Azure Lion Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 *Breaks out the champagne* What? There's reason to celebrate. Also, there is nothing wrong with celebrating more than once! Thanks for taking the time to give us a progress update. Also, thank you greatly for your continued improvements to Steel Beasts! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gibsonm Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 (edited) Thanks for the SITREP. Looking forward to the updates as and when they come out. If nothing else they'll now be two "refresh frenzies", Julyish and Christmasish. Edited June 29, 2016 by Gibsonm 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kev2go Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 (edited) 4 hours ago, CalAB said: Sounds good Ssnake, looking forward to the release of 4.0. Maybe this division of hardware between military and civilian rigs foreshadows the beginnings of Steelbeasts 2 ?? so it seems civies have better rigs than the machines the each individual army members are able to supplied by tax payers. Np just raise taxes a tad bit, its for a good cause Joking aside, what the real "division" though? Also on a different note Im personally stoked for the older Cold war era tanks. Cant wait to try out a crew able M60A3. Also good to see Eastern armor get some love by having multiple variations of crewable T72B's added. Also here to hoping one day for a fully crewable Chieftain Mk10 Edited June 29, 2016 by Kev2go 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vikingo Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Cheers for the news Ssnake !! My humble opinion is to release now and update later The new terrain is a very nice feature but I can wait for december for it We get the new vehicles, new effects, improved infantry, plus more and maybe we can try ALL them in July. Why wait until december (or even more far away) for enjoy them waiting the new terrain? That can be a calamity. No way!! I have no problems in pay for a 4.0 beta version for play and help hunt bugs if it has all those improvements... I can handle the terrain update. Thanks!! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt DeFault Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 I can also wait for the terrain. Given all of the other new features/vehicles/improvements, I doubt I'll even miss it [much]. Thanks! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gibsonm Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 1 hour ago, Kev2go said: so it seems civies have better rigs than the machines the each individual army members are able to supplied by tax payers. Np just raise taxes a tad bit, its for a good cause Joking aside, what the real "division" though? Well can't speak for all but we have several hundred PCs (optimised for running Office, etc.) used for SB, etc. and their life span is 5+ years. So its not cheap / easy to swap them all out all at once (given that often a bunch of machines on one side of the country will be working with a bunch on the other side). As usual things that are straightforward to do in ones and twos don't necessarily scale up well. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kingtiger Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Just a clarification; the new weather with wonderful snow and rain, is that a part of the terrain engine that will be pushed back or is that independent of the terrain engine and will be in the current release? /KT 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedgehog Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Mmm, thought this would happen, there is 2+ years of features to test. The new engine is an update in itself. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ssnake Posted June 29, 2016 Members Share Posted June 29, 2016 Weather is independent of the underlying terrain. It will snow on the traditional 12.5m grid just as fine. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marko Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Question, With plan C now in operation. Will the hardware specs for the July version remain the same as 3.28 I was going to upgrade my rig with more memory and was considering a new graphic's card. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Furia Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Sounds really good plan!!!!. With so much new content on 4.0 released in July I am perfectly happy waiting til December for the terrain. Cannot wait to get my hands on the M60 Thanks for the heads up Nils. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
munckmb Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Not bad news at all. New vehicles, particles and lots more is a damn good update! Bring it on! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azure Lion Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 In all honesty, I don't know that many of us are in any hurry for high resolution terrain, thus having that postponed for a bit vs waiting for a full release of planned is fine. Frankly, I could wait on the HR terrain till it coincides with the next hotfix patch. Whatever the outcome though, thank you guys for 4.0. I am definitely excited about this update! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apocalypse 31 Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 19 hours ago, Ssnake said: Why? You get the particle effects, all the new vehicles, plus road leveling. And in about half a year, also the new terrain engine as a free update. In addition, we'll come up with better methods to manage minor map modifications than what we had originally in mind, where we admittedly chose the wrong path. All right, we have to back-track a little. It happens. But the proposed solution, if it works out, still allows for a July release rather than waiting for Christmas (or possibly even longer). I thought road smoothing was part of the new terrain. Good to know. What happens between now and December if new priorities arise from real customers? Does the 4.0 terrain system become the 3.0 particle system? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grenny Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 58 minutes ago, Apocalypse 31 said: I thought road smoothing was part of the new terrain. Good to know. What happens between now and December if new priorities arise from real customers? Does the 4.0 terrain system become the 3.0 particle system? That would be a bummer. Hopefully work on the terrain is also within the mil-customers interesst 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ssnake Posted June 29, 2016 Members Share Posted June 29, 2016 1 hour ago, Apocalypse 31 said: I thought road smoothing was part of the new terrain. Good to know. What happens between now and December if new priorities arise from real customers? Does the 4.0 terrain system become the 3.0 particle system? Well, we found a way that delivers reasonably good results most of the time. There are cases when it's not good enough IMO, but these are the more extreme cases of "goat trails on alpine mountain slopes" like what you might encounter in some places of the Hindukush; so, it has SOME relevance to be able to do the road smoothing in high resolution where the slopes are very steep. Also, we definitely need terrain smoothing around buildings in high resolution, as was evident in the 4.0 video that I made about the road leveling/terrain comparison. The work plan until December doesn't allow for major revisions. There are contractual obligations that must be met, so there isn't really a way how we could accept additional work that would jeopardize the work on the new terrain. Also, it's not as if our other customer group doesn't want the high resolution terrain, or that the technology isn't there. It works, we demonstrated it at ITEC. What needs to be done is to reorganize the file handling. It isn't an entirely trivial task, mind you, but still of somewhat limited scope. We just want to be very careful here because changing our minds again would come with significant consequences for all the content created by customers after the introduction of the new terrain. