Does anyone think PC simulators will ever look this good ?

[Golden_Eagle_FM]

If I understand you right Bearcat I see two points in your reply:

1) More computing power does not necessarily mean better quality (visually) games.

2) We are far from having used all the existing hardware power available today.

I totally agree. One path which will also bring gains and which I have not mentioned is to invest into better usage of existing hardware. But this is a human/financial factor.

I think there are two issues with that:

a) The graphic hardware chain from CPU/GPU up to and included the display as well as the sound system does allow us to have a home cinema wide-screen type environment to play with our simulators. But for such an experience we need more and more details.

On the "primitive" systems of 15 years ago the LOD had to be crude for multiple reasons like CPU/GPU performance, low resolution etc. etc. to get to an acceptable framerate.
My personal experience is that framerate, sound and right control are THE three things for the immersiveness and the success of this very dynamic and interactive type of games like flight simulation. Maybe the fact of being an active pilot makes me feel like this. From the hardware side we have all these three things available today to some extent.

Allow me a small diversion here:
(I allways put the visual quality to a level were I get enough FPS, but I agree then that visually the result can be poor. So I had allways to buy the most powerful system available to improve display quality. In fact I fully change my system every year and I allways have the most powerful GPU available so I may switch graphic board every six months or so. A pretty expensive hobby. My systems are entirely assembled by myself which allows me to pick the best components.)

But a high LOD to be visually interesting means also to "really" put more details in the scenery, the aircraft models etc. etc. This is hours and hours of work because more and more REAL details have to be put in. More CPU power means more refined physical models, flight models and so on. But again all this has to be painstakingly "hand"crafted in. In the past when the polygon budget was so tight, crude and approximative models were okay. Today a Nvidia GX2 board can generate > 1 billion textured pixels in real time (at 60 fps). This translates in at leat 5 million polygons (transformed, textured, shaded etc.) in real time. All this is fine but to now you must model the locking pin on the wheel axle (i am not kidding) , the screws which are along the canopy frame, the fluid tube that runs along the landing gear and so on. The texture has to be also with high LOD with all the small scratches etc. etc. When I see the LOD for the aircraft that are being modelled for SOW I start to wonder if this game will ever come out. Oleg is practically doing the work that an aircraft manufacturer may do to build a real plane with all the inner details. We must add also that this work is not enough, the same LOD has to be put in the scenery, ground detail, ships, transport, buildings, trees, the sound effects, lighting, meteoroligical events, wind, clouds etc. Nothing is worse than beautifully modelled airplanes moving around in a very crude environment and interacting with crude targets like ships, artillery etc..

This brings me to the second comment:

b) The economical financial factors. Software and coding throughput does not, very unfortunately evolve at the same speed as the hardware does. The evolution in software is more along the lines of generation changes of software engineers. Tools have improved and automating some coding tasks too, but still there is a huge gap between software and hardware.
I am afraid that the financial economics of human code production may simply limit the LOD (visual, physical etc.) that can be put in a game that is sold for max 40 US$ (in US) and around 80 $ (in Europe). Either you can have a budget like hollywood has for CGI movies or somhere you are stuck.
On the other hand flight simulators (I do not speak for Microsoft Flight Simulator which is a special case) like IL2 do adress a low volume niche market.

So one conclusion:

First we must recognize that Oleg made miracles with the IL2 saga, and I really wonder what his business model is.

Second we should be ready to accept to spend not 30 but 300 US$ for our passion/hobby and maybe then there is a chance we get the best possible game making the most use of the available hardware. 300 is not so much after what we really spend on hardware in general. Very strangely people are ready to spend much more on hardware but start to cry and shout when they must pay 10 more bucks on a software that is extremely complex and difficult to produce and that allow them to play for 6 years with free support. Even the hardware does not last such long time.

Software has not the visibility of hardware (No nice PC case with led lights flashing and blinking, coolers spinning, display, keyboard etc. etc.). Software feels immaterial and as such is being considered of little value (Worth just the CD or DVD) and should be granted. It is a completely wrong perception. This perception and total lack of respect for software is in my opinion the base why it is so common to pirate, steal, copy software.

The truth value lies much more in software then in hardware. We should all start thinking about it if we want to tip the balance of economics in our favor.

Gold

[mondo]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

Remember that

? That was what 2002.. LMAO... I was so souped up .. I thought the sim would look like that... Boy was I disapointed... LOL.

