[YodaSean]

Originally posted by LtNarol
no, its called a smaller screensize pixelwise to fill the 14-17 inches of monitor, with higher resolution maps.  Its like using a magnifying glass in a sense, you can zoom out way far with a higher pixel screen and see less of everything or you can see more and render less by veiwing few pixels in greater detail, it would really bring out higher resolution maps.
 

So what your saying is that you want to run the game at a mind-numbingly low resolution in a small window so that it doesn't look as bad, but it is almost impossible to see?

[LtNarol]

no, just enlarge pixels so there are few pixels per square inch of monitor, no reason to go to more pixels.  Fewer pixels with higher resolution maps work better anyway.  And i do mean 16b

[Grey Wolf]

Originally posted by NotDefault
I have a 32MB TNT2 Ultra

It's actually much better than it sounds.  Along with the 400mhz Celeron in this computer, it can handle most games (although the latest types have to be played with very low detail).  It can nearly max out all the FS2 detail settings (on 1024x768, 32bit).

Hmmm... Maybe processor speed is more important. I have a 550 P3 with a 16MB TNT2, and I run most things with the high graphics level.

[el84]

Originally posted by LtNarol
no, just enlarge pixels so there are few pixels per square inch of monitor, no reason to go to more pixels.  Fewer pixels with higher resolution maps work better anyway.  And i do mean 16b

Aaaargh! My brain hurts just trying to make sense of that. If you didn’t have 1300+ post count, I’d think you are just a troll. But perhaps you just don’t understand technical things like pixels and bytes. Hey, that’s OK if you don’t. Not everyone can be a rocket surgeon.

I am curious: What’s your definition of a “pixel”?
And what unit of measure is a “b”?

This should be good.  

[LtNarol]

pixel: measurement used for size of graphics, in this case, we're used to shrinking them, what if instead, we enlarged them a bit, make the screen a bit lower resolution, but not by enough that the eye can tell, on the other hand, thats a lot less rendering per second for the system running the engine, we can used that freed up space for better things, on some computers, higher resolution maps.

as for b, bit, i have a 16 bit 3d accelerator, dont know much about what that is in megs, but it runs pretty damn slow; considering i got it for $10 or so, its not that bad.

and watch who you're calling a troll



Edit: wow, i do have 1300+ posts, that was fast...i only got up to about 100 on vBB before it went down and i was there a lot longer...

[##UnknownPlayer##]

High res maps with a lower res overall resolution won't work. All that extra detail will be lost because the screen resolution is lower. Fine lines on the textures and such will look awkward. Anyone with a bit more of an idea about this want to take over?

[EdrickV]

The phrase "16-bit" normally refers to color depth. It doesn't really have anything to do with resolution. If your video card can only do 16-bit color (the Display control panel's settings tab will tell you what you're at and can be used to see how high you can go with different stuff) then it must be worse then a Voodoo 3. The statistic most often touted for 3D cards is the memory. The Voodoo 3 has 16 MB of memory and is capable of 32-bit color at 1024x768. (And maybe higher, but I don't think my monitor supports higher resolutions as it is just a 15" so I can't tell.) 16 bits BTW is two bytes. 8 bits per byte. 1024 bytes per kilobyte. 1024 kilobytes per megabyte. etc. A byte is equal to a number from 0 to 255. Hexadecimal: $00 to $FF. F being the highest single digit "number" in the hex number system. A bit is either a 1 or a 0. It's a base 2 number system and counts oddly. 123 is: 01 10 11. (Binary math is a mess to do manually, since 01 + 01 = 10. )

As far as reducing resolution, Direct X, as far as I know, supports 640x480, 640x400, 320x240, 320x200. (And of course higher resolutions which are irrelivent to the matter at hand.) The drop to 640x400 would just make stuff look weird and dropping to 320x240 would result in really bad looking graphics because the graphics would have to be "stretched" to fill the screen. (A single pixel as far as the game is concerned would take up multiple pixels on the actual screen.) I have a game called Magic Carpet. I played it on an old computer with an old monitor in 640x480 and it looked alright. When I got my new computer and tried it, it looked like heck and ran too fast so I had to switch to 800x600 (which is the normal resolution for a 15" I think) and it looked better and ran fine. Lowering the resolution will not improve the graphics quality. An 800x600 option would be nice, but it's not a big deal to me and would be a hassle to make. Not only would you have to rescale the pcx files, you'd have to redo the animations.

[LAW ENFORCER]

My XP2000+ (which is not worth the money but I wanted to upraged my other computer) with a TNT2 ULTRA runs perfectly even better now its overclocked. I am only now starting to notice slow downs in newer games like WTCW (I had to switch it to 'medium' texture details.... still in 1024*762) My 1GHz Athlon with a Kyro2 runs faster though.... my 450 with a TNT2 ULTRA (when I get my box a new Radeon or somet) is rubbish.... proably, I haven't built it up yet.

