ETA on terrain patch?

[Rotareneg]

Quote

in all likelihood will never materialize in the first place.

 

So you're saying the update will never come out?

 

 

Everyone else was taking comments out of context, I figured should join in too.

Edited August 25, 2017 by Rotareneg

[inexus]

2 minutes ago, Rotareneg said:

 

 

 

So you're saying the update will never come out? That sucks!

 

 

 

......

 

Try and read one more time what ssnake wrote. 

 

Once the terrain upgrade is completed it would be interesting to see if importing assets could be considered so it is easier. That would truly open up great opportunities for modelling real world scenarios even better. 

[Rotareneg]

4 minutes ago, inexus said:

......

 

Try and read one more time what ssnake wrote. 

 

Once the terrain upgrade is completed it would be interesting to see if importing assets could be considered so it is easier. That would truly open up great opportunities for modelling real world scenarios even better. 

 

Uh, the sarcasm in my post was apparently too subtle.

 

[ChrisWerb]

I think (and I'm probably reading too much into what Ssnake said previously here) which maps get upgraded to what extent will depend on the availability and expense of LIDAR maps/imagery of different areas of interest to the user base. I'm not sure to what commercial availability can be suppressed, but I would not be surprised if certain countries would not want LIDAR quality mapping of their terrain to enter the public domain (NL for example still does not allow military installations to appear in google maps and some countries do not allow Google street view at all, let alone of defence related sites). Then there is the expense of LIDAR imagery which would presumably come down over time, but which Ssnake mentioned was currently non-trivial. I would expect military users to stump up the cash and not have any problems with national security for implementing LIDAR enhanced terrain for their implementations, but PRO PE may not benefit from those enhancements for some of those geographical areas for some time, if at all.

Edited August 26, 2017 by ChrisWerb

[Ssnake]

The conversion of maps that I'm talking about doesn't involve the inclusion of LIDAR scans. The latter would really inflate map sizes. But even then the old HGT format is obsolete inasmuch as it doesn't allow for a number of features that the new engine is intended to support, even if said features may not be available in this first iteration. Therefore we have not much of a choice - the old HGT files need to get converted into the new format - something that every long-term customer of SB Pro PE could, in principle, do for himself. However, we at least want to take care of the conversion work for at least all the scenarios that are part of the official SB Pro PE installation. So, that's what the current discussion is about, at least as far as eSim's official position is concerned.

[ChrisWerb]

Thank you for the clarification Ssnake. Is the terrain shown below LIDAR enhanced or the new format dicussed above? (I'm assuming the former).

 

 

Edited August 26, 2017 by ChrisWerb

[Gibsonm]

8 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

Therefore we have not much of a choice - the old HGT files need to get converted into the new format - something that every long-term customer of SB Pro PE could, in principle, do for himself.

 

Are you likely to include some sort of batch conversion tool?

 

That is convert all the *.hgt files in a given folder to the new format while I go out for the day (or weekend)?

 

Or do you need to convert them one at a time?

 

Edited August 26, 2017 by Gibsonm
Lost context due to interceding post.

[Ssnake]

Originally I thought that batch conversion was the way to go. We might still do that. For the PE release however it turned out to be the wrong path to take. There are too many almost identical maps. It turned out that we really have to go through the maps by hand, figuring out which map should be a base map, and fixing the maps' meta data in the process. I absolutely sympathize with the desire to have a magical converter where you just need to throw CPU time at the problem to make it go away. Be aware however that this is a very costly method, as far as disk space is concerned.

[BigBadVuk]

On 8/26/2017 at 4:12 PM, Ssnake said:

 Be aware however that this is a very costly method, as far as disk space is concerned.

 Are we talking about Tb or Gb?

How big our HDD should be? I dont want to learn on the day of release that i have too little space available. IF i have to , i will get new drive. 

Some heads up would be nice. ATm i have 1.5 Tb free, is that enough? 

