Seem some discussion on this before, but why not include a free water-only map with the base game?

[Tree_Beard]

My understanding is that every map already has a flat ocean underneath the land model anyway, so wouldn't releasing an "open ocean" map take practically zero development effort? 

People will say " Well the Marianas map already has a ton of ocean." Sure, but the game is still simulating all that land in the distance so a map with no land at all would probably perform a lot better (right?).

Plus, it would be great to have total freedom to plan out big carrier and naval engagements for any era without having to worry about keeping the units out of visual range of the Mariana Islands or adjust their starting positions to take the islands into account at all. 

Unless I am missing something here, why not give the community a performance friendly, small file size, open naval playground to work with in the base game? Whats the downside? 

[cfrag]

17 hours ago, Tree_Beard said:

Sure, but the game is still simulating all that land in the distance so a map with no land at all would probably perform a lot better (right?).

Terrain data is a 3D mesh with points that all have altitude. If their altitude is > 0, it becomes land, else sea. A water-only map will still have exactly as many grid points as one with land on it. What may be a (small) speed advantage is that the objects that populate the land can be omitted. So what you will gain with a map free of scenery objects is some time when performing the step that culls view objects (objects are culled from rendering when they are outside your view cone, or are too far away). Omitting map objects should also make the map file size smaller, and conceivable require fewer textures to load (also applies to land textures that wouldn't require loading).

So, upshot is that yes, the file size should be smaller on storage, and it would require less VRAM. Processing-wise I think that such a map would only be marginally faster compared to Marianas when you are far enough out and have enough VRAM to hold all textures (all polygons have a texture applied, you gain no time during rendering by having your VRAM only half filled because the map uses fewer textures). Such a map would, conceivably, be more gentle to older gfx cards. 

[Edit:

I just realized that such a map could very much constitute the worst case scenario performance-wise: water terrain is exceedingly hard on the GPU, depending on your water preferences. So such a map could perform worse than a land-only map.]

So, if this map can be made without much effort - why not? 

Edited April 14, 2023 by cfrag

[Tree_Beard]

7 hours ago, cfrag said:

I just realized that such a map could very much constitute the worst case scenario performance-wise: water terrain is exceedingly hard on the GPU

 

Part of my suggestion is assuming that there is already water being rendered on every map below the land anyway. Pretty sure that when you load into a busy server, for example, you see water below before all the land populates. 

[cfrag]

12 hours ago, Tree_Beard said:

there is already water being rendered on every map below the land anyway

Usually not. Only the polygon closest to the camera is rendered, and when during load the terrain data isn't available (?) it simply renders water at height 0. When terrain is rendered above water, no water will be drawn below.

The "problem" with water is that it is (or can be, if your settings are accordingly) highly processor intensive: it has waves (i.e. dynamically creates submeshes that need be filled), reflections, foam, and, worst of all, is transparent to a degree, requiring the renderer to calculate a color based on depth and sun position. The upshot is that water can be performance killer, and can be much more expensive (in terms of calculation) to draw than a universally flat terrain at 1m elevation. 

The rest of the idea (water-only) I believe still to be sound, it's just that I'm not sure it will be guaranteed to be easy on lower-end gfx cards.  

Edited April 15, 2023 by cfrag

[upyr1]

I've asked for an ocean only app, though ED would need to stop up the naval game.