Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[HiFlyer]

Just keep in mind people like me who turn the scenery up. I was glad to find when I maxed out the trees that very few turned up sprouting from the middle of houses, but the dam area did sort of became "The world of the drowning trees." 

I've had tooooo much problems in this area wile cleaning the few trees (with normal forest settings) with original material roads
If you are curious, just make a large road in the middle of the lake, and yo will see what will happen 

More seriously, everything water related can be considered as a placeholder. I will need more advanced tools to handle that without loosing my mental sanity.

Lets hope we all get them. I started on a scenery a long time ago, but gave up when I saw yours and realized I could never go that far with just the tools available without going insane.

But I still want to try it. Just with better tools.

[HiFlyer]

A random question to the open air: Would it be possible to instance Tonywobs library of buildings, and would there be an increase in the efficiency of rendering them (drawcalls) that would make it worthwhile to do so, seeing as LFNA and very likely other projects in the future will probably eventually be using a zillion of them?

[Acetone]

A random question to the open air: Would it be possible to instance Tonywobs library of buildings, and would there be an increase in the efficiency of rendering them (drawcalls) that would make it worthwhile to do so, seeing as LFNA and very likely other projects in the future will probably eventually be using a zillion of them?

What do you mean by instancing?

One thing that could probably help the framerate in large areas is to tie the objects rendering to the terrain quality setting. That way, objects would not be loaded only when their size on screen is larger than x pixels. I'm trying to start a strict model policy around LFNA to keep the resources loaded as low as possible, by only using a limited numbers of packages. I should do a test, but with the current complexity of World2Xplane library, I think you could have ten thousands of these without really impacting a lot the framerate. However terrain quality setting may probably be lowered a bit in heavy urban areas, in order to keep the framerate smooth.

[HiFlyer]

Pretty much this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb173349%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

I'm almost certain the trees in Outerra are already instanced, and thats why there can be so any of them with so little overhead.

[Levi]

@HiFlyer,
Outerra is already making use of geometry instancing for separate entities. If you spawn the same object multiple times, the instancing will happen automatically.
Try this: Spawn an object, press Alt+7 (you must have debug_keys enabled in eng.cfg) and look at the number of draw calls. Then spawn the same object again and you'll notice that the number of draw calls will stay the same.

[HiFlyer]

@HiFlyer,
Outerra is already making use of geometry instancing for separate entities. If you spawn the same object multiple times, the instancing will happen automatically.
Try this: Spawn an object, press Alt+7 (you must have debug_keys enabled in eng.cfg) and look at the number of draw calls. Then spawn the same object again and you'll notice that the number of draw calls will stay the same.

Interesting. Is that for the planes, as well. So that a line of parked planes would show the same number of calls as one?

[Acetone]

Pretty much this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb173349%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

I'm almost certain the trees in Outerra are already instanced, and thats why there can be so any of them with so little overhead.

If I'm not wrong, it's already the case: in Outerra each package (geometry - textures) is only loaded one time in the GPU memory. You can have one or 200 instances of the same object, it will have the same memory footprint. However, global objects polygon count still have an impact, I'm not sure if there is a way to change that. One thing Outerra can't do for the moment, is making possible to resize objects.

Edit:

@HiFlyer,
Outerra is already making use of geometry instancing for separate entities. If you spawn the same object multiple times, the instancing will happen automatically.
Try this: Spawn an object, press Alt+7 (you must have debug_keys enabled in eng.cfg) and look at the number of draw calls. Then spawn the same object again and you'll notice that the number of draw calls will stay the same.

Interesting. Is that for the planes, as well. So that a line of parked planes would show the same number of calls as one?

Yep. But don't forget that the sum of each of these objects geometry still have to be computed to render the image. So spawning a lot of complex objects will still affect the framerate, but not the GPU memory.

LFNA has around 1022 objects in view when you're close to the airport, looking at Tallard, but only 240 draw calls.
Talkeetna uses a lot more different buildings so, 513 in view for 353 draw calls.

When you use the alt+7 tool, only the first instance of the object in a yellow box.

[HiFlyer]

Pretty much this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb173349%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

I'm almost certain the trees in Outerra are already instanced, and thats why there can be so any of them with so little overhead.

If I'm not wrong, it's already the case: in Outerra each package (geometry - textures) is only loaded one time in the GPU memory. You can have one or 200 instances of the same object, it will have the same memory footprint. However, global objects polygon count still have an impact, I'm not sure if there is a way to change that. One thing Outerra can't do for the moment, is making possible to resize objects.

Edit:

@HiFlyer,
Outerra is already making use of geometry instancing for separate entities. If you spawn the same object multiple times, the instancing will happen automatically.
Try this: Spawn an object, press Alt+7 (you must have debug_keys enabled in eng.cfg) and look at the number of draw calls. Then spawn the same object again and you'll notice that the number of draw calls will stay the same.

Interesting. Is that for the planes, as well. So that a line of parked planes would show the same number of calls as one?

Yep. But don't forget that the sum of each of these objects geometry still have to be computed to render the image. So spawning a lot of complex objects will still affect the framerate, but not the GPU memory.

LFNA has around 1022 objects in view when you're close to the airport, looking at Tallard, but only 240 draw calls.
Talkeetna uses a lot more different buildings so, 513 in view for 353 draw calls.

And essentially framerate is what I was thinking about: Lots of objects, with draw calls mitigated by instancing equals what size city before outerra starts to choke? How will it compare to current sims?

It seems we really have no data, and its something I wonder about.

[Levi]

Interesting. Is that for the planes, as well. So that a line of parked planes would show the same number of calls as one?

Yes, aircraft, watercraft, ground vehicles, well everything will be instanced if spawned more than one entity, draw calls will stay the same of course.

One thing Outerra can't do for the moment, is making possible to resize objects.

Actually, you can resize the objects, but by script with geometry object interface, using the method set_scale. And can be done in real-time as well.
Here's a quick video I made just for you:

Yep. But don't forget that the sum of each of these objects geometry still have to be computed to render the image. So spawning a lot of complex objects will still affect the framerate, but not the GPU memory.

Yep, that's right.

[PytonPago]

OMG ... what the ... 

[Levi]

OMG ... what the ... 

Pretty odd isn't? 

[Acetone]

Actually, you can resize the objects, but by script with geometry object interface, using the method set_scale. And can be done in real-time as well.
Here's a quick video I made just for you:

Wow, that's... hilarious 
Just tell me it's also possible to do the same thing with the mercenary 

[Levi]

Wow, that's... hilarious 
Just tell me it's also possible to do the same thing with the mercenary 

Yup. Well... almost:

[Acetone]

Wow, that's... hilarious 
Just tell me it's also possible to do the same thing with the mercenary 

Yup. Well... almost:

Thank you, that was fantastic 
How does it work, a console command?
I have an idea of how this may be used...

[Levi]

Thank you, that was fantastic 
How does it work, a console command?
I have an idea of how this may be used...

It's just a little line of code you write in hero.js, which can be found in /Outerra/scripts/hero.js.

Code: [Select]

this.geom.set_scale({x:1,y:1,z:1});1 is the normal size.

You can place that line either within the function deferred_initialize(){}(after this.geom = this.get_geomob(0);) or within the function update_frame(dt){}.

Have fun!