Level of detail discussion

[DragonFire]

I would really like to see the rendering distance at least the same as JustCause2 that has got to be just about 3x what we have here.

I´m also curious of exactly what you mean when you say that the render distance in JC2 are 3x higher than in theHunter? JC2 also has a render distance for the characters that should be the same as ours (JC2 characters = theHunter animals).

Sorry Peter i must of missed this post.
Here is an example of a boat being rendered way out there, in my estimation between the 2 games at least 1000 meters +, i was comming into the port and haden't got there yet and this boat appeared ,so calculating i could of flown backwards a bit like in theHunter before it dissapeared, my height and i hadn't got to the base yet i am guessing mind you this boat rendered far out there way further than any animal i have seen so far.

[MonacoSteve]

Sorry Peter i must of missed this post.
Here is an example of a boat being rendered way out there, in my estimation between the 2 games at least 1000 meters +, i was comming into the port and haden't got there yet and this boat appeared ,so calculating i could of flown backwards a bit like in theHunter before it dissapeared, my height and i hadn't got to the base yet i am guessing mind you this boat rendered far out there way further than any animal i have seen so far.
]

Well, TH has also a boat (the ferry) which renders far further out than any other moving object (except the aeroplane perhaps). But I guess Peter was talking about the "living" objects like human figures in JC2.

[Peter Johansson]

Just as I thought The "living" animals/characters in these games are veeery different things within the engine compared to static things, such as vegetation, buildings and certain vehicles! These static/dynamic things do not utilize AI, physics and animation in the same way as the "living" things. Static objects such as trees produce a load on the computer once there´s many of them on screen at the same time, while our animals get heavier because they utilize, among other things, alot of AI (constant conditional checks through their senses against the surroundings).

[lounis19]

the ARMA 2 games you can see enemies over 1000m

[Rezrex]

the ARMA 2 games you can see enemies over 1000m

Yeah, but I play theHunter on all-low settings, and it's enjoyable even if it runs on 17-22 fps on my laptop. However I played ARMA 2 on this laptop, minimum graphics and it's freakin' blurry! Yeah, I have slightly better fps than in theHunter (26 fps), but it's so blurry (that I don't understand, cause if I play on the native resolution of my monitor, it shouldn't be blurry but rough... I think it's the doing of the HDR that you cannot disable in the game) that if theHunter would utilize it's graphical solutions, with that settings I couldn't spot an animal from 200 meters! So I could wipe my ... with the 1000 m render distance...

[TundraPuppy]

the ARMA 2 games you can see enemies over 1000m

Yeah, but I play theHunter on all-low settings, and it's enjoyable even if it runs on 17-22 fps on my laptop. However I played ARMA 2 on this laptop, minimum graphics and it's freakin' blurry! Yeah, I have slightly better fps than in theHunter (26 fps), but it's so blurry (that I don't understand, cause if I play on the native resolution of my monitor, it shouldn't be blurry but rough... I think it's the doing of the HDR that you cannot disable in the game) that if theHunter would utilize it's graphical solutions, with that settings I couldn't spot an animal from 200 meters! So I could wipe my ... with the 1000 m render distance...

Note: This is a simplified explanation of how all this works.

ARMA2 graphics get blurry because the graphics quality are reduced so much on the textures themselves that the game uses to display things. Resolution (for the most part) doesn't have a lot to do with how 'crisp' the actual texture is, it's got to do with how many overall pixels are represented on your monitor. When you downscale texture quality in graphics options, you're saying "when you're close to a texture, let's instead use mipmaps that would normally display farther away." The lower the texture quality you set, the lower quality mipmap the game uses the closer you are to the texture.

Confused? What the hell are mipmaps? What does distance have to do with anything? I can explain!

Mipmaps are lower quality versions of textures, at lower resolutions, that you swap in and out as you get closer or farther from the texture itself in the game.

In real life (and if you live in the USA), if you're standing next to a stop sign, you're going to be able to read the word "STOP" easily. If you walk away a bit, you might be able to "STO", but "P" is kinda blurry, and maybe it's a "P" and maybe it's an "O", or a "D". Walk farther away and it's just a red and white blur. In a game, mipmaps would be textures representing all 3 stages. So when you're close to the stop sign in the game, it shows the high detail version. As you walk away it uses a lower mipmap to show you the "STO" with a blurry "P". Walk farther away and it swaps to the total blurry one. The reason you do this is because a crisp version of the STOP sign uses up a lot of texture memory, but if you're far away from it, why use all that texture memory if you can't see it in detail? So use a low detail version that takes up less memory on the graphics card. Less memory used means a.) you can makes your game run faster, and b.) you have space to use even more textures OR you can support video cards with lower amounts of memory!

