Tree branches contact - Drag or damage in Battle of Britain?

[BG-09]

Originally Posted by JVM

I do not think you would need a damage model for a tree: I believe it would just be necessary to know the height of the tree, the height of the A/C and you just have to cut your tree in say three parts:
- height of A/C in the upper part of the tree = big noise, everything OK (believe me I experienced that first hand with a PA-25!); if two trees or more, the flight stops right there, not necessarily with a boom...
- height of A/C in middle part of tree (this would be actually a very small part, and maybe not even existing) = big hole equivalent to 20 mm explosion, consequences on handling, still flyable with skill...if two trees or more, boom
- height of A/C in lower part of tree: boom

Add in the picture coefficients to take in account the nature of trees (pine not equal to oak for that matter!) and you could be done...

Even a simple separation in two zones on the tree, without the complexities as described above would add a lot to immersion!

JV

Realy good proposition JVM - sounds very reasonable. easy and relistic decision of the problem. You know, that colision with the part of other aircraft in Il2 series, leads to desintagration of your aircraft or both aircrafts - similar effect must appear be in the case of colision with tree branch.

JVM, say something more about your experience with PA-25 please!

Regards!

BG-09

[X32Wright]

It might look simple on paper but in the 3d world thats another issue. If this is implemented even with LOD (level of detail) geometry, this would lead to an increase in the geometry load since every breakway section would need to have a separate geometry (plus the LOD geometry) plus bounding boxes (for collision detection). Even with adaptive subdivision this multiplied by thousands of trees would be a nightmare. IF its possible at all it would restrict online play to maybe just 6-8 people nothing more due to the amount of data that needs to be exchanged as well as the amount of data that needs to be processed.

Even if they use flat geometry and simple geometry (triangles) ovelapped with Alpha-channelled textures this would still lead to more geometry and more texture maps to load during gameplay. This would be impossible. Using shaders (Cg or rendermonkey) might help but still it would be too much for online play.

[Codex]

You need to Broaden Your Horizon fellas ... get it ... Broaden Your Horiz....ah forget it.

Have a look at this: http://www.gamedev.net/community/for....asp?jn=263350

This is terrain generation procedural style. It is CPU intensive but way less expensive on storage space i.e. RAM, but with multi core CPU's pretty much main stream now who cares. So with the saving in RAM bounding boxes could be cached to aid in collision detection between tree and planes.

[BG-09]

Originally Posted by Codex

You need to Broaden Your Horizon fellas ... get it ... Broaden Your Horiz....ah forget it.

Have a look at this: http://www.gamedev.net/community/for....asp?jn=263350

This is terrain generation procedural style. It is CPU intensive but way less expensive on storage space i.e. RAM, but with multi core CPU's pretty much main stream now who cares. So with the saving in RAM bounding boxes could be cached to aid in collision detection between tree and planes.

Thanx a lot Codex for the link! Extreeeemly good graphics...

I belive it is not dificult to model tree colision. New CPU's are coming...

[X32Wright]

You did notice that those trees in there were made with at least four (4) triangles each (if it wasn't subdivided into segments) with a texture map right? If you want some interactivity the number of polygons would need to be at least doubled if not quadrupled for each tree. Still a big problem if you want collision detection with planes and trees. The additional geometry load in the game is really much better being used for the planes and interactivity between planes in the game.

If you are so concerned about trees then I think you are flying way too low and getting damaged too often

[BG-09]

Originally Posted by X32Wright

If you are so concerned about trees then I think you are flying way too low and getting damaged too often

As You may be know, famous proverb in our community is this:

"...at altitudes at which this community is flying, diving is not an option..."
So not only I but many fellow pilots do have contacts with the trees.

Oleg is perfectionist, so the problem will be terminated.

I am not programer anyway.

BG-09

[|ZUTI|]

I think that we don't need the trees breaking at all, just a bit better DM when contacting a tree. If we can live with what we have now, we would sure be able to live with what we could have then And if tree makes a plane crash, just replace it with a burned tree texture

I just don't want the kind of forests that we have now (3 layer textures). But from what we've seen so far, forests will be forests. That's cool.