4.259 Terrain deformation

[Gibsonm]

I touched on this is a related thread but the conversation moved on.

 

What I'm seeing on some new maps is that the terrain takes time to "draw" properly.

 

To remove networking issues / red herrings, I've done the following on the local machine in the "planning phase".

 

Two screenshots showing before / after:

 

Pre:

 

 

Post:

 

 

A link to a very crude video displaying the same behaviour and the time elapsed:

 

https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZGqvDXZMyumneVu8VFtoCvnsxAq80y27cLV

 

Here is a screenshot of what I suspect are the relevant settings:

 

 

Subsequently during game play the same redrawing is displayed.

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by Gibsonm
Typos.

[Volcano]

Yes, IIRC the "redrawing" is actually the terrain streaming in. This is a necessary side effect, because the alternative was to force the user to wait when jumping to another unit, like at a black (or blurry) screen, while the terrain fully loads. This was very much disliked by the Beta team, because we can all think of the frustration ourselves -- being forced to wait while terrain loads, when you want to jump to a unit under fire and take direct control. There would be a lot of anger about a several second delay and the jarring break in the experience.  So, the current behavior was thought to be the lesser of two evils, as its much better to allow the user to jump to a location in the world immediately, and then have the loading (streaming) of the terrain happen on the fly. 

 

Naturally the more height changes made in an area, the more data that needs to be streamed/loaded, and the longer the time it takes to do it. Also, the further the user jumps away from current location, to the new location, then it means the more loading/streaming of terrain that is required.

 

Anyway, that is just the semi-technical reason why it does what it does -- not saying it cannot be improved, but there are limitations and design decisions that necessitated its current behavior. 

[Ssnake]

Simply put, it will never occur if you stay with the same platoon all the time. But once that you teleport across the map and if the map data exceed the amount of video memory, Steel Beasts simply needs time to replace the current terrain with data of the new location.

[Gibsonm]

On 4/25/2021 at 3:11 PM, Ssnake said:

But once that you teleport across the map and if the map data exceed the amount of video memory, Steel Beasts simply needs time to replace the current terrain with data of the new location.

 

Understood.

 

Perhaps a decision point for upgrading graphics cards then (to increase the amount of VRAM)?

[Ssnake]

That will only work up to a point.

Sure, if you can get a graphics card model with 12 GByte of video RAM or more - which officially are in production, just not available in 2021 - that could solve the problem for you (others with less memory might still experience the same thing). For scenarios on a 20x20km² map even 4 GByte should usually be sufficient.

 

But a linear increase of VRAM by factor three effectively only gives you a map size increase by square root of three, so 34x34km² which isn't that much more, and again, only "usually" because it really depends on how large the .HNT file in the map package grows ... which in turn depends on the number of height operations made (leveled & ramped roads, building foundations, anti-tank ditches). And then there's other factors like the number of different vehicles by different parties with their individual textures; all of this also consumes texture memory. (But the dominant factor would be large .HNT files.)

 

When we have military customers who would rather demand from us to support 300x300km² sized maps and the terrain be in high-res LIDAR scans, and they want division-sized formations and multiple parties with irregular fighters in them and the terrain is supposed to be dynamic to form craters with every artillery barrage, and partially destructible buildings on top of all that (where defending infantry, ideally, would intelligently make use of rubble heaps as cover and concealment) ... well, you get the drift. Hardware upgrades may mitigate, but cannot solve the problem. Terrain data streaming is inevitable. But at the same time it's also chiefly a problem of those who teleport around much.

[Gibsonm]

Thanks.

 

I was only interested from a personal point of view, not driving procurement decisions.

 

I just thought that upgrading my current GTX 1070, but if it effectively makes no difference (spending lots of money just to slightly reduce the streaming period) it makes little sense.

[Ssnake]

For the moment I'd keep that 1070. I totally hate that dual-1060 card that I have in one of my machines because it's noisy as hell, but I just can't seem to get my hands on something faster and less noisy at non-crazy prices (thank you, Bitcoin miners, I hate you). And I don't expect the situation to change dramatically in the coming three to six months, maybe not even until 2022. Current Bitcoin prices have made mining highly attractive at the moment, so pretty much all of the cards made are being absorbed by boring people in China converting CO2 emissions into cryptocurrency.