2.0 Details

[JG14_Smil]

Hello,

 

I took a relaxing free flight in the VA 2.0 server. I enjoy flying my Blackshark around looking at the detailed scenery. I flew to Heliport Sandy, saw a F-15 circling and then headed back to Nellis on route mode AP. The F-15 flies a bit close and clips my rotor blade. He apologizes and I don't mind as I need to test my eject function in my cockpit. As I parachute down I see I am landing in a little town. I note the walking pilot is pretty well articulated and he looks pissed off. I walk in the beautiful little town and I expect a soldier from OFP to start hunting me. It just reminded me of that old shooter. I tell you I would not have minded being able to get in a car and drive back to base! I walk around and notice there are garbage cans for the houses. I see a 3D garbage can, go look in it and there is garbage in it! It was an interesting cyber-walk. I just wanted to show appreciation for the details someone took the time to put in the sim.

 

Has anything been down towards pilot rescues? There are great choppers for it. Just curious.

[cichlidfan]

The garbage can stuff sounds like someone spent too much time on a model. Some of this kind of stuff, i.e. overly detailed models, is contributing to lower FPS for no reason. Every single extra polygon hits fps.

 

This isn't ARMA.

[cthulhu68]

My favorite little detail so far. Theses are the backs of the satellite dishes on top of Tromb Tower.

[cichlidfan]

Nice. The problem is that the dishes look flat and, at that size, the parabolic shape should be easily visible. Dishes that small would be more round and not a dodecagon, as well.

 

This is another area where emphasis/detail was put into the wrong place.

 

EDIT: Sorry to nitpick but this is just more of the 'sailboats at Batumi' problem carried over into Nevada. By that I mean that there is either too much, or too little detail, on various objects without regard to their significance to the overall environment that needs to be rendered.

 

EDIT2: As an example...

About 37 years ago, when I was working as a draftsman (pencil on vellum, no CAD), I was working on a top down drawing of a Coast Guard ship. The notes indicated that I was supposed to represent a chain between points A and B. I was fairly new to the job, so I took them literally. I drew a beautiful chain in the appropriate place. However, it took about 20 minutes to draw. It was, very quickly, explained to me that the extra detail was useless and cost both time and money that could be better spent elsewhere.

 

That is what I see happening here, along with the side effect that the end user sees reduced performance as well.

Edited October 4, 2016 by cichlidfan

[JG14_Smil]

I understand what you are saying cichlidfan and I agree. I was kind of at a loss as to why I was seeing so much detail that no one even knows is there. Still made for an interesting walk.

 

How about answering my question? Has anything changed towards pilot rescues in the last three years?

[Art-J]

a) Extensive detailing might seem over the top from fighter jock's point of view, but it's more than justified from Combined Arms users in their ground vehicles and that's where DCS is heading to after all.

 

b) There's no pilot rescuing capability in the game yet.

[cichlidfan]

a) Extensive detailing might seem over the top from fighter jock's point of view, but it's more than justified from Combined Arms users in their ground vehicles and that's where DCS is heading to after all.

 

I, respectfully, disagree. As long as the environment is common for CA and the rest of the modules, it is impractical to include the level of detail that ground units need and still maintain the frame rates that the aircraft need.

 

CA is a nice tool for certain things, like JTAC support, but the sim can't do both, properly, without something suffering in the end.

 

If DCS wants to do both environments well then they need far more computing power than is likely to be available in the near future.

[OttoPus]

I, respectfully, disagree. As long as the environment is common for CA and the rest of the modules, it is impractical to include the level of detail that ground units need and still maintain the frame rates that the aircraft need.

 

CA is a nice tool for certain things, like JTAC support, but the sim can't do both, properly, without something suffering in the end.

 

If DCS wants to do both environments well then they need far more computing power than is likely to be available in the near future.

 

Scalability is the key here, nothing new in the computing world.

[Buzzles]

Scalability is the key here, nothing new in the computing world.

 

Yeap, and already in DCS in various forms.

 

I've no idea what ED are doing with LOD's for ground models though.

[Ala13_ManOWar]

Here I don't completely agree with you Cichlidfan. As already said, tiny details adds immersion, life indeed to the maps and from my viewpoint those are very welcome. Bail out and walk in the map to find you're in a living environment is really nice. Also I don't think tiny details has any huge impact in FPS while on the other hand has been sort of an Eagle Dynamics personal seal since the very firsts times. I remember a review back in the 90's about Flanker 2.0 where reviewer were amazed... even missiles slats moves!! Those tiny details means the care put into this sim.

 

 

S!

[fixen]

The texture on those dishes have no extra impact on performance compared to dishes that would not have the writing on it. Same with the trashcans. It is just a texture file and if it is a metal texture or trash texture, it does not impact performance.

What will impact performance is the resolution (which is quite low as we can see) and the amount of polygons. If you give those dishes a rounder look, they will eat more gpu power, because rounder means more poly's. I think they do optimize well in general and some details that look unnecessary might just bring that bit of life to the picture that it needs. When you take it all away it might suddenly look very bland.