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigBadVuk Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 10 hours ago, Marko said: Question, With plan C now in operation. Will the hardware specs for the July version remain the same as 3.28 I was going to upgrade my rig with more memory and was considering a new graphic's card. I did upgrade mine already - I have now i7 5820 with 16GB of DDR4 and i decided to stretch for 8 Gb model of R9 390x instead of smaller one.. With this rig 3.028 is VERY smooth ( but i never tried x86 version, just x64) even with lot of things going on and details near max. There is no going back now but im nearly quite sure that i will keep my 60+ FPS even with new particles and weather and later, terrain. Will game be more CPu demanding or more GPU demanding.. i dont know, i upgraded all 3 crucial components, and this should be enough imho. About the delay - as ppl already mentioned, with all new things i really doubt any1 will miss too much new high res terrain for another few months. My wild guess is that maybe most obvious thing which will follow the lack of high res terrain would be the suspension animation. It will use the old grid density so it wont go up and down so smoothly or so frequently. P.S. Can any 1 of testers which have access to 4.0 post a few pictures or video with artillery effects ( HE and ICM)? Pretty please 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azure Lion Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Would meshing in a deeper concrete foundation and setting buildings such that none of the standing structure's perimeter is below the terrain be a viable option for some of the buildings? Or perhaps setting the buildings to have a road mesh within the foundation? Or both depending on the building? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ssnake Posted June 29, 2016 Members Share Posted June 29, 2016 When you're dealing with slopes you would neither want to have the main door substantially above ground, nor the windows at or below ground level. There's only one way to deal with it, and that's a proper adjustment of the surrounding terrain. It must be done in high resolution since buildings are usually close to the roads surrounding them, and high resolution requires preprocessing. So... that's why. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TankGirl90 Posted June 30, 2016 Share Posted June 30, 2016 Sounds good to me 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kev2go Posted June 30, 2016 Share Posted June 30, 2016 (edited) 4 hours ago, BigBadVuk said: I did upgrade mine already - I have now i7 5820 with 16GB of DDR4 and i decided to stretch for 8 Gb model of R9 390x instead of smaller one.. With this rig 3.028 is VERY smooth ( but i never tried x86 version, just x64) even with lot of things going on and details near max. There is no going back now but im nearly quite sure that i will keep my 60+ FPS even with new particles and weather and later, terrain. Will game be more CPu demanding or more GPU demanding.. i dont know, i upgraded all 3 crucial components, and this should be enough imho. About the delay - as ppl already mentioned, with all new things i really doubt any1 will miss too much new high res terrain for another few months. My wild guess is that maybe most obvious thing which will follow the lack of high res terrain would be the suspension animation. It will use the old grid density so it wont go up and down so smoothly or so frequently. P.S. Can any 1 of testers which have access to 4.0 post a few pictures or video with artillery effects ( HE and ICM)? Pretty please well the current requirements arent very high to run SB pro pe anyways, even with a graphics update with 4.0 i feel confident my current desktop is more than enough to run it smoothly. core i7 4790K , 8gb ram and Amd 280x has proved enough to run DCS, though im thinking of upgrading since there been a significant performance gain in new generation cards that have begun releasing this summer, finally moving up to 14nm and 16nm architechture. Weve had cards based on 28nm architecture for nearly 3 generations now. Edited June 30, 2016 by Kev2go 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azure Lion Posted June 30, 2016 Share Posted June 30, 2016 Well, if the terrain auto levels near roads, having an invisible road mesh in and around the foundation centered along the perimeter of the building would adjust the immediate surroundings I would think. As far as buildings near roads, that get's pretty tricky if you want it to be near the level of the road. Perhaps if it is within a certain distance and the slope isn't too steep, it sets it to within +/- x units above or below the nearest road with smaller tolerances the closer it gets to the road, though I expect this to already be incorporated into the terrain engine. Also, meshing in a porch and stairway for some of the buildings would work as far as high entryways, though I can see why this is not the most viable of options as it would need to be paired with at least some terrain leveling for the really steep slopes. Perhaps even have it to where the building is removed/unplaceable if the slope is too steep. Anyway, I digress, I am probably bringing up things your team has already gone over. Just trying to brainstorm in the hopes of trying to assist is all. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidZill Posted June 30, 2016 Share Posted June 30, 2016 I support this, but it would be a great added bonus if you guys could doctor up the m1a1/m1a2 interiors to look like those screen shots of the m60a3...the weathering, intricate details, etc. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gibsonm Posted June 30, 2016 Share Posted June 30, 2016 14 minutes ago, DavidZill said: I support this, but it would be a great added bonus if you guys could doctor up the m1a1/m1a2 interiors to look like those screen shots of the m60a3...the weathering, intricate details, etc. So put it in the wish list thread. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daskal Posted June 30, 2016 Share Posted June 30, 2016 (edited) With regards to the delay - I'd be more than happy if you would just scrap this update and only release one complete, tested and working package for Christmas instead. I remember back in the previous major release particles were left out, and said to be available in the coming months which never happened. So... take your time and realease only when its done Been playing SB for the past 10 years and am more than happy with it. Waiting for another few months does not bother me. Just my two cents. Edited June 30, 2016 by daskal 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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