You and me both and probably a whole load of other sim fans. I watch that video in awe and then played CSF3...

[Luffe]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

Remember that

?

Wow. That Intro is awful. So many wrong details, I don't even know where to start lol.

And, yes, I bought into the hype as well...

[mondo]

Looking back at it now, the video is crap ain't it.

[Bearcat]

Eagle what I meant was that between the sim technology and the hardware that level of graphical qulaity may not be too far off.

[Avala]

I think that we will have something like that with SOW BoB, just without human figures. Must I say "remember my words?"

[Xiola]

Originally Posted by Golden_Eagle_FM

I am ready to bet that in ten years from know real time interactive raytrayced animation of the quality of what we have on those short films will be available at less than 1000 US$ (today value) for general purpose desktop machines.

This is if CPU design evolution goes as planned that is the massive multicore CPU's of the Larabelle type that Intel has already demonstrated with a raytraced version of a very popular FPS game. We are talking of CPU's with 80 cores and plus.
We are now at the stage were we have quadcore CPU's with a max frequency around 3GHz available on the market and in general use. I do not believe the frequency will increase much, but a breaktghrough in technology may allow some major steps. Shrinking the size of CPU components in combination of high voltages for high frequencies, and high heat dissipation problems is already starting to hit some fundamental physical barriers that generate many unwanted effects as for ex. electron migration. We see that it is a few years know that with INTEL and AMD have stalled between 2.5 and 3.2 GHz. Maybe we get to 4GHz but it is not really of much use. On the other hand the fundamental limits to core multiplication in the CPU are much further away.

If we apply Moore's law in conservative manner that is a doubling every 24 months then in 2009 we have 8 cores in 2011 16 cores, in 2013 32 cores, in 2015 64 cores and in 2017 128 cores. The advantage of this approach is that you can lower the frequency, and run say at 1.5 GHZ max and you can get full use of the shrinkage of components as you do not have any more the heat issue. So all the real estate can go to low heat dissipating and simpler architectured cores and so also with even more shrinking without major problems (but for sure there is also an atomic phisical limit here).
The final result is promising. Better 80 cores at 1 GHz then 4 at 4 Ghz. Roughly speaking and to have it simple you get 80 Ghz of power instead of 16.

So it is better to go the lower frequency+low heat dissipation+simpler architecture and higher multiple-core path then the other way round.

If these multi-multicore CPU's do get on the market then there will be enough processing power to get all the software rendering algorithms executed in realtime (60FPS).

The problem is that the whole polygon based culture and tools in game design will have to be readapted to optimally generate raytraced images.
But also the whole software generation community will have to be geared to use massively parallel hardware. This last point may be the most difficult issue.

So to finish I would say that we will have in ten years the hardware capability on the table for sure. I will not bet even a dime that we will be able to use that capability. That will be the major roadblock.

Gold

Surely there is a size limit here, 4 cores is already close to filling a normal size CPU, so 10 cores will mean that the size of the CPU as a whloe will need to grow.

As we have already hit limits with electron migration, then the size of the core caanot go much smaller than it already is with the limits as we know them. The paths are already so small as to have individual electrons escaping and causing errors.

Wouldnt a 80 core CPU be massive? (with the limits as we now know them?)

[mondo]

I think before we get so many cores on a single chip we'll go back to what was taking off yet disappeared 5 or 6 years ago; motherboards for enthusiast PC's with support for 2 CPU's. SLI made a come back after years being undeveloped so motherboards with multiple CPU support might also make a comeback for the home PC.

Don't count out GPU's either. Looking at the specs of AMD's new ATI card, its not hard to imagine video cards with 2 GPU's containing multiple cores in systems with multiple CPU's each with multipe cores, or the amalgamation of GPU and CPU like IBM's Cell.

[BigC208]

What i find an interesting developement is Nvidia acquisition of Ageia's physics technology. That will find it's way into mainstream video cards and should help with more realistic ingame physics without dragging the cpu/gpu down. As far as realistic aircraft modeling goes, just look at some of the aftermarket products for FS2004/X. Real Air simulations Spitfire package and Shockwave's WW fighters look and fly realisticly. If Oleg releases anything looking and flying close to that I'll be a happy simmer for a long time to come.

[Golden_Eagle_FM]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

Eagle what I meant was that between the sim technology and the hardware that level of graphical qulaity may not be too far off.

Cross fingers Bearcat. Be the gods with you and make us have this quality shortly.

Gold