me!?!?!?

I thought the maximum was 4sq km!

Do you have any screenshots (even if it's Bf2Editor)?

Guerra norte · Post by **Guerra norte** » 2007-03-30 15:51

El_Vikingo wrote:Are you shiting me!?!?!?

I thought the maximum was 4sq km!

Do you have any screenshots (even if it's Bf2Editor)?

17sq km = ca. 4 km^2 no?

Maistros · Post by **Maistros** » 2007-03-30 16:08

Lets put it this way. Each grid square (A1, B2, etc) of the map is the size of Helmand Province.

SethLive! · Post by **SethLive!** » 2007-03-30 16:16

'[R-PUB wrote:Maistros']Lets put it this way. Each grid square (A1, B2, etc) of the map is the size of Helmand Province.

oh, man, thats huge.

Desertfox · Post by **Desertfox** » 2007-03-30 18:51

'[R-PUB wrote:Maistros']Lets put it this way. Each grid square (A1, B2, etc) of the map is the size of Helmand Province.

Or, 2 Al Basrah's.

Superior Mind · Post by **Superior Mind** » 2007-03-30 19:23

Oh man, I need to buy a new graphics card. I have a 5600 right now lol. I run on low, with some things medium. I am gonna get a 7800AGP though. A 17sq KM would be so much fun. Though I assume it will be like an open desert map, right?

Maistros · Post by **Maistros** » 2007-03-30 19:42

Nope

DirtyHarry88 · Post by **DirtyHarry88** » 2007-03-30 20:37

HA!

Banter

vanity · Post by **vanity** » 2007-03-30 21:07

I'm glad this dialog is still open and developers are at least testing things out. If it doesn't work and frame rates drop too much, that's fine. At least we took a look.

But I have a feeling that if it does work out and people see screenshots of these new massive maps, and they're excited and engaged, they'll miraculously find money to upgrade. If you give them a taste of something they really like, they'll find a way to pay for it.

Quake series, Doom series, HL series, Crysis....all have proven that people will find the cash to run the games they want.

Post by **eggman** » 2007-03-30 21:39

I am not at all opposed to having maps that as much 50% of the player population can't enjoy (without an upgrade). Hate to say that .. but to restrict what we can do on a 2 year old engine because 30 to 50% of the player base won't be able to appreciate *SOME* of the maps in the mod is really restrictive to what we can do.

Playing PR on 17 sq km of terrain with 800m view distance and 1km travel distance between CPs is like a completely different game. And that is a lot more like the game we want than insta-fragging on Karkand sized maps.

And btw it is NOT 2x Al Basrah.. these maps have 4x the square area as Basrah.

Some people will want a more instant action style of play... that's not really PR's forte .. and the larger maps will have heavier system requirements. But for combined arms maps .. I strongly believe that these maps need to be as large as possible. For infantry actions we can keep some smaller maps and folks will be able to play those.

But 2 years ago 1gb ram was a gaming rig standard an today 2gb of ram is pretty much the norm for a "current" gaming rig. btw I think RAM appears to be the most imporant factor in frame rates (both dram and vram) because you have so monay more objects (and textures) loaded with longer view distances that you start to get HDD activity with <2gb of RAM and very long view ranges.

Anyways .. testing will bear it out, but yeah we DEFINITELY want longer engagement ranges. And where there are assets heavier than jeeps we'd like to see that into the 600 to 800m range. Flying a helicopter with 400m view range just feels completely wrong.