[CP5670]

I have a 1400mhz Athlon (TB) running at 1450mhz, 512mb DDR RAM and a Geforce3 (non-Ti) running at 250/575mhz; as can be seen, the stuff is somewhat outdated by now, but I have had a good experience with overclocking and FS2 averages around 150fps on 1024x768x32 and max details. I might upgrade this machine depending on how UT2k3 and U2 run.

[LtNarol]

ok, you've got nearly 3 times my processing speed, and you're saying thats outdated? (not to mention a much better 3dacclerator and 4 times my ram)

[el84]

LtNarol, correct me if I am wrong, I think you were trying to describe the following:

When you are right next to a cap ship, there is very little detail. Far away, the textures look great, but up close they look smeared and stretched. You’d like more detail on big ships at close distances. But you’re concerned that improving this would make FS2 slower on your PC.

A way to improve this is to have the game switch to an alternate texture map (and/or model) as you get near the object. Actually, this already happens. FS2 models have a few LODs (levels of detail). When you are very far from a ship, the game engine uses the lowest LOD, which has very few polygons and a simple texture map. Get closer, and the game engine switches to the next LOD. At a certain distance, the game renders the highest LOD. For really big capships, eventually a tiny portion (just a few pixels) of a single texture is stretched to fill your entire screen.

This has nothing to do with screen resolution. Same thing would happen at 320x200.

Modifying the game engine to use additional LODs is possible – the code to switch LODs is already there. It would be very time consuming, but shouldn’t be that big of a technical challenge. But unless the modelers are willing to spend the time creating these extra LODs, it would be wasted effort.

Any modelers out there want to explain how difficult it would be to make a super-high detailed LOD?

[LtNarol]

1. im not just worried about capital ships, im more concerned with the fighters at any rate, they have far lower detail closer up.
2. im not a newbie, i know what lods are, i've worked with them before, and fs2 currently supports 6 detail lods, most models only use 4 of which.
3. i model (though i have geometry problems often) and i texture, i know how the engine works, dont treat me like i'm new to modding.
4. increasing the screensize pixelwise is not neccesary to increase the resolution ingame, the texture maps dont even map full use of the 640*480 screen setting.

increasing it would be pointless as unless you have a 24inch monitor, you wouldnt notice a difference unless you hacked the fs2 registry to use maps at 1028*1028 or larger and rescale the maps

at 500 meters or more ingame, everything looks very detailed, when you get to 50 meters, it can use some work, but even then, a 1024*768 screen setting would do little good if the maps are 256*256 (which in case you didnt know, all capital ship maps are).  In fact, even most fighter and bomber maps are 256*256 or smaller, with very few exceptions.

[NotDefault]

I have a few things to say on the topic.

--------

Voodoo3 can do 32bit in 2D, I believe, but it cannot do 32bit in 3D, which is one of the major failings of the card (versus a TNT2, which is from the same era).

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The screen does not get more detailed as you lower the resolution.  If so, no one would be playing at 1024x768, they would be playing at 640x480.  The 1024 is the number of pixels that fit horizontally on the screen, while the 768 is the number that fit vertically.  For example, 10x8 would look like this:

x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x

Each x is a pixel.  A pixel is a solid block of colour (not exactly, but close enough for the purposes of this explanation).  It is only one colour.  There is no detail to a pixel.  A pixel can be red, but it's only one shade of red.  If you reduced the resolution of your screen to 1x1 (if that was possible), your screen would be a solid block of colour.

Higher resolutions do not always make things smaller, either.  When you resize your desktop, everything becomes smaller because the icons were designed to be a certain pixel width and height, so they look smaller because the pixels are smaller (so as to fit more into your screen).  This is not considered a problem as long as your monitor is big enough to allow you to see things well.

3D games, such as FS2, will not have this smaller effect, because they are using models instead of bitmaps (or equivelant).  These models are rendered and then simplified into the pixels you see on your screen.  The more pixels you have to cover an object (because it's either taking up a large portion of your screen, or you're running a high resolution), the greater detail you see the object in.  Antialiasing is basically a technique for making the simplification less obvious and distracting.

Because of this, you'd think that the higher resolution, the better.  Unfortunately, this is not strictly true, because the models are skinned with bitmaps (or equivelant).  Because of this, they do have pixels pasted onto them.  This means that a model, even at a huge resolution, will look like it has a blocky wallpaper on it instead of a textured surface if the skins are not high resolution enough to cover the monitor pixels that are showing them.  This is unfortunate, because it means that high resolutions don't always give the good looks you'd expect.  Bump mapping is one way of working around this, but it's far from perfect.

--------

I probably missed something or misspoke in places, so if you know what you're talking about, feel free to correct me .

[NotDefault]

Doh, of course you manage to post while I'm typing that up .

Originally posted by LtNarol
at 500 meters or more ingame, everything looks very detailed, when you get to 50 meters, it can use some work, but even then, a 1024*768 screen setting would do little good if the maps are 256*256 (which in case you didnt know, all capital ship maps are).  In fact, even most fighter and bomber maps are 256*256 or smaller, with very few exceptions.

