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Interestin g (and quite old) article about optimising for multi-core here:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/11237 I'm curious about this because it seems like a key to the games longevity, if it doesn't scale well past 4 cores, then long term increases in performance are going to be hard to come by - clockspeed improvement has ground to a halt, it seems that per-core optimisation of CPUs must be coming more difficult - so future improvements in CPUs will mostly be in number of cores. |
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I have not seen one cogent counter argument as to why they are bottlenecking the game, IL2 was 10 years ago so dont ** me with that, computers now are hundreds of times more powerful. |
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The number of aircraft in the official campaign is almost certainly an attempt to make sure that if someone has a computer that fits the specifications on the box, they will actually be able to play through the game they paid for, instead of being limited to puttering around in the QMB with a handful of aircraft. |
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Now irrespective of that, we keep hearing about this "cpu cap", where is this coming from? Says who? Did the devs specifically say CPU power is the problem? Why does this game or IL2 have problems with CPU when much much more complex games (interms of cpu function) can do far more than this game does on the same CPU? Over that all the stutering and problems we have seen are due to GPU/Ram over land and such, nothing ever to indicate it was "cpu based". So due to this they should develope the campaign for the mid range market, because in a few months time/1 year the current mid will be the low... |
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Of course, if a dynamic campaign is added at some point, then the devs will be able to re-evaluate how many aircraft can be put up, or maybe follow the suggestions here and add an option for players to set the maximum number of aircraft. Given a functional mission builder and there being no limit hard coded into the sim, initial unit numbers are probably one of the least important parts of scalability. |
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yes, I agree Quite disappointed in reading those comments, myself What it means is that I can't paint a skin to show a known level of wear in COD. I can paint a skin, and then the sim decides where the wear is, and if the wear the sim decides on doesn't agree with photos of the real plane, well, I must have done something that wasn't up to the correct standards? Baloney. AND it means that what they see on online servers is their yardstick for the community. I would love to have a dialogue with the Devs that came up with these comments. On the one hand, this confirms my fear that online play is the focus instead of one of the many facets of the sim. On the other, they don't know F-all what they are talking about concerning the efforts of the community as a whole. Quite disheartened to read their take on things. |
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I don't recall reading that, but I sincerely hope you're right |
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Luthier put this picture up halfway through one of the update threads, which is probably why a lot of people haven't seen it. http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/4379/109weathered.jpg I think the in-game weathering system looks very good, but I can understand why many skinners will wish to retain control of the weathering on their skins. |
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1. Did I say they have the same requirments? I was specifically talking about CPU usage by software, and that currently there should not be a CPU bottleneck, its GPU. So then you put words in my mouth by saying I cannot recognise the difference, what is this drawn on? What did I say that is incorrect? Seriously, go to school and learn how to uses something called a "thesis" in your argument, then use evidence to support the "thesis". My observation is very useful because in order to have all these units on the field, you need to not only run the AI that controls the armies, but indvidual pathfinding for soldiers and units which is one of, if not the most intensive CPU based operation that is EVER done in gaming. Not only is there 56k but they are on a surface all the time, so they are not flying around in the air where there are very few "obstacles". But I love how suddenly out of the blue you jump from CPU's to GPU's when you said I was incorrect about CPU's, fail to say why I am wrong in any way, then completely jump topics and ramble without a point about GPU's... Also as they are a small team of course they dont have the rescources of bigger devs, but if they cant optimize that IS NOT a hardware bottleneck, thats crappy programming/optimization and therefore all arguments about how they are trying to scale the game down to the lowest comps are invalid because they could "optimize" the engine and therefore would not need as much downscaling. As for the computer - if you have a rubish computer why are you gaming then? What entitles you to have a right to be able to play the game with a crap computer? Either upgrade, wait, or dont buy it simple as that. If you cant afford to upgrade a computer, go buy a console... :rolleyes: Its a question of sales, and to get sales they have to target the right market sectors. |
Heliocon, you answer you own question in the last paragraph of you post.
"Its a question of sales, and to get sales they have to target the right market sectors." The right market sector is the lowest common denominator. The kid playing the game on a hand me down, bought at Best Buy 4 years ago. Upgraded with $150 gpu 2 years ago. If that kid thinks CoD is going to be a slideshow he won't buy it. If he does buy it, and it runs and looks halve decent, 1C has another convert for life. In two or three years he'll upgrade with a, by then cheap, middle of the road computer, turn the eye candy up and play the game as well as you and I on or now expensive high end computers. Sad for us more fortunate? Jus the way it is. Wish it was different but without that kids $50 you and I will not be playing this game at all. I've got the best I can afford today coming down the pipeline and will probably only be able to use 50% of it's potential with CoD out of the box. That's really my own bad cause I knew that when I ordered it. I'm pretty sure though that I can get it on its knees when making custom missions. |
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Actually I just realised, I am more irritated with peoples excuses of CPU bottlenecks then the actual 21 planes themselves... lol |
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Let's cut them a bit of slack. |
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If there is one, might not be for awhile, this game needs a dynamic campaign system along with a good pilot career mode, similar to what there adding to rise of flight. |
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Luthier did make it clear recently that CPU was the bottleneck, not GPU. He said that in testing they even made each object appear as a single pixel and it made little difference. A flight sim has a heck of a lot of complex calculations to make compared to your normal shoot em up....flight model, engine management, air AI, ground AI, weather, line of sight calculations for radar and AI etc. etc. I reckon just figuring out who can see who based on the position of clouds and hills could be a massive resource hog in itself...one of the reasons no sim has done this adequately to date. |
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The difference with a RTS game is that your units will not have any physics at all to compute. Each unit is a list of numbers which go through a relatively basic calculation to determine which number is bigger i.e. who wins. The reason RTS games are CPU intensive is because of the large numbers of units possible. Path-finding is indeed CPU intensive but do you think that there is no path-finding in COD? Path-finding in 3d space is exponetially more CPU intensive than on a single plane. The point being that yes, both types of games are CPU intensive but for very different reasons. As others have said larger formations will be possible but this is a product, and you sell a product to as many customers as possible - it doesn't mean the game has been coded badly or they are trying to dumb the game down to remove all your fun. Besides, as others have said if your computer can handle it there'll be plenty of big formation missions built by the community. Goodluck shooting down 20+ bombers when they come along. :-) |
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An extra slider for the exhaust would be great.
