[Sandwich]

Having a second screen, according to Chris Taylor, gives you a complete second interface to the same mission. Imagine... early on, you have one screen at your base, where you're building structures and the like, while the other screen is locked to a scout unit who is exploring the map.... mid-game, you use one screen for keeping an eye on the main approach to your base, while the other you use to execute hit-and-run strikes on the enemy's outlying positions... towards the end of the level, you could simultaneously manage a two-pronged assault on the enemy's base, either with an attack from two directions, or a frontal diversion and a rear sneak attack. The possibilities are amazing.

[Ghostavo]

In other words, it is like Earth 2150/60.

[Fury]

It just needs quite much more graphics processing power to render two screens smoohtly instead of just one, and figuring from the game's graphics it won't be a a small feat if you plan to use max. or next to max settings.

[Deepblue]

This is exactly the reason why I keep saying the DS is perfect for RTS games. The second I saw the two screens + touch screen I envisioned a C&C remake.
 

I always thought it'd be ace, myself.  Bottom screen (touch) could be the tactical control, probably on a nice simple and clear display of your+enemy units, and the top would be information or battle display.

AoE:AoK did this and was actually quite good.

[Ulala]

It just needs quite much more graphics processing power to render two screens smoohtly instead of just one, and figuring from the game's graphics it won't be a a small feat if you plan to use max. or next to max settings.

Think a 7800GTX will do the job? Man I don't want to upgrade again, but it's looking inevitable. 

[Fury]

I'm sure the game will run on 7800 series well enough, but 7800 may not have enough juice to render game on two screens if using high details. But at this point I'm only speculating as no system requirements and recommendations have been published yet, afaik.

[Ulala]

Hmm, maybe I should get this in anticipation of SupCom's arrival...

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/monitor_3007wfp?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04

 

[Fury]

It's nice indeed, but look at power consumption! 147W to 177W (max)! Jebus! 20" screens are 1/3rd of that.

[Sandwich]

Besides, having one huge screen isn't the same as two smaller screens for the game's purposes... I doubt you can have two seperate zones of control on one monitor, no matter how large.

As for the graphics power required, remember how he did TA. It was an absolutely beautiful game, and the requirements were extremely low. Despite that, the units were rendered in full 3D against a pre-rendered terrain texture that looked 3D, mapped onto a virtual 3D heightmap. Stoke of genius, that.

[Ferret]

I still don't think that Supreme Commander will need all that much of a powerful PC. Just look at the videos, when he's zoomed in there's not that much detail being thrown about, and zoomed out all the units are replaced by coloured  blobs.
I'm sure your computer will have more trouble calculating the trajetory of every single shot than rendering the game on two different monitors.

[SadisticSid]

I'm sure your computer will have more trouble calculating the trajetory of every single shot than rendering the game on two different monitors.

Err, you realise that it's essentially twice the work, minus a little for caching, to render for a second monitor running at the same resolution? Calculating ballistics for a few thousand projectiles at any one time is child's play by comparison - they did it in TA 10 years ago, after all.

And if you look at the interview on SupComU:

Like everything else, the water already looks exquisite, powered with all the beauty of Pixel Shader 3.0, however, we were told that Gas Powered is developing new wave technology so the waves will lap up upon the beach, while explosions of naval engagements will send out shockwaves along the sea. The level of detail is incredibly high, however, some clever tricks to reduce poly counts have been implemented. [...] Many of you may have read the press releases by now, but I'll rehash anyway. The ideal system for playing Supreme Commander will be an SLI'd Nvidia rig running an Intel CPU.

I suspect the latter bit's for people who want to play on dual monitors, though.

[Ulala]

Mother.. looks like the time to upgrade is fast approaching.

[IceFire]

I still don't think that Supreme Commander will need all that much of a powerful PC. Just look at the videos, when he's zoomed in there's not that much detail being thrown about, and zoomed out all the units are replaced by coloured  blobs.
I'm sure your computer will have more trouble calculating the trajetory of every single shot than rendering the game on two different monitors.

I'm not even worried about the physics for each shot.  The IL-2 series has long been calcluating the physics required for each bullet fired in the game (with some simplification on the tank and triple-A batteries) including bullet penetration and so forth (they don't likely have to go that far) and with the IL-2 series you've got machine guns putting out 1200 rounds a minute.  Multiply that by 4 or 6 or 8 in some cases...the game doesn't even blink.  So I doubt that'll be a problem. It'll be the AI that eats the most out of the CPU.