So, let's say you have Low, Medium, and High as texture detail. And you have three distances from your STOP sign. This is how it works:

If you set the game on High texture detail, it's pretty self explanatory:

Close - High Mipmap
Near - Medium Mipmap
Far - Low Mipmap

If you set the game on Medium texture detail, you'll notice we start at Medium quality, even close, then drop to Low. And we just keep using Low at that point:

Close - Medium Mipmap
Near - Low Mipmap
Far - Low Mipmap

If you set the game on Low texture detail, the game looks like...well. Ugh. We start on Low, and it's Low all the way out, baby!:

Close - Low Mipmap
Near - Low Mipmap
Far - Low Mipmap

Different games use different methods with how detailed (or not detailed) they make mipmaps, so in some games "Low" will look a lot worse than others.

-TundraPuppy

[abslayer]

What I really don't like is the popping in and out of trees and ground cover at very close range of about 100 feet.
This to me is really distracting well hunting in this game.

Peter would it be possible to increase this range of full scenery draw to say 300 or 200 feet without putting a heavy load on players PC .
At least a option for people with high end PC to move this farther out.

[sepulsolja]

I would also appreciate an option for LOD. PC games should be highly adjustable when it comes to optimizing the graphics settings. And an option is just what it means. So it can work for both people with lower end systems, and high end systems.

[deth2deer]

This is something I thought really needed addressed. Then I found this thread and read the posts.
The way I see it, the important thing is to make this game available to as many people as possible. More players = higher chance of monetary return and we all know that most people would rather make money for their hard work than see the game die out and have all that effort wasted.
With increasing the draw distance (as easy as it sounds) it would also need ALL details and calculations included in that distance.
Now the problem starts.
As the radius of this circle increases the area in the circle skyrockets. An increase from 200m to 250m means the area increases from ~125km squared to ~196km squared (how do you do that little superscript 2?). Thats an increase of over 70km squared in area for an extra 50m draw distance. Now if you add another 50m from 250m to 300m the area increases to ~282km squared so this extra 50m in draw distance is an increase of ~86km squared in area. Thats a lot more blades of grass to bend in the wind and insects flying around etc etc..
By increasing the distance by 100m the area has over doubled! With a further increase of 50m pushing the area up to ~384km squared (over triple that of the starting 200m) this really starts to snowball.

This would not be too much of a problem had the dev's made a simple engine. But instead they made an accurate simulation of physics and animal behaviour. THIS is what we love about TH and also the reason increasing the draw distance is hard work. A slide bar would be great to see implemented (or even a "low, med, high" system for 200m, 250m, 300m) so high end systems could really be used to show off this amazing game BUT that is a lot of work for a lot of people in a lot of areas of the game as currently there is nothing past the current cutoff point. If only it was as simple as I thought before I did the reading.

To me I think this would not be my choice for the dev's to focus on but definitely put this in the near future folder. I would love to see multiplayer implemented more (not by much more tho) and this seems to be a very popular opinion. Once again a nightmare amount of work.
And also having both of these implemented would most probably cause havoc.

I think the amount of work done so far is incredible and especially thinking that this isn't even turning a profit yet..... that reminds me, I should go spend some more $ and maybe buy a new gun or a bear license or something to show my appreciation.

Mass respect to everyone involved with this game! I know you guys work hard.

[TundraPuppy]

Re: the 'so everyone can play it from low end to high end machines' thing:

Right now, we have 4 levels of 'scene complexity'. Low, Medium, High, Very High. These correspond with the range at which agressive LOD kicks in - low, the agressive LOD kicks in closer, Very High, the agressive LOD kicks in farther.

Currently, HighendHarry can set his computer to Very High and play theHunter on his beast of a machine, but still run into the problem of "stuff still looks crummy at a (far) distance". LowendLewis can set his computer to Low and play theHunter on his crummy machine, and get a good experience because it's running the game at a detail level he can play at and still get good frames per second. It might look like mud, but that's just the reality of how he has to play.

So assuming we don't get rid of Low (and really, why would we?) how would adding Very Very High and Very Very Very High and so on, be hurting LowendLewis? Low still exists. We're just making it so people like HighendHarry, SupercomputerSam, and OverclockOscar can play at much higher detail levels. What is magical about the "Very High" setting that is acts as a ceiling and we cannot go farther in terms of extending the agressive LOD range without making the Low scene complexity simply no longer work on LowendLarry's computer? If someone wants to choose to render each tree at full detail (as crazy as that might be), why in the world would you need to modify Low scene complexity (and thus, 'break' the game for low-end players to be able to play) to do so? You're just extending the LOD on the high end, not the low end.

I've done developement with game studios from the art side, and talked to programmers about this problem. I may be skeptical about the "breaking it for the low end users" explaination, but this is because when told that it can't be done, I follow it up with "what about a programming path for low end users and one for high end users?" This usually gets awkward silence and sideways glances, then "well, we could do that, it just would end up being more work from the programming side." And admittedly, programmers are more interested in working on fun stuff like weapons and things to shoot and fun physics stuff than writing a low end and a high end AI network, or a low end and high end projectile simulator.

Interestingly, we (the art guys) already had this problem with shaders during the early days of shader versions, where you had to write shaders by hand or construct them (if you were lucky enough to have a WYSIWYG shader tool) differently for different shader versions on video card hardware (and we still do). But we did that because it looked nicer and was just "the right thing to do".