[phreak]

models in the thousands of polies range isn't going to be harmful.  we can probably get away with 100,000 poly ships for use on high-end cards

[Taristin]

...right.

I doubt that. Maybe with the x800, or the 6800 Ultra, but not on the current stuff. I think, atleast.

[ChronoReverse]

I hope you mean 10000, 100000 polies is more than a tad too much methinks.

[Kosh]

That would kill my mobility Radeon 7500......

[Drew]

Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
...right.

I doubt that. Maybe with the x800, or the 6800 Ultra, but not on the current stuff. I think, atleast.

at least? the 6800 can render over one million polys in real time. ON a current high end card like a Radeon 9500, 100,000 polys isnt much at all

[Bobboau]

if properly built it probly wouldn't be a problem at all, 100,000 poly ships I don't think would be a problem,  you'd need a radeon 9700 or better I'd say, but it could handel it with decent frame rates.

[Rictor]

I think its the ripples as well as the un-texturiness of the texture (well, why dont you think of a better word) that makes it look like an ice cave. There also appears to be some sort of lighting contributing to the effect.

Damn, that looks cool. If only Freelancer had been like that....

[Bobboau]

"think of a better word"

subtlety

[JarC]

Originally posted by PhReAk
models in the thousands of polies range isn't going to be harmful.  we can probably get away with 100,000 poly ships for use on high-end cards

you, my good man, have totally lost touch with reality.

unless you want freespace Open to be played by only a handfull of people...I'd rather go for the largest market share and make sure it runs on as many cards as possible...

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by JarC
you, my good man, have totally lost touch with reality.

unless you want freespace Open to be played by only a handfull of people...I'd rather go for the largest market share and make sure it runs on as many cards as possible...

which is exactly what we're doing. Your point?

[Ransom]

Originally posted by JarC
you, my good man, have totally lost touch with reality.

unless you want freespace Open to be played by only a handfull of people...I'd rather go for the largest market share and make sure it runs on as many cards as possible...

Well he did say "for use on high-end cards". Although even the Unreal Engine 3.0, which only runs reasonably on an FX 6800, only has 10,000 odd polies for a single model. And I don't think they've released the 6800 yet.

Say we improve it so it still runs on low-end cards. Now the high-end card owners are left with something that, to them, looks sub-standard (compared to new games, like Far Cry). The only solution I can think of is to have two versions of every improved model, a lower poly one (1000 polies or so?) and a higher poly one (5000?). Although frankly I don't think that solution is very workable.

[ShadowDrakken]

Ransom: there's another solution that's better than that... continue with the low poly models, and add z-mapping support as an option.  Then high end card users can just turn that on and it adds the effect of a higher poly model for them

[Liberator]

I got a better Idea, set a minimum requirement and stick to it.

Tell people ahead of time they aren't going to be able to run this on their 5 year old hardware and quit trying to cater to them.  Decent Video Cards are cheap these days and there's almost no reason that someone shouldn't have at least GF4 or Radeon 9xxx.

[kasperl]

I got one very good reason, a Mobo that won't give off the right voltage.

I am stuck with R7000 or below, thankyouverymuch.

[JarC]

Originally posted by Lightspeed


which is exactly what we're doing. Your point?

My point already explained, but indeed, you are correct in stating the current development does just that, but once the polycount will be on average 10000-100000 the result will be an elitair game, only playable by a handfull, say bye-bye to (large) community interest.

For a practical example of what it does to a system, try out the demo mission that has all of Omicrons hi-poly Star Trek models in it...

Not that I am against hi-poly models, but I notice a tendency to go overboard here, we are talking about an action-packed shooter here, not a virtual sight-seeing tour. There's no one that is gonna stop midflight/fight to admire the scenery (unless the pilot has suicide tendencies) so in most situations, such hi-poly counts are wasted on 95% of the player public...

[Flipside]

Or copy V's example and do a high spec and low-spec version of your campaigns, the hardest part would be the models themselves, but it's the easiest way to provide maximum flexibility and accessability.

I think it had already been decided that HT&L would probably be a minimum requirement in the end?

[ShadowDrakken]

Originally posted by Liberator
I got a better Idea, set a minimum requirement and stick to it.

Tell people ahead of time they aren't going to be able to run this on their 5 year old hardware and quit trying to cater to them.  Decent Video Cards are cheap these days and there's almost no reason that someone shouldn't have at least GF4 or Radeon 9xxx.

Cheap? $200+ is hardly what I would call "cheap" (with the exception of a few companies' quality)

I for one can't afford even a $20 video card at this point, and my GF4 Ti4600 is becoming very quickly outdated.  I'm sure there's also quite a few kids playing still, who are limited by what their parents are willing to fork out.

Don't presume everyone can afford to keep up, I don't have plans on upgrading until 2006 at the earliest.  I'd rather see developers take the time to make their stuff work even on the MX level cards so that more people could enjoy the games.  Just use scalable graphics options like the better games out there.

[Fineus]

The GF4 4600 Ti is fine for what we're doing to FreeSpace at the moment... I don't think we're trying to turn this into a Far Cry level game here - but if you're trying to run it on a TNT2 then you should expect a performance hit and seriously consider a hardware upgrade.

[Taristin]

Hell, you should consider an upgrade at the GF2 level. I know I am. *still waiting for ATi's new card to kill pices of last-gen cards*

[Gregster2k]

It already has, Raa'Torh. I bought an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR from CompUSA for $250 USD two Sundays ago. Awesome card, can't run the latest and greatest at max speed but its playable. FSO runs great, but suffers from all the performance problems associated with it, including massive texture load. Some of these days I'm going to go into my VP file and make all the sizes of the textures multiples of 2 because I am too impatient to wait for the community to do it for me

The Radeon 9800XT 256MB is holding the title of "ATI's current $400+ buck card". If you wanna wait for THAT monster to drop in price, you may have a long wait.

If you do get an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, don't install the CD at all, just go to ATI's website and download the latest Catalyst drivers to be hummin right along.

Your mileage may vary.

P.S. My Anti-Aliasing doesn't work with FSO. If you adore your AA your gonna have to lobby the SCP team to fix Radeon AA support with FSO, because I have tried EVERYTHING I know to fix AA and NONE of it works!