[Ferret]

It'll be the AI that eats the most out of the CPU.

Eh, I don't think it will need to be that good either, it looks like everything is played out with clumps of units at once, so the AI just has to build a bunch of groups and send them out periodically. Builds base stuff when it needs it blah blah.
The AI will probably not be great, this looks way more like a multiplayer fun fun fun game.

[IceFire]

It'll be the AI that eats the most out of the CPU.

Eh, I don't think it will need to be that good either, it looks like everything is played out with clumps of units at once, so the AI just has to build a bunch of groups and send them out periodically. Builds base stuff when it needs it blah blah.
The AI will probably not be great, this looks way more like a multiplayer fun fun fun game.

No...AI in general.  AI routines for base building and all that stuff is a piece of cake.  ITs each of the units that have independant gun positions and so forth.  Thats all AI...even your units.  That eats into the CPU cycles because AI is just rediculous in how much it needs.  AI really hasn't gotten any better despite CPU advancements...its just very hard.

[Grug]

Pathfinding was a big pain in the butt in TA. They say Supreme Commander has vast upgrades to the AI of units, in particular the path finding stuff. So I would guess at CPU and RAM being the two crunchers for this game. CPU for AI and physics, RAM for the extremely large battles and maps.

We'll find out soon enough I guess.

[Ferret]

It'll be the AI that eats the most out of the CPU.

Eh, I don't think it will need to be that good either, it looks like everything is played out with clumps of units at once, so the AI just has to build a bunch of groups and send them out periodically. Builds base stuff when it needs it blah blah.
The AI will probably not be great, this looks way more like a multiplayer fun fun fun game.

No...AI in general.  AI routines for base building and all that stuff is a piece of cake.  ITs each of the units that have independant gun positions and so forth.  Thats all AI...even your units.  That eats into the CPU cycles because AI is just rediculous in how much it needs.  AI really hasn't gotten any better despite CPU advancements...its just very hard.

Supreme Commander units have this? They move independantly? That's pretty cool. Would be great if you could customise units and switch around thier weapons to suit your needs, Mech Commander style.

[Dave2040]

Nice Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3223875399371663925&q=supreme+commander

[IceFire]

It'll be the AI that eats the most out of the CPU.

Eh, I don't think it will need to be that good either, it looks like everything is played out with clumps of units at once, so the AI just has to build a bunch of groups and send them out periodically. Builds base stuff when it needs it blah blah.
The AI will probably not be great, this looks way more like a multiplayer fun fun fun game.

No...AI in general.  AI routines for base building and all that stuff is a piece of cake.  ITs each of the units that have independant gun positions and so forth.  Thats all AI...even your units.  That eats into the CPU cycles because AI is just rediculous in how much it needs.  AI really hasn't gotten any better despite CPU advancements...its just very hard.

Supreme Commander units have this? They move independantly? That's pretty cool. Would be great if you could customise units and switch around thier weapons to suit your needs, Mech Commander style.

Well most RTS games have independantly moved AI units.  Even the good old Dune 2 had this...each AI unit operates with its own bit of AI that governs what the unit does.  In recent years we've gotten pretty good at it.  In C&C Generals each tank for instance determines its path, what enemy targets are in range, if its being threatened, has a turret that can independantly track the enemy units while moving, and can, to some extent, even determine which threat (if presented with two similtaneously) it can better deal with.  Even in C&C Generals your units will respond when attacked and fan out to engage.

What Supreme Commander has takes things a few steps above from the looks of it but its really quite the same.  The biggest thing being that units like the Battleship have two or three main guns and a compliment of smaller guns.  So what I see is units that act more like they do in FreeSpace.  They know how to operate in their 3D space, they know what guns they have, each independant weapon system runs its own AI routines to prioritize, range, and track appropriate targets.  So when we saw the battleship go into combat we see the main guns engaging the enemy ships, while the AAA guns track, each independantly, the enemy fighters. With the air units we see them dogfighting in a pattern attempting to gain advantage and fire on the opposition.

Its still not all that sophisticated but its better than we've probably seen.

[Flipside]

Looks good, though I'm sure I saw some Eagle from Space 1999 in there