better clouds and trees in next patch ?

[AMVI_Superblu]

i think that the real problem with tree's hit boxes is that we all have different trees setting..
let's make an example..
i am flying in a 1v1 dogfight.. i have trees set to High (lot of trees) and my opponent has them set to low (just some trees here and there).. guess what.. he could collide with trees he can see but not with the ones i see (obviously he doesn't because of lower trees setting).. pretty tricky to explain but if it sees less trees than me, he could collide with less trees than me.. that's the real deal..

[=FI=Scott]

Even the most ardent supporters of the game must concede that this is a valid concern ? For the Devs the longer they stay silent on the issue the bigger an issue this will become. Whatever the underlying problems are they should just have it out so the 'I suspect' brigade can go off and assume about something else.

If you had this in say, Wings of Prey (a game I do not own btw) many would seize on it as 'evidence' that the game was an unrealistic arcade title. CoD sells itself on fidelity. Flying through trees and Radar towers does not stack up with that.

Whats wrong ?, can it be fixed in the CoD engine ?, and if so where on the fix list does it sit ?. Answer those and its done.

[ZaltysZ]

Collision detection and rendering is different matter. You can't say that if they can draw chimney smokes, they can check trees. No. When rendering is done, it cares only about what camera sees, so only data of one sector is loaded at given time, because only one camera is active at given time. This is different with tree collision checks, because there can be lots of planes on map and more than one sector has to be loaded.

Data for camera (rendering) can be loaded with delay (i.e. missing textures, effects for brief periods), but data for collision checks can't, it must be available almost instantly or simulation will lag badly.

Amount of trees is huge in Channel map and this gives 2 problems: memory usage for keeping tree locations and CPU usage for finding nearby trees around some point. Once you can quickly lookup and get nearby trees, then you can give hit boxes to those trees only and do collision checks. Coordinates loaded into quadtree + heigh map could be used for lookup, but that combined with current memory usage of CoD will probably make impossible to play CoD on 32-bit OS due to memory limitation.

[=FI=Scott]

I am inclined to defer to someone who actually knows what they are talking about so far as technical and coding issues are concerned and I am sure you are correct. Surely it is the game makers art in overcomming such issues ?

Part of the challenge of flying has always been avoiding the ground and those objects attached to it but what we have here is Harry Potter and the Magic Spitfire.

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by =FI=Scott

I am inclined to defer to someone who actually knows what they are talking about so far as technical and coding issues are concerned and I am sure you are correct. Surely it is the game makers art in overcomming such issues ?

Part of the challenge of flying has always been avoiding the ground and those objects attached to it but what we have here is Harry Potter and the Magic Spitfire.

Ok, as a younger poster you probably dont know my older posts, but I have a good track record of predicting the problems and solutions. If I dont know I dont post (in general), but like said since I am not active much anymore (sadly because of the game/forums state) I wont spaz out and jump on you for that comment (some here will know what I am talking about).

It is safe to say that the devs took the wrong "path" while coding the game. It may be that they know a way to solve it, but they simply cannot because the code or engine is written in a way, or written poorly so that these changes cannot be easily implemented, or implemented at all without major re-writes. It could very likely be that the person who wrote the code for a "section" or the engine has left the team as we saw bickering between x-employes a few months back. In any case in this paragraph I am guessing, and I know very little about the coding process compared to graphics design and system hardware. The above seem likely possibilities, but for me they are just guesses; however my comments on how tree collisions should be/are normally implemented are not guesses. But like said it may no longer be an option without engine rewrites.

So when will dx11 be coming?

[Walshy]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

So when will dx11 be coming?

God knows if it ever will, when you you have the dinosaur that is DX9 still being utilised by the majority of game developers I can't see much of an uptake for it. It may be used by this game some time in the misty future but as a time frame for when ........ the man in the moon may have a better idea. It is quite likely that DX11 will die a quiet death the same way DX10 has/did. Personally I blame the consoles for the non-uptake of new technology and in my opinion the Xbox scenario was a huge mistake for Microsoft, I do hope that pc gaming will come back with a huge resurgence and flight siming as well on the back that said resurgence but I doubt it will. The consoles are effectively strangling the gaming industry in terms of technology in hardware and software.

