[Bobboau]

I just completed a stress test on the new HT&L engine FSO is useing, and it is at least 6 times as fast, probly more than an order of magnatude, meaning you can now ad at least one more zero to the number of polys to can have on a ship (fighters were about 2-500, now 2-5000, capships were 1-2000 now 1-20000) and expect good frame rates, the new HT&L engine, likes the following,
use as few textures as posable,
(use exsesivly large textures (1024X1024) if needed for this, it's that big of a deal)
use as few subobjects as posable (this is no longer a visual quality thing)
high poly counts are now encoureged, even if there is no good reason for them,
lower LODs should remain fairly low, we could just add one super detailed LOD on top of what is alredy there

my test was to convert a pers into cob, NURB it, and convert back to POF
1368 verts
1382 polys, many of them quads, all had to be triangulated during the load
4 of them in mission (+ golgotha, several drones and 4 polaris stations (wich is actualy several of them glued together think theres about 1300 in each)), absolutely no slowdown at all (an aparent 120 FPS), with somewere on the order of 12000 polys
the same mission with the same models in the most recent SCP build was about 20 fps (on my machine)

I chalenge any modeler to create a POF that meats the criteria sugested (namely use fewer than four or five textures on a capship, no more than one on a fighter, this is not a RAM issue, so the texture(s) can be quite large), that slows my computer down below 120 FPS, it simply cannot be done!

[karajorma]

Sounds good but...

Most [V] capships use much more than 5 textures. Is the number of textures only important with higher poly ships or is it something we need to worry about with models made for use with the original FS2?

You say to limit the number of sub-objects. I presume that means the ~750 poly sub-object limit has gone and we can make models in one piece?

I've also recently been working on some bombs and torpedos for MG. Would there be a problem in increasing the number of polys for them (cause sometimes there can be a lot of them on screen at a time). Also can we use larger textures on them too?

[Sandwich]

[Bobboau]

the HT&L engine likes haveing everything the same, that way it can say, hey you graphics card, here is the position and orientation of the object and camera render those 10000 polygons over there to look right, if you have diferent textures you have two issues, first you have to tell it to render those polys over there twice, second changeing the currently active texture(s) actualy takes longer than rendering the current object

you will note
1368 verts
1382 polys,
one subobject
I'm not sure what the new limits are but I would like someone to try to find them

you can'y have more than 16 textures on one object
you can't have more that 5500 triangles in you're model (it gets triangulated by the engine, you don't realy have to wory about makeing you're model out of triangles, haveing mostly quads of something would provide a smaller file and be benifical)

[Nico]

so my arcadia with 21 maps won't work anymore?

[karajorma]

I'm not trying to knock this cause it definately sounds like a major improvement but there are a few things I don't quite understand.

The 16 texture limit is for what? Each subobject? Each LOD? Each model? (a few models are going to be broken if it's latter one).

[Bobboau]

16 textures on one subobject, if this is a problem it can be changed

[diamondgeezer]

Well... not being funny Bob, I mean this is great work and all, but the whole texture thing worries me somewhat. I mean my carrier had over 60 textures when I'd done with it, and PCS told me where to go. I know that's excessive and probably inefficient use of textures but all the same is there anyway you might tweak this issue to have less of an impact?

[Flaser]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Well... not being funny Bob, I mean this is great work and all, but the whole texture thing worries me somewhat. I mean my carrier had over 60 textures when I'd done with it, and PCS told me where to go. I know that's excessive and probably inefficient use of textures but all the same is there anyway you might tweak this issue to have less of an impact?

As far as I know, the problem resides in the fact, that HT&L renders with the same texture as many object in a single session as possible.
Using multiple textures therefore are bad; hence they cap the graphics engine --> ergo a manual cap had to be made to prevent.

I'm not one to do extensive mods, but I assume fusing textures could be a b***ch to do in some cases.

However I'm still in favor of the idea, except for special textures, like nameplates and damage and ect.
The reson is, that if a single or only a couple of textures where used (albeit huge in their resolution) that would make skining all the more easy.

Now, I don't mean reskins alone, but think of the possibilities: you could create a set of custom skins for each craft. Wouldn't it be nice if the pirates for one instance weren't using standard shiny GTVA paintjob on their crappy beat up fighers?

[Bobboau]

the max for the entire model is and always has been 64, I just figured no more than half of that would be in LOD0 and only half of that would likely be in any single subobject, I mean I can't even comprehend why you would need more than 8 textures per model (other than being lazy, wich is a perfictly good reason I supose) but look at it this way, you sacrifice the one instance in wich you would need 64 textures on one submodel for an insainly high framerate, if you absolutly need it, you can seperate the hull into two or more subobjects, and after this it will still render an order of magnatude faster than it does now (the non-HT&L engine), it's just if you send one texture it will be three or four orders of magnatude faster.

[Gloriano]

My friend will love this now he can now but his model to FS that i reskined

[Flipside]

Sounds ok to me! After all, not even the most powerful games engines in the business, written by people who are being paid to do so, offer absolutely limitless resources to designers

Flipside

[Ryx]

I'll try to cook something up!

[Styxx]

Alternatively, someone could bake textures for all current FS/FS2 ships and reconvert them, and have only a single, really high-res map for each ship. I suppose that would speed things up even further.

[Liberator]

When are we going to see or better yet get your latest masterpeice god...er, Bob?

[Nico]

Originally posted by Bobboau
I mean I can't even comprehend why you would need more than 8 textures per model (other than being lazy, wich is a perfictly good reason I supose)

well, for exemple, my arcadia, with its 21 high res maps, is really gorgeous, IMHO

edit: anyway, talking with woomeister, I realize that limit will break compatibility with some already released mods. Just put the old map limit, it's up to modders to deal with that. old pofs will still work, but now we know we'll have to optimize more on future mods to help T&L rendering, and that's it.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Bobboau
I mean I can't even comprehend why you would need more than 8 textures per model (other than being lazy, wich is a perfictly good reason I supose)

Area-specific details.... though i guess you can split those into seperate parts of single texture and use an unwrapper.  Sounds promising, though... just wish I had an photoshop handy......

[deep_eyes]

hey bob think u could allow us to test this thing?

[StratComm]

Originally posted by aldo_14


Area-specific details.... though i guess you can split those into seperate parts of single texture and use an unwrapper.  Sounds promising, though... just wish I had an photoshop handy......

What worries me is that tiled maps cannot be merged, and as most everyone knows most capships have tiled maps.  I can think of more than one mod that this will break (my Archangel comes close, as do several of my other mods... and a couple of unreleased things won't work for sure)  There has to be a happy medium somewhere, as to not break compatability and not set back a revolutionary upgrade to the graphics engine.

[Galemp]

My thoughts:

I like the higher details, but I'm a bit nervous about how the texture thing is going to affect the current Volition models. Each LOD of the capships uses what, 7 textures? So long as the same Volition mission will run as well or better with FS2_Open it's great.

And nobody's hit on the core issue here: With higher detail models, you won't NEED that many textures. The purpose of textures is to imply detail. If we can detail/greeble our models to this extent we can just use some fairly generic textures.

Another thing is that we can hope to see some really nice models and maps, depending on the skills of the mapper. Full-hull UVs like the Lucifer would be more efficient in the new engine, instead of the hulks with tiled textures we're used to seeing.

Something we're going to have to worry about here is that 256 color conversion. If we're limiting textures we're going to have to be careful with our palettes.

So, what are the other current advantages with HT&L? Can we use intercepting polies with impunity? How's the lighting? Are glow/shine maps still supported?