About the efficency of new models

[orogor]

When peoples ask about how faster the next release will be i see a lot of answer talking about the new models , it is not new models , it is the way characters are handled ,  if i am not wrong  , the new way they are handled is throught cal3d which is a library that allow skeletal animation, this kind of animation allow sutch things like using the same animation for different meshes , this allow to gain speed when develloping as you can use tha same animation for many models, one of the power of this library is to allow to blend animation together, and to allow to overide animation on certain parts of the body. This kind of thing  is mutch more powerfull ( in the meaning than you can do more things )  than the old way this was handled , however this require more computing power, also , like you can see on the screenshoots , the charaters themself are more detailled , this mean more butiffull , but again more computing power needed.

So how do they plane to gain speed  ?
The graphic engine they are using is permanently in heavy devellopement ,  since some time the devellopers are modifying it in order to take advantage of the all the features than modern graphic cards offers , thus moving the computing power needed from the processor to the graphic card , this does not mean than you have to get the latest graphic card to benefit from thoses changes ( even if it s always better ) , it s just than if the engine can use a feature in the graphic card , it will use it , if it s not here , it will ask the processor to do the job, so let s say than they are unreleasing the power that sleep in your graphic card 8?).


Well let s say than i might be damn wrong about everything too ....

[Parts]

Any word on dynamic-LOD etc?

[orogor]

Well also LoD will help a lot , it have been added a few months after molecular blue was out.

For those who don t know what LoD is , it mean Level Of Detail , this mean than you can change the number of polygones who will be drawn depending on the distance , this mean than the further the objects are , the less they will be detailled( but as they are further , you dont notice it ).

Static LoD meaning than the artist have to actualy design one mesh for eatch distance , so like 3-4 note than there s some polygone reductions tools around that can help.

About dynamic Lod , this mean than the engine is smart enought to know when and where to remove polygones depending on the distance , i just checked on #cs and it seems than dynmaic Lod is suported only by the terrain engine and the old character system.

[Parts]

I was wondering because I\'d spent a little while trawling thru CS info and didn\'t find info on the dynamic lod (although I remembered seeing some before).

Unfortunately I haven\'t been sucessful in compiling MB on my latest bleeding-edge system so I\'m stuck with no knowledge at the moment and hoping that CB will compile / run first time

Of course, we will all be using optical processors by the time CB is out so framerate shouldn\'t be a worry

[Wedge]

Skeletal based animation is much faster and less processor intensive than any other form of animation.  Since they weren\'t using it in MB, I can only assume it was straight vertice translations, which is the most inefficient and processor intensive manner of animation.  Crystal Blue will look better than MB, but will probably be running on much lower specs than the current version does.  These changes are a very good thing.

And I think they said they don\'t want dynamic LOD anyway, as they\'d prefer the control of static LOD.

[Vengeance]

What Wedge said is totally wrong.

Skeletal animation is slower than vertex animation.

The reason skeletal is preferred is because it takes much less RAM (<1MB compared to >15MB in MB), and because of ability to blend multiple animations, etc. as orogor said.

- Venge

[Wedge]

...really?  I know it\'s already going to give you a big filesize and memory reduction.  I thought since all the vertices are assigned to bones, its only having to process the bone translations instead of individual translations for all the vertices?  Wouldn\'t that be faster?  Or with vertice translations, since the individual vertices have to be exported into animation, you get bigger file sizes and memory usage, but it\'s not as hard to run then since all that data is defined?

[Syzerian]

wow
this sounds great
are the hills going to lose their spikeyness in cb too?

i need a better comp

[Wedge]

If they\'re using the new terrain system (I really hope so), then yeah, hills would be much nicer.

[Kiva]

I can\'t wait to see grass though. It\'d be nice to have grass instead of just a textured green hill. But it sounds like some nice changes, and it just makes us all more eager to get CB and play with it.

[Niber]

Even if we wouldn\'t use that terrain system it will be nicer than those spikey hills in MB, I mean you\'re not suppost to go outside the city so I imagen Boonet did that \"terrain\" in 2 mins.
I can assure you that if CB has a reason to go outside the city the outside will look better  

I don\'t know what we have planed for grass though,, but I heard Boonet say in this forum some mounts ago that we might use Pixel Shaders (I think it was, and that gives much better look) instead of the useal plane transparent grass, but I doubt that will be in CB anyway.

[orogor]

Just posted a quick thing in the art section about shaders ,if anyone dare to check ...

[Xanaroth]

the devs tought have a problem, they can make everything beautifull, but you have to remember it is played online, so better graphs mean more data-traffic, means more lag.
And we dont all have super-computer (tough i kinda have:P) so if the devs make it to good, it would result in huge lag, and into people quitting the game since their pc cant manage it.

[Parts]

Originally posted by Xanaroth
the devs tought have a problem, they can make everything beautifull, but you have to remember it is played online, so better graphs mean more data-traffic, means more lag.
And we dont all have super-computer (tough i kinda have:P) so if the devs make it to good, it would result in huge lag, and into people quitting the game since their pc cant manage it.

I\'m not sure i follow, if you mean increased network-traffic linked to graphical detail, I would suggest that\'s unlikely.

The graphical side of things can be handled exclusively by the client for things such as grass and trees blowing in the breeze as the representation doesn\'t need to be identical for each client and therefore need not be handled by the netcode. A simple \'wind\' / \'nowind\' flag would suffice.

Of course, if every character had individually controllable fingers (just for example), you *would* need to co-ordinate this between clients and hence you\'d murder the bandwidth with the extra network information.

I would say, that until 90% of the Real World(tm)  population is linked by gigabit dark-fibre, that individually controllable fingers would be a Bad-Idea(tm)

As for the actual rendering detail for each client (regardless of network), absolutely; more detail will cripple older systems and I\'m not sure exactly how far crystalspace has come on that subject. Of course, to handle extra detail we could go back to talking LOD / Dynamic LOD but we\'ve already been there

[Androgos]

Originally posted by Xanaroth
the devs tought have a problem, they can make everything beautifull, but you have to remember it is played online, so better graphs mean more data-traffic, means more lag.
And we dont all have super-computer (tough i kinda have:P) so if the devs make it to good, it would result in huge lag, and into people quitting the game since their pc cant manage it.

That I don\'t get, how can better graphics increase the data traffic?