[Legate Damar]

Two questions

1. What is the biggest ship that has ever been modeled?

2. How big can a ship be before the game will crash?

[The E]

Ships can (in theory) be infinitely large. However, due to floating point math inaccuracy, you will run into issues if you go above a few hundred kilometers.

Of course, this doesn't cover the other issues associated with such large ingame entities (you can't interact with them in a meaningful way, making them look good requires an insane amount of polygons and textures). In short, you won't see crashes. You won't be able to make these things fun, but at least it would be non-crashing not-fun you'd get.

[Legate Damar]

Is a planet doable?

[Snail]

The largest in-game model ever would probably be the "Earth" planet model from Inferno Release 1, which was a sphere 12 million meters in diameter. It was used as a mission background.

This is generally discouraged. Planet bitmaps and skyboxes can do the job better.

[Dragon]

There are also terrain models, which actually work pretty well. It's pretty much the only use for such enormous models. They're a priceless resource for any mod that wants to include flying in atmosphere, but there isn't many of them, and most are lo-poly. In general, any big object, be that terrain or a very large space station, is most useful as a "mission environment". There's an enormous mission design potential in there, but due to the difficulty of making both assets and missions using them (AI crashing tendencies don't help), it's barely touched in most existing campaigns.

[Rampage]

The largest in-game model ever would probably be the "Earth" planet model from Inferno Release 1, which was a sphere 12 million meters in diameter. It was used as a mission background.

This is generally discouraged. Planet bitmaps and skyboxes can do the job better.

HINT: Kinda' hard to destroy a planet that's stuck to the background as a bitmap (would involve many well-coordinated SEXPs and doesn't look as good).

R

[JGZinv]

We've been working on getting fractalspounge's SSD in game @17.6km and I think it's do-able... but the model was never intended
for game use. PCS2 seems to have a limit of about 200,000 polies per object too, so it's a shot in the dark if you'll actually
get output or it just sits there and eats ram into infinity, at that size.

[Dragon]

The largest in-game model ever would probably be the "Earth" planet model from Inferno Release 1, which was a sphere 12 million meters in diameter. It was used as a mission background.

This is generally discouraged. Planet bitmaps and skyboxes can do the job better.

HINT: Kinda' hard to destroy a planet that's stuck to the background as a bitmap (would involve many well-coordinated SEXPs and doesn't look as good).

R

Vidmasted did just that, in the Fotune Hunters III. It did involve a lot of coordinated SEXPs, but was absolutely stunning. Seems quite a chore to write though.
As for SSD, Gargant is 40km long and works (well, outside of the nebula, where the engine doesn't quite know when to render it).

[Kobrar44]

We've been working on getting fractalspounge's SSD in game @17.6km and I think it's do-able... but the model was never intended
for game use. PCS2 seems to have a limit of about 200,000 polies per object too, so it's a shot in the dark if you'll actually
get output or it just sits there and eats ram into infinity, at that size.

isn't it something like 64k? I've encountered this problem befre 200k and splitting the model into 50k pieces helped[with not working at all].

[The E]

The limit is set to 2^16, aka 65536. Expanding it is not an option, just in case you were wondering, since a) it would require adjustments to the pof format (which would involve changing both PCS2 and FSO), and b) because as Taylor once said, this is a game, not an art show. If you really think you need so many polygons, you are not thinking in the right way for a game designer.

[Dragon]

Besides, splitting the mesh into separate objects isn't a bad thing, and if you use detail boxes, it's a great way to improve performance on big, long ships.

[LordMelvin]

Is there a tutorial anywhere that covers use cases for detail boxes?

[yuezhi]

didn't know there's a planet. anyways, i figure the pygros is the farthest it'll ever go.

[General Battuta]

didn't know there's a planet. anyways, i figure the pygros is the farthest it'll ever go.

nope!

[Nuke]

didnt we already go over this in general fs:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80415.0

im convinced its possible to get (smallish) planet or moon sized geometry in the game, or to completely cover the entire useable game grid with high quality terrain geometry, with clever detail-boxing techniques and minor engine tweaks. i went into that in the other thread and i dont feel like repeating it.

[Droid803]

guys planets arent ships
nor are terrain objects

[Woolie Wool]

Really the Orion is about as big as a FreeSpace ship can get without losing much of the interactivity and turning it into a BDO.

[Legate Damar]

I need big ships for massive battles, to make it look impressive.

What the player does is a small part of the battle.

Like in a real battle, is it not up to one soldier to win, every one plays their part and has their assignment.

[rscaper1070]

Uh-oh, BOE here we come.

[Legate Damar]

I know about BOE problems, but this will be different as the player has a clear objective to do and it's important.