SoW:BoB 64-bit/Multicore optimised?

[Les]

Originally Posted by yarbles

... We may see BoB have a better handle on how to deal with more planes in the air and better terrian but other than that under a very restrictive budget, I wouldn't expect to see things much more advanced that what's already been done.

At the end of the day, I think this is a realistic expectation.

Oleg has stated we probably won't be able to switch views from plane to plane like we can in IL-2, so as to avoid having to render all planes in such detail, and therefore have more of them in the sky at the same time. I don't think a measure like that would be made if it were possible to keep that feature in by using some multi-threading technique. Or maybe that's more of a current graphics-power issue/limitation.

Whatever the case, in relation to this coding for multi-core thing, it's interesting for me personally to realize I probably have been sucked in by the Intel marketing/hype/spin. I actually believed them when they said games could be coded to make use of multi-cores. When in reality, that's probably just not practical for the most part, if possible at all.

It's interesting to note too that all the new SOW features we've seen on recent updates can be had as a result of the increases in graphics power and CPU core power (not the number of cores) that have taken place since the IL-2 days. And the old SOW features we saw and heard about ages ago, all the meaty nuts and bolts stuff, was never quaranteed to make it to the final version anyway. It was all, we can do this, we can do that, now we've just got to go find a way to put it all together and still have it run at more than 10fps. That's why no promises are made. It's all got to be made to fit, and no single feature can be allowed to drag the whole thing down.

Not saying SOW is just going to be IL-2 all cleaned up graphically, with just enough new CPU-intensive features to make even the most powerful release-date system crawl, but...it's probably just going to be IL-2 all cleaned up, with just enough new CPU-intensive features to make even the most powerful release-date system crawl. With less planes.

And if it is, well, okay, it's just a game, or a sim, or a way to learn about history and what some people have experienced for real in the past. So, it's no big deal.






But if they can get that multi-core thing working...!

(That would make SOW as innovative as the original IL-2 was, and that, all these years later, would be amazing.)

Les.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by Les

Whatever the case, in relation to this coding for multi-core thing, it's interesting for me personally to realize I probably have been sucked in by the Intel marketing/hype/spin. I actually believed them when they said games could be coded to make use of multi-cores. When in reality, that's probably just not practical for the most part, if possible at all.

Well. It's not all spin But it's a hell of a lot harder than making an Oracle database use all the cores/sockets for all those parallel queries. Falcon 4 is a good (and old) example where the multithreaded code works rather well with the ground war running on a separate thread. FSX also implemented a usable multithreaded code in SP1 where the texture loader was placed on a separate thread so that the loading of ground textures did not pause (stutter) the main render loop (much more fluid gameplay after that). Most modern block buster FPS games are multithreaded to some extent, but using it with mixed results... The bottom line is that it's not the salvation that Intel tries to make it (at least for gaming). Games using 4 cores in a way that really improves performance significantly does not exist as far as I know...

So sure, I guess with a lot of work the overall strategic AI in SoW could be placed on a separate thread handling the stuff outside of "the bubble" around the player, and stuff like object loading and textures. Maybe that won't be that important in a game that does not use unique satellite textures for the ground. I guess most of it will be loaded at mission load (especially if it uses the extra memory that the process may use on a 64-bit system ).