[Ssnake]

Look, the actual amount of additional disk space compared to the current installation will not be THAT much bigger. Look at the current folder for your maps (C:\ProgramData\eSim Games\Steel Beasts\maps), and multiply by a factor of about ten. That's a realistic upper limit, and probably the actual size growth will be smaller, about factor four, due to a number of countermeasures. So, we're definitely not talking about terabytes here, that would be entirely unworkable. But the installation size of SB Pro PE might grow from currently 4...5 GByte to maybe 20...25 GByte, potentially more, depending on how many extra maps you have and if you decide to convert them all.

Now, a single 50x50km² map that consists of high resolution LIDAR scans would actually be several hundred gigabytes in size (uncompressed, might shrink to just under a hundred once that you're done editing it). But we're not shipping such a map, so we don't have to discuss it here.

 

So, in that respect SB Pro isn't more demanding in disk space than other contemporary games like Skyrim, Fallout 4, or similar. It's just a significant step up from the established standards since version 2.4 or 2.5, where the installation was maybe 2.5 GBytes, and today's 4...5 GBytes for version 4.0. HOWEVER, the file size growth forced us to reconsider certain convenience features in current multiplayer games. We can no longer embed height data in scenario files (the good news: scenarios shrink in size, substantially). It is no longer practical for the host so send map data to all connected clients. So in multiplayer games the participants need to come prepared, or they can't participate; they must download the map files separately before the game start, or do it while everybody else starts playing later join a session in progress. Maps must be "published" (=locked down against further editing) in order for the data compression to work, and you probably want to work with "delta maps" that only track the changes from a "base map" when tinkering with maps. Delta maps are much smaller, but again, if you use them, the base map must be present. And since we have these different map types (base/delta) and map states (published/unpublished) and a scenario could be based on any combination of these, we were forced to add a number of precautions and safety railings in the user interface to ensure data integrity in a network session. These all have (we hope minimal) impact on the user interface and some established practices.

 

I hope to create a number of tutorial videos in advance, explaining the details there.

[jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ]

I don't see any problem in leaving the choice for host to upload maps to clients on server connection. Or did I misunderstand something? It shouldn't take long to share even a few GBs of data on match start with current connection speeds. And if someone has a slow connection, they can download the map beforehand since they know it will take long. I don't see why you would remove a working feature just because some people won't have a fast enough internet to use it.

 

Of course, the ideal solution would be to have a mod tracker similar to Steam Workshop that can tell you the dependencies of a session and download them from a dedicated fileserver before you join, but that might take some programming hours to do.

[Ssnake]

If a map that is associated to a scenario takes up 300 MByte and needs to be distributed to 20 clients that's 6 GByte already that the host must upload. With a 16 MBite DSL connection (which typically comes with 1MBit upstream bandwidth) that means roughly 15 hours transfer time. This is a not very unrelistic case. Even if it's just a single client, that still means almost an hour waiting time.

 

So maybe you don't see a problem with that, we do.

[jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ]

Most of my friends, me included, have 100/100 fiber connections though, so it'd be a bit under 30 seconds per client. Waiting three minutes at scenario start would be more convenient than keeping track of download URLs for all scenarios in my folder.

 

Edit: not to mention LAN parties, where we mostly play. A gigabit lan connection wouldn't take very much time at all to do it.

Edited September 3, 2017 by jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ

[Mirzayev]

18 minutes ago, jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ said:

Most of my friends, me included, have 100/100 fiber connections though, so it'd be a bit under 30 seconds per client. 

 

Sure, but not everyone has a connection speed as fast as you and your friends. 

 

I think leaving the technical details to eSim is for the best. After all, they are the ones building the update. 

[Ssnake]

As far as map distribution is concerned, all you have to worry about is one big folder per map package that contains everything. All that the clients need to do is to download and to unpack it into the map directory (which will be user customizable). Once that the map is in place you can participate.

