Oleg Maddox's Room #1

[Jamake]

Hello Oleg, I would have a few interesting questions, hopefully they haven't been answered but I've read the thread from 100th page and it wasn't there so..

Will SoW support OpenCL (ATI GPGPU) and/or Nvidia PhysX for physics acceleration?

And if it does, I had a brilliant idea which would truly be a revolutionary thing, just what you are looking for!

Being a huge damage model fanatic, my favourite past-time is wrecking things in games that have very good damage model.

So I though that what if you take those soft materials seen in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxOBhnF4aRc

Mirror's Edge with PhysX enabled and harness it to enhance damage model. What I had in mind was to make it completely dynamic using the principle seen in that clip.

In other words, there would be materials that have the same properties as in real life. And from those materials you would build planes, like from lego bricks, with some exceptions ofcourse, like the engine, weapons, or miscellanceous interior parts. Since the materials will behave like in real life, you won't need to do anything else. It will do the rest, dynamically. Flexing and bending of the airframe from surrounding forces, extremely realistic shattering and tearing of every imaginable part of the plane, they will all be dynamically generated because every material will have unique properties, and they will act accordingly. This will also accurately simulate late war for Germany, when their quality got worse and worse, and so did materials.

Also right now you can say that damage model is not quite there yet. Sure, there are different kinds of damage that can happen, and you can have holes in different parts of the plane, but under the surface they're all artificial. You have the same texture for damage, copied over the surface of the plane, but they're all same, and their effects are all scripted too. It's less work to implement it this way, but in the long run my way could save a whole heap of work, and since it's dynamic it also has immeasurable potential.

When expanding SoW, it would be enough to model a plane and add "materialistic properties" to key parts. Surface which is made of thin metal sheet, armor plating, a framework structure inside the plane which is made of wood or metal, rubber, wiring, cables, plastic, fluids, what else do you want to model in? And that's it. It will then be 100% compatible with whatever you want to do. You will be able to destroy each part differently every time, and every type of ammunition will act realistically on impact by only assigning correct properties to it. That would also allow you to perfect the planes later on, when you'll have more resources. And in the future, you can migrate the framework and make it prettier, nothing more you'll need to do since it'll all be there already.

So now you will have bullets shattering and ricochetting inside the structure, causing even more damage if that dynamically calculated splinter punctures your gas tank, making it leak so that the next bullet may ignite the fuel by causing a spark. Even unthinkable little thing could be done with extreme realism, but with little effort, such as flak jackets for crew. Then it will actually serve a purpose, as it will save lives by absorbing debris flying around the compartment when you get hit, now it would be useless because only direct hits are in, which would kill anything instantly, flak jacket or not. And AA, oh boy, that'll be even deadlier hearing all the shrapnel zipping past your plane. Everything imaginable could happen, exactly as in real life. Not only things that programmers have added. Like a sandbox, you are given the tools but outcome is in no way pre-determined, you only have rules that prevent from going outside the box.

And if you wanted to take this even further, you could also model aerodynamics. So now you have not only a plane that is shredded beautifully into ribbons, but ribbons that also spin nicely as they fall down.
Your aircraft could be literally like a flying sieve, but still hanging in there because your critical components are still somehow operational. Not like in IL-2 for example, where to me the damage model seems like it was like "plane divided into sections, when a section's hitpoints reach 0, whole plane violently explodes". Just imagine the possibilities! I've always dreamed to get killed in a flight sim like one German ace whose name I cannot remember. He landed his plane but was found dead, because a bullet had pierced his whole plane from back to front, went through the armor plate behind pilot's seat and hit his heart. It's one in a million but it could be possible, now imagine that with a 20mm cannon round
And what's more, if aerodynamics were featured, people could design their own planes, and try to make them as sturdy as possible, while still being able to fly. Like a physics playground with a flight sim built around it.


To sum it up, it's like having planes, ammunition, things like that, made of clay. You can bang em, and they will deform. Stick it with a pencil and there will be a hole. Try lifting it and the plane will snap in half because you had too many holes in there, so the clay couldn't stay uniform. Put a cracker next to it and you'll only find tiny crumbles all over the place once crackler's done. It's a fantasy I've had a very, very long time, and it's very possible to make it reality with today's technology. Guess I still have a little boy inside of me
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=5960 It wouldn't be too far from that vid posted there, allthough graphics just can't be as great. 0:12-0:15 is especially beautiful, even more impressive is 1:13-1:21, and pretty ok between 2:45-3:28, that's what I hunger for. And hell, it could be done, if damage model behaved "clay-like", as I described in this paragraph. All those particles and debree would be generated on the fly, according how materials will react to forces directed at it, and thus damage taken.. NOT "hey look, your engine took 40 damage from a random direction, let's add an animation where part of your cowling breaks off LOL and some smoke for bling" Which ofcourse would not accurately display what would actually happen, because it's a general purpose animation for engine damage.

Oh and I registered just to post this crap. I hope you will take your time and read the whole thing through. Not all of it might be completely clear, but you get the idea anyway, use your imagination.

Also if some moderator could remove that youtube embedded -thing, I would highly appreciate it. Also editing seems to be malfunctioning at the moment, I almost destroyed all of my post.