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by Walshy

God knows if it ever will, when you you have the dinosaur that is DX9 still being utilised by the majority of game developers I can't see much of an uptake for it. It may be used by this game some time in the misty future but as a time frame for when ........ the man in the moon may have a better idea. It is quite likely that DX11 will die a quiet death the same way DX10 has/did. Personally I blame the consoles for the non-uptake of new technology and in my opinion the Xbox scenario was a huge mistake for Microsoft, I do hope that pc gaming will come back with a huge resurgence and flight siming as well on the back that said resurgence but I doubt it will. The consoles are effectively strangling the gaming industry in terms of technology in hardware and software.

No, go look back at my mid 2010 posting history and you will understand the joke

Also DX11 offers tangible visual benefits to the gamer where DX10 did not, DX11 wont die out because in a years time new games wont support dx9 (it is too expensive to do DX9+dx10/11 or DX10+DX11, only thing that is holding dx9 around is consoles but now I believe we are moving away from the current paradigm of lowest common denominator in dx9.)

Edit- today BF3 specs just came out: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/08/ba...ents-revealed/
Edit/Add 2 - Crysis dx11 patch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSGYb...layer_embedded

[furbs]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

So when will dx11 be coming?

The same time as 64bit

[SQB]

Originally Posted by AMVI_Superblu

i think that the real problem with tree's hit boxes is that we all have different trees setting..
let's make an example..
i am flying in a 1v1 dogfight.. i have trees set to High (lot of trees) and my opponent has them set to low (just some trees here and there).. guess what.. he could collide with trees he can see but not with the ones i see (obviously he doesn't because of lower trees setting).. pretty tricky to explain but if it sees less trees than me, he could collide with less trees than me.. that's the real deal..

I understand completely, but there is a very simple solution to this if you think about it.

What if the high and low options for trees made the render DISTANCE of the trees change, this way while one with a very high tree option enabled can see more trees than one with very low enabled, they both see the same trees around them (you can only hit a tree if you are near it anyway)

[Madfish]

Ok, a page ago someone wrote a good post about the general community approach and I agree.

However - I believe trees should be collision objects in the same way bridges our houses should. They can be, even if only rarely, used strategically.

I also believe that lower settings should result in a disadvantage for the player, not higher settings. This is because there is a state that the game is meant to be seen and played in. Usually it's the complete state. In other words: higher settings don't add unecessary trees - lower settings just cut them out.


Generally I must say that I am very, very sad about how graphically lacking the game really is. I believe there simply isn't any excuse for this. It should be self explanatory that a game which doesn't even rival an old arcade shooter like Wings of Prey (that ironically runs on it's predecessors engine as far as I know) looks better than Cliffs of Dover. That is unacceptable and until fixed I won't be able to enjoy Cliffs of Dover at all.

And here is why: yes, WW2 simming is about fighting - but 99% of the time you simply DO NOT fight but just fly. And that is where all these "simple" matters become game breaking bugs to me.
Especially when flying with full realism you end up with limited ammo - yes you can shoot for a few seconds but then ammo is OUT.
So is it that important to only focus on fighting mechanisms? Most of the time we fly, we look at the landscape, scout for enemy planes or just watch and enjoy the sounds of the engines, the feeling of being in the sky or speeding close to the ground.



In the end I must say (my opinion):
Yes, trees need to be collision objects
Yes, the ground textures need to be much better
Yes the shore needs to look like a shore and not like laser cut border between mushy textures and half assed waves (that do not build up close to shore, heck, not even go into the right direction)
Yes, the sounds are important to me - in a real vehicle I don't look for instruments, I trust my senses of hearing and feeling in most cases


Thus, it just makes me sad to see that CoD is like IL-2 with an improved FM and better (but fewer) planes.


I also miss out of the box thinking. I miss game modes like air race and other creative multiplayer gameplay. I suggested a few but I guess the community is problematic and thus I see the risk of a great genre dying just because gaming companies lost the vision of making quality products and because the community is old, ignorant and always expecting the same, thus obviously shrinking which in turn makes it less feasible to create a product that's satisfactory.



But yes, make the damn trees collision objects! We're in the year 2011, not 1940, after all.