Actually, 1024*768 does do good if the maps are 256*256.  If the ship is only filling up about a quarter of the screen, you should be getting approximately the maximum detail possible from the map.  A quarter of the screen is quite a lot, and ships will normally be filling less than this.  Therefore, a higher resolution than 1024*768 would help.

The only major problem comes when a capital ship is viewed at extreme close range, but that isn't the fault of high resolutions, and low resolutions would have just as much of a problem with it.

[LtNarol]

im not that dumb, i know how pixels work in games for crying out loud, but going to 800*600 means 1/2 more pixels to render, thats quite a lot for a seemingly small increase in detail, and would at the same time lower FPS (thats frames per second el84, you lost yet?).  Going to 1024x768 (god forbid) means more than double the number of pixels and more than double rendering, needless to say this will drag down FPS.  And whats the point of increasing the screen size if you use 256*256 maps? NONE  Therefore, you'll either have wasted a ton of FPS for nothing, or you'll have to hack the fs2 registry and rescale all the maps to 512*512 or larger; given you're apparent press for detail, you'll want 1024*1024 or higher.  This will again detract from FPS.  By now, the game will be barely crawling along on anything short of a Pentium 3 with GF-4 or better, and 256mb+ of ram; in which case you'll have to go to options and dial down detail in there just so the game will move along at a semi reasonable pace-in turn losing all that detail you just spent so much time trying to get by rescaling a hundred or so maps and screwing with the source code.  Now if you're some spoiled rich prick with money to burn and have a bunch of state of the art computer ware just for playing games, you will notice a increase in detail, but anyone else with a Pentium 2 and 128mb of ram will have to play it at next to no detail just so the thing will run.

Decreasing the screen size to 500*375 on the other hand, wont sacrifice much resolution screenwise but will free up HALF of the processing used from 640*480, space that can go to higher resolution maps.  Whats the point of having a 512*512 map if you're running on only 500*375 or screen? Simple: you dont always see the entire map, if you get close to a ship, often you're only seeing part of it, 512*512 maps on 500*375 screens mean you still have decent amounts of detail on capitol ships and fighters even at 50 meters distance.

[##UnknownPlayer##]

Exactly! At higher resolutions, more of the detail of the textures can be seen further away, so high resolutions help.

Capital ships have the blurring problem (a substantial improvement on the pixellation of the old days I might add) because they use maps that are the same resolutions as fighters. The only solution there is higher resolution maps, or to use more maps per capship. As such, the easiest solution (minimal game modification) would be to texture the cap ships with more maps.

[LtNarol]

you get higher resolution on more distant capital ships at higher screen resolution, yes, but in fs2, the things look find and unless you have 20-10 vision (which if you keep playing fs2 at higher details, you wont keep for long), you wont notice the difference in detail for a Hecate at 1000 meters from 640*480 to 1024x768

[NotDefault]

FS2 will not look better at a resolution lower than 640*480!!!!

Lower resolutions != prettier graphics.

Furthermore, you wouldn't be able to even SEE a 512*512 texture map at 500*375 unless the ship was filling up your entire screen or more.

As for your assertion that 1024*768 bogs the game down to a sludge pace, it does not!  I'm running a 3 year-old (or so) system and it can handle 1024*768, 32 bit, and very-high detail just fine.

[LtNarol]

im running a 550mhz pc with 128mb ram, and i tell you, running on current resolutions is hell enough of my pc in a dogfight involving 4 wings of enemy fighters with a couple of cruisers in the mix, for even larger scale battles, it would be insane to have a higher resolution.  Also, fighters do not use the entire map for each section, usually an entire fighter is mapped with 1 map for each lod, and that map is cut apart so that part of it corrispond with parts of the fighter, resolution of a fighter is incredably low at 50 meters, which means in formation, when following a ship, or when defending another fighter, it looks like ****.  Also bear in mind that when you're 100 meters away from a destroyer, it you're not seeing any whole maps, you're seeing parts of them, greater than 512*512 maps can be useful for a 500*375 screen resolution, theres no need to go higher than 640*480 in any case, what are you going to do? pick out individual lights on a Hecate at 2 klicks? on normal screens, you'd need a magnifying glass for that, and with the lods used, there would be no point because volition didnt intend on higher detail at longer ranges.

[EdrickV]

Originally posted by LtNarol
im running a 550mhz pc with 128mb ram, and i tell you, running on current resolutions is hell enough of my pc in a dogfight involving 4 wings of enemy fighters with a couple of cruisers in the mix, for even larger scale battles, it would be insane to have a higher resolution.

What kind of graphics card do you have in that thing? I ran FS2 (and Descent 3) fine on a P1 non-MMX 166 Mhz with 32 MB RAM and my Voodoo 3 2000 PCI. And I think I had the detail levels at Very High at least, with hardware textures maxed. (Though my 8X CD-ROM drive was ailing enough that some command briefings didn't want to play right, that was the result of an old and heavily used CD-ROM plus buffering rather then anything else and didn't impact the missions themselves.)