The 109 could be more dirty but the exhaust is a bit overdone imho. |
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http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/4379/109weathered.jpg Here is the other picture Luthier put up to show the contrast between full weathering and no weathering. Comparing the exhaust stain to RL pics of heavily weathered Bf109s, the color is right but its too well defined and in RL the staining follows the top of the wing instead of the side of the fuselage. Don't forget the weathering is a slider though, not an on/off switch, so the weathering doesn't have to be so pronounced. |
If those models and skins that appear in the menu are the actual ones that are in the game proper (As it was in IL-2) then I'd have to say I'm a tad disappointed. Buuuuuuut! We don't know how old that pic is, and what has been changed since then.
As was mentioned by Feathered_IV, the contrast between the two aircraft is almost negligible, and the markings look to be factory fresh. Still, "Pre-Release", hopefully this has been changed. p.s. If Oleg or someone is reading this. Will skinners be able to create transparent portions to their skin so bare metal can show through? Maybe a specific colour that translates to transparent? |
Also the slider is al the way to the other side, which is rather exceptional I think, the ground crew would clean the plane once in a while, I think it comes pretty close when after a year of service and no ground crew cleaning/ maintaining.
Nothing wrong with it. |
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So changes are unlikely. However, I don't see any need for more detailed models in the menu. 1) The existing models are excellent, and 2) Creating even more detailed models that will only be used by the menu would be waste of resources that even if the team had time to do, could be more profitably used to make things like more cockpits or aircraft. |
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In fairness though, you did ask the same two questions about half a dozen times in the same update thread. Also in the interest of fairness, I should have said you were spamming the update thread, not the forum. |
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As for the weathering where it says physical and visual, is physical = mechanical? As in if you fly it and take bullets then donw repair something might malfunction? Maybe a more used aircraft engine overheats more easily or it responds slower?
As for CPU 3d space is easier - because there are little/no obstacles and over than the ground and other planes they wont get stuck. Managing pathfinding for 56k units, and they cant "overlap" is immensly complicated, so I dont know why you repeated what I alrerady said then dismissed it without addressing the specific points of why it is complicated. As for flight models, I believe we know that COD will have properties for surfaces, and modifiers for movements. They are not using a realistic (in the particle - airflow tracking sens) model which is the CPU eater. due to this its not as an intensive operation as you make it out to be, the properties and values are pre determined and modified but are not truly ground up and calculated in any way. |
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By contrast, pathfinding for an aircraft needs to be more sophisticated. The basics are keeping a safe distance from the ground, but more accuracy and hence more calculations are required to do this, because unlike an RTS unit which can bump into the obstacle and then move on, a plane will turn into a fireball on contact with the ground. Simple flight from point A-B is easy enough, you just need the altitude and speed, but that is still more complex than moving an RTS unit across open ground, because an RTS unit doesn't need to calculate the altitude and moves at a fixed speed. After that, you need to be able calculate an accurate path for takeoff and landing. Once you add combat things get much more complicated for the Flight sim. While a RTS unit only has two basic parameters added, which are the range that it will sight (and move to attack, if the units AI is set to) and the range where it can use its attack, the aircraft requires many calculations on how to position itself relative to the enemy and more to be able to lead the enemy and shoot accurately. More so if you want the AI to be able to predict the needed aiming point against a manoeuvring target. Separate calculations are required for different styles of attack, for example dive-bombing or strafing. Of course, you can simplify some stages, IE in Il2 AI landings are simplified to a fly to this point, and then be guided in on rails down to the runway system, and AI bomber pilots do not "know" the whereabouts of other aircraft, which leads to collisions, but I believe the intention is to improve on this aspect in CoD. One of the methods mentioned was AI bubbles, where aircraft outside a certain range use simplified AI and pathfinding. End of story, the AI and path finding in a simulation of the level of CoD requires at least several hundred times as many computing resources per unit as an RTS. |
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Again TW = 56,000 units moving in often complex enviroments. The pathfinding needs to be done but it cannot "conflict" with the paths or posistions of thousands of other units and therefore becomes a massive calculation interms of pathfinding. There are a few errors in your post, for example just because its a 3d space (of movement) does not add much load to the pc at all, thats not how the computer calculates movement. Also altitude and speed does not in any significant way take extra cpu processes, because its all numbers and once broken down, fundamentally simple. Now when you have an interaction between two aircraft when one has to "attack" thing get more complicated. Depending on the AI used it can be very complex but since neither of us know how the ai operates then we should not include that, same goes for a TW rts where the ai has to utilise its limited troops (and if you dont know about TW youtube it, it isnt age of empires). Now as far as calculating when/where to fire thats one of the most simplistic thing it does. It is simple math that can be done by hand, although it would have to be rapidly updated in a serial fashion. On the other hand pathfinding creates mathmatical conflicts and recalcs which is the cpu eater. |
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