 

Yes, it's a deviation from previously established routines. You may consider the bandwidth considerations low on your priority list. We came to a different conclusion, and because of our different conclusions, most of the other UI changes cascaded from that. The SB Pro user interface hasn't changed much over the past ten years. Occasionally it must be possible however to change things lest we become entirely stuck in development directions that we can take. We don't only have to deal with SB Pro PE maps that are exclusively based on converted low resolution legacy terrain, we must also have a user interface that can deal with said LIDAR maps of several hundred gigabytes in size, each. This inflation of file sizes requires an adaptation of file handling, and with it, changes to the user interface.

[haraldhe]

I think Develeopers should not be hindered in their progession by unimportant issues as diskspace or frame rates......................If people want to play games and enjoy eyecandy, they have to invest in the proper hardware and stop complaining. When I read the forums I see a lot of people playing on medieval riggs....you cant take those moaners serious into account regarding future upgrades/updates.

[jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ]

Frame rates are definitely not unimportant. SB is almost unplayable now on some maps, with FPS dropping close to 10 when using thermals in woods.

[ht-57]

1 hour ago, jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ said:

Frame rates are definitely not unimportant. SB is almost unplayable now on some maps, with FPS dropping close to 10 when using thermals in woods.

 for you not an issue.

For me its a game breaker, and I 'm not using gear from 2010 or even medieval times. Ive had this sim on my system for almost 13 years now

and it has been one of the smoothest best playing experiences, even when my system paled in comparison to what I have now.

if sb is "almost unplayable on some maps" (which I agree with you on btw) how is that unimportant?

fwiw-  msi x99a pro carbon mb/ I7 6850k 6core @4.0 ghz/16gram corsair vengence ddr4 @3600 ghz/nvidea gtx ftw 1080 8gvram @2000ghz /Samsung evo850 250g ssd x2/ intel x86 80g ssd x2/ 1200w psu /asus 27ips mon x3

[jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ]

15 minutes ago, ht-57 said:

 for you not an issue.

For me its a game breaker, and I 'm not using gear from 2010 or even medieval times. Ive had this sim on my system for almost 13 years now

and it has been one of the smoothest best playing experiences, even when my system paled in comparison to what I have now.

if sb is "almost unplayable on some maps" (which I agree with you on btw) how is that unimportant?

fwiw-  msi x99a pro carbon mb/ I7 6850k 6core @4.0 ghz/16gram corsair vengence ddr4 @3600 ghz/nvidea gtx ftw 1080 8gvram @2000ghz /Samsung evo850 250g ssd x2/ intel x86 80g ssd x2/ 1200w psu /asus 27ips mon x3

If you read my post again you'll notice I said frame rates are definitely not unimportant. Good post otherwise tho.

[Ssnake]

Proper frame rates are a high development priority. Those particularly low rates seem to occur only with very specific combinations. I'm not sure if we have completely figured out what's causing those drops. I for one don't see it, on any of my machines.

[delta6]

Ok troopies...I am volunteering myself as a zippo target...How about we leave Snake alone and let him and his crew make this update happen..(In layman terms shut the intercourse up and let him alone)..Ok..I am prepared to be given a life time ban so let her rip...

[Ssnake]

Well, asking me questions isn't going to delay the release. That's why I'm here, so the actual developers are being left alone to do their work. The trouble is of course that we're running late, once again, and it's beginning to collide with other development contracts. That some of them have been delayed for external reasons, that some customers have a serious bottleneck in their contracting departments but still need to spend their budget on deliveries before the end of the year, well, it doesn't exactly help the situation.

[ht-57]

@jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ

Oop's -reading is fundamental ,sorry bout that. I'm old I get senior moments

@ Ssnake

You are correct sir- " Those particularly low rates seem to occur only with very specific combinations. "

carry on-

[delta6]

Not 1 post on this subject since 09/04/17...I am impressed...

 

[Marko]

6 hours ago, delta6 said:

Not 1 post on this subject since 09/04/17...I am impressed...

 

LoL