Friday 2010-08-20 Dev. update and Discussions

[airmalik]

Originally Posted by BadAim

I love the cloud video! "Coming in 2007", and people are complaining about SOW being late! All of the dumb ass crap you guys can come up with will be blown away by Oleg. I have faith backed up by evidence. Flame away.

I was quite impressed by that video as well so I did some research. Turns out the company that made this product got bought out by the makers of Second Life back in 2007.

The real-time volumetric clouds took only a month to create according to the developer:

I have to say that I’m really pleased with how this turned out. Given the task of finding a way to grow and render fully volumetric, full-sky clouds on regular hardware in real time, with the target ‘look’ being the clouds in these TG2 screenshots (which are rendered offline), all within one month, it was a pretty tall order.

The volume itself is based on a simulation – so you can ’seed’ the atmosphere with humidity and other parameters, and clouds will naturally ‘grow’ into the kinds of interesting shapes you see there – no artists required, yet you still get the ability to dictate the placement and shapes of clouds, rather than placement being random like noise-based methods.

http://www.stevestreeting.com/2006/1...-cloud-system/

The atmospheric lighting (WindLight) is equally awesome:





Pre:


Post:

[Dano]

It's probably fairly easy (in relative terms of course) to make a cloud simulator that looks accurate, it'll be making it use a limited amount of resources and run acceptably while the computer is simulating everything else needed that becomes an issue I'd imagine.

I'm sure Oleg could give us an almost completely authentic sim with absolutely everything modelled to within a few % of reality if he wanted, but he'd need either a massive team of staff or many many more years to do it, concessions have to be made at some point.

[ChrisDNT]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

Regarding clouds...this'd be awesome:

I would gladly pay BoB 10-15 Euros more, for this technology implemented in the game.

[airmalik]

Originally Posted by Dano

..I'm sure Oleg could give us an almost completely authentic sim with absolutely everything modelled to within a few % of reality if he wanted, but he'd need either a massive team of staff or many many more years to do it, concessions have to be made at some point.

To get the high fidelity games we expect in 2010 and beyond, without unlimited money, time, resources, I think it'll be increasingly necessary to license such technologies from specialists. As good as Oleg's team is, I doubt they can do better than specialists focusing on specific areas of the sim. I'm encouraged by Oleg's use of Speedtree which indicates that he's open to this strategy.

As for the rendering speed of the clouds/atmospheric lighting shown in the posted video, they were optimised from the beginning to be used in real time games. Some screenshots on the http://windwardmark.net/ show frame rates between 100 and 170fps on 2006 hardware. I don't know how that compares to the rendering cost of Oleg's landscape/cloud rendering.

[Igo kyu]

Originally Posted by airmalik

Some screenshots on the http://windwardmark.net/ show frame rates between 100 and 170fps on 2006 hardware. I don't know how that compares to the rendering cost of Oleg's landscape/cloud rendering.

Yeah, but do you crash if you hit them? Solid clouds would be useless.

<edit>

Also, if they weren't generated by Oleg's code, how would the AI know they couldn't see you through them? In IL*2 I turn clouds off because in single player I'm not prepared to be shot through clouds by AI I can't see. That is supposed to be fixed in SoW.

[nearmiss]

It never bothered me to have non-moving clouds. WHen I was moving it wasn't even noticeable.

WHen I was getting ready for take off it wasn't a biggy either.

So, moving clouds vs better FPS with non moving clouds, I'll take the latter.

Just like the leaves rustling on the trees. WHo gives a flip. I recall running the various graphic benchmarks over the years and how rustling leaves killed any high FPS rates.

I'm definitely for clouds, but however Oleg wants to handle clouds I'm OK with it.

[philip.ed]

Originally Posted by nearmiss

It never bothered me to have non-moving clouds. WHen I was moving it wasn't even noticeable.

WHen I was getting ready for take off it wasn't a biggy either.

So, moving clouds vs better FPS with non moving clouds, I'll take the latter.

Just like the leaves rustling on the trees. WHo gives a flip. I recall running the various graphic benchmarks over the years and how rustling leaves killed any high FPS rates.

I'm definitely for clouds, but however Oleg wants to handle clouds I'm OK with it.

I agree; for me, as long as the clouds look right I'm happy. No offence to the team, but at the moment they don't....

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

I agree; for me, as long as the clouds look right I'm happy. No offence to the team, but at the moment they don't....

We know. You mention it almost every week.

[kedrednael]

Originally Posted by nearmiss

It never bothered me to have non-moving clouds. WHen I was moving it wasn't even noticeable.

WHen I was getting ready for take off it wasn't a biggy either.

So, moving clouds vs better FPS with non moving clouds, I'll take the latter.

Just like the leaves rustling on the trees. WHo gives a flip. I recall running the various graphic benchmarks over the years and how rustling leaves killed any high FPS rates.

I'm definitely for clouds, but however Oleg wants to handle clouds I'm OK with it.

When I look at clouds in real life I always see them move, and beneath SOW's clouds I saw nice shadows on the land, in real life you can see the shadows move over the land really good it would be nice to have moving clouds with good shadows if you are going to land in a field, than you can see where the wind is comming from. in il2 it bothers me a bit that clouds are still on the excact place above the ground when you land as when you began the mission (40 minutes earlier)
(sorry for the really bad English )

[nearmiss]

If you have to take an FPS hit, because of moving clouds... no thanks to moving clouds