Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
Intrepid3D said:
they use POM to bend the shading to carve out what looks like panel seams and pipes, cables, recesses in the structure..... when in fact the underlying asset surface is completely flat
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How dare you sir? All SC pipes are real!

But to be serious: This is just the type of flannel that doesn’t really matter hugely from a player perspective. I’m super glad there’s a fancy new twist on bump maps, but the fundamentals are:

Does it look good? [Yes]
Does it perform well? [Gnarrr]
Is it out yet? [Yes / No / Why can I smell dead cat?]

The SC perpetua-stream of dev minutiae could convince you that the techniques in question are super relevant. (And they are indeed important for making a lovely-looking, performant game). But until I know whether they’ll be stripping the selfsame prettiness out to ensure downstream additions function, it’s still just a sleek-looking, low-performing alpha. That may not become anything more than that.

Does look alright for 2021 though ;). (Visually, not managerially ;))
 

Red Martian

Red Martian
Intrepid3D said:
This entire thing is probably no more than half a million vertices, if that.

All of the detail you see on it is made entirely by textures, including everything that appears to have 3D depth, they use POM to bend the shading to carve out what looks like panel seams and pipes, cables, recesses in the structure..... when in fact the underlying asset surface is completely flat and with it low poly.

NqI3x07.jpg
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Yeah, up close they look awful. I've EVA'd my way out to a bunch of these stations and once you get an up close look, you can see the seams, and the cheats. It's not that I condemn them for cheating, you have to in video games, it's that it still eats the hell out of my CPU and GPU in terms of power, and it shouldn't considering the low level of detail. What's the point of cheating if it still consumes too much?
 

Intrepid3D

Intrepid3D
Coloratura said:
Yeah, up close they look awful. I've EVA'd my way out to a bunch of these stations and once you get an up close look, you can see the seams, and the cheats. It's not that I condemn them for cheating, you have to in video games, it's that it still eats the hell out of my CPU and GPU in terms of power, and it shouldn't considering the low level of detail. What's the point of cheating if it still consumes too much?
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Yup, you're right i have done it my self, EVA right up against a surface of any of these large things and you can clearly see what's going on an it looks horrible.

In this case it done for a large scale, press your visor up against a bolt head on a wall inside the station, looks completely believable from 2 feet (0.7 Metres) away, from 2 inches you can see its not actually there.

The thing is if you actually model that bolt head as an asset or even as part of the larger asset it would use a lot more of your GPU's resources.
 

Intrepid3D

Intrepid3D
cigwatch said:
Is this what you would like CIG to have released in 2016? - asks a concerned backer.

Daaaa! - answers I.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-xvCg8CI9U&t=7s
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"Atmospheric Entry" is a loadscreen, which suggests the A18 LZ in that is just what you see, nothing more, add to that the entire sequence was in Auto Pilot. you're not flying into A18, its a cinematic sequence.

This really is the extent of the original pitch, that's fine, but what you can't do is go off under your own will and explore the planet, there is no planet. :)
 

cigwatch

cigwatch
Intrepid3D said:
"Atmospheric Entry" is a loadscreen, which suggests the A18 LZ in that is just what you see, nothing more, add to that the entire sequence was in Auto Pilot. you're not flying into A18, its a cinematic sequence.

This really is the extent of the original pitch, that's fine, but what you can't do is go off under your own will and explore the planet, there is no planet. :)
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AND I LOVE IT! I have ED for planets and long-bottom exploration. What I do not have, is modern day Wing Commander and modern day Freelancer. Mass Effect demonstrated how a bunch of small levels can feel like a universe as long as they are filled with characters, stories and proper transition screens.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Intrepid3D said:
Textures have little impact on a GPU's ability to render, it has some effect but not as much as Tessellation.

Tessellation is a series of triangles that make up the shape of an object, the more you have in your scene the harder the CPU needs to work to render it.
If you don't use enough Tessellation your assets look like Minecraft, blocky.

What you can do after you made your assets in 3DSMax is pass it through some optimisation software, that will reduce the visual quality, the level of detail in the object, but you can use textures to manipulate the shading in such a way that it brings that detail back but without the underlying surface being so heavily tessellated, this requires a lot more work than just shoving an asset densely packed with triangles into the game.
pretty much anyone can make an asset, refining it using various techniques is where time and talent comes into play.

An example of an utterly insane road bollard, each red line is a vertices making up triangles, there are millions in this, there should only be a few hundred with all the pitting on the surface made with POM and Bump Mapping textures.

Its an extreme example but this asset was made by someone who doesn't know how to do that. consequently that bollard alone was giving any GPU that saw it a hard time.

https://imgur.com/hH58ViA
Source: https://i.imgur.com/hH58ViA.jpg


https://imgur.com/QyGzxLM
Source: https://i.imgur.com/QyGzxLM.jpg
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Right, so it shifts the requirements from the graphics card elsewhere, for example, more disk loading right?
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Intrepid3D said:
Yup, you're right i have done it my self, EVA right up against a surface of any of these large things and you can clearly see what's going on an it looks horrible.

In this case it done for a large scale, press your visor up against a bolt head on a wall inside the station, looks completely believable from 2 feet (0.7 Metres) away, from 2 inches you can see its not actually there.

The thing is if you actually model that bolt head as an asset or even as part of the larger asset it would use a lot more of your GPU's resources.
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Can't believe Chris allows this! You should be able to see specks of dust on the textures when close up!
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Intrepid3D said:
"Atmospheric Entry" is a loadscreen, which suggests the A18 LZ in that is just what you see, nothing more, add to that the entire sequence was in Auto Pilot. you're not flying into A18, its a cinematic sequence.

This really is the extent of the original pitch, that's fine, but what you can't do is go off under your own will and explore the planet, there is no planet. :)
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Maybe the original original pitch, but by 2014 they had already added a stretch goal for full planets.

Backers paid for that a long time ago and CIG should have had it factored in when they were making statements about SQ42 and SC being close to release. You may (or may not) recall CIG saying on more than one occasion that SQ42 was close to completion in 2014 with SC not far behind. AFTER reaching all their stretch goals in funding.
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
Intrepid3D said:
If you can run Odyssey chances are you can run SC.
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I wouldn’t go that far. My seven year old computer was able to handle Odyssey at >30 FPS in settlements post release, while similar computers were getting FPS in the low teens, according to SC’s own telemetry page. One reason why I never bothered with the free fly events, even after I got my money out of this money pit.

My new computer is significantly more powerful, so next free fly event I’m planning on having a proper look-see. I picked up an SSD on sale for $20, just for SC. My new “hot swap” bays means I’ll be able to swap it right back out (when the machine is off… actual hot swappable drives are expensive) after I’m done. No need to open it up. ;)
 

Intrepid3D

Intrepid3D
Agony_Aunt said:
Right, so it shifts the requirements from the graphics card elsewhere, for example, more disk loading right?
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You got it. And yes because of that minimum system requirements for 1080P is a 4GB GPU (RX 470) , 16GB of System RAM and an SSD, not that this is what those requirements actually are, i don't know what they are but as an educated guess that's what i would say, what it should be.

That is not unreasonable tho.
 

Lone_star

Lone_star
VR Golgot said:
Yeah I’m yet to see a Vulkan overhaul where anything changed radically. NMS got slightly better performance on low end gear. That seemed to be about it from a user perspective.
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The main benefit is likely that it makes further development easier/faster. I'm guessing switching to Vulkan has made it easier to deliver the graphical updates we've seen since the switch
 
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