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[Acetone]

Hmm... How can I introduce that?

With the release of the new editor, I had something we can call a "binge building session". You need to realize that we can now not only copy and paste buildings, but also clone a selection of buildings and paste it. Most important, the default placement mode in the editor always set buildings to the terrain level, meaning that you can copy and paste a large section of buildings everywhere, and they will always be on the ground.

And of course, I started to test it.
And of course, it went too far...

At some point, my idea was to place buildings in order to see if I can kill my framerate.

Well, I can't.

Depending on your configuration, this scene may be too heavy to keep a smooth framerate, but for those with a decent GPU, you will only experience a lag when the tiles are loaded. I added a few roads and an airport to improve the whole thing, but it's not a real scenery, just a playground.

I thought that some of you may want to have fun with it, and see what Outerra has in the guts:

Download Chaos City  v1 - 87mb - otx installer




I need to repeat, the amount of objects here is insane. And if you want to experience it full size, set

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min_obj_size to 1.0 in your eng.cfg.
Campos are included, this is close to one of the default scenery location too, by the way.

[HiFlyer]

Very nice! I figured you would do something like this.

As you said, FPS are barely affected, but as you said, there are noticeable hitches as tiles are loaded. (Reminded me of X-Plane)

I had no problem with maintaining 80FPS with this, and I think that bodes well for the program.

[ZeosPantera]

Infrastructure seems a bit lacking. Would have to travel the last 1/4 mile over dirt to get home.

[Jagerbomber]

And you have a problem with that?

[Acetone]

Infrastructure seems a bit lacking. Would have to travel the last 1/4 mile over dirt to get home.

It's called Chaos City for a reason 

[HiFlyer]

Infrastructure seems a bit lacking. Would have to travel the last 1/4 mile over dirt to get home.

It's called Chaos City for a reason 

So much potential.

[HiFlyer]

Playing around with this is fun, but the tile loading is nasty. I wonder what can be done?

[Acetone]

Playing around with this is fun, but the tile loading is nasty. I wonder what can be done?

I suspect the problem here is related to how Outerra loads data inside a tile. As you may notice, the game freeze a few frames in this area each time a new tile (with a ton of buildings) is loaded, but otherwise, framerate is good. I think this freeze happens because the engine is set to load the entire buildings data (type/position, stored in hex) as soon as the tile is inside the rendering range for this type of elements.
So I don't think it's a model related problem, but rather a read/write one (but I may be wrong).

The solution (and again, I don't know if it's technically possible) : rather than trying to load every buildings data in a single frame (=freeze in a heavy loaded tile), load object.bix elements during several frames.
If it's possible, it will also have a cool side effect : when tile objects are all loaded in a single frame, you'll notice it more than when these are loaded incrementally

BTW, here is what an object.bix file looks like:

[HiFlyer]

Which is kind of what I was thinking as well, but its also kind of strange. I remember when Levi first arrived with his ripped GTA buildings, I did some experiments where it seemed that his buildings were visible at a nearly infinite distance, and the same applies in the Talkeetna area, where buildings are visible as nearly single pixels at what has to be several tiles away.

Yet in chaos city, it does seem that large gobs of buildings suddenly all appear in one huge burst, and at relatively close range.

[Acetone]

Which is kind of what I was thinking as well, but its also kind of strange. I remember when Levi first arrived with his ripped GTA buildings, I did some experiments where it seemed that his buildings were visible at a nearly infinite distance, and the same applies in the Talkeetna area, where buildings are visible as nearly single pixels at what has to be several tiles away.

Yet in chaos city, it does seem that large gobs of buildings suddenly all appear in one huge burst, and at relatively close range.

As far as I know, objects are rendered depending of their size and of the value set for

Code: [Select]

min_obj_sizein your eng.cfg (in px).
As long as an object is larger (you can even set subpixel values), it will be rendered but right now these objects are only loaded when you are in some distance of the tile where they are stored.
A good example is the Chapala Lake mesh. If you load it, you can go up to space and you will still be able to see it. However, take a look at the lake in the LFNA scenery : it will appear only if you're starting to be close of the origin point.

Thing is, this scenery was made without any performance logic, and the surprise is too see that there is a framerate impact, but absolutely not where I expected it to be ┐(°ヮ°)┌

[HiFlyer]

Which is kind of what I was thinking as well, but its also kind of strange. I remember when Levi first arrived with his ripped GTA buildings, I did some experiments where it seemed that his buildings were visible at a nearly infinite distance, and the same applies in the Talkeetna area, where buildings are visible as nearly single pixels at what has to be several tiles away.

Yet in chaos city, it does seem that large gobs of buildings suddenly all appear in one huge burst, and at relatively close range.

As far as I know, objects are rendered depending of their size and of the value set for

Code: [Select]

min_obj_sizein your eng.cfg (in px).
As long as an object is larger (you can even set subpixel values), it will be rendered but right now these objects are only loaded when you are in some distance of the tile where they are stored.
A good example is the Chapala Lake mesh. If you load it, you can go up to space and you will still be able to see it. However, take a look at the lake in the LFNA scenery : it will appear only if you're starting to be close of the origin point.

Thing is, this scenery was made without any performance logic, and the surprise is too see that there is a framerate impact, but absolutely not where I expected it to be ┐(°ヮ°)┌

I wonder if it would be better to have all objects out to a certain preset distance render regardless of tiles..... Like maybe everything within a circular radius of the viewer out to a distance of 20 miles, with new objects loading incrementally as they enter that range and match the set pixel size limit....

[Acetone]

I wonder if it would be better to have all objects out to a certain preset distance render regardless of tiles..... Like maybe everything within a circular radius of the viewer out to a distance of 20 miles, with new objects loading incrementally as they enter that range and match the set pixel size limit....

Maybe, but I have no idea if it's possible with the way this data is stored.

[cameni]

At the moment the size of the objects doesn't affect when the tile gets loaded. Actually, the world has no idea that there's something large on given tile, it will only learn it when the tile gets loaded. For perf reasons it can't take a peek at every tile out there just because there might be some huge objects that needs to be seen from much farther than "normal" objects. Stuff like that will have to be attached to a coarser tile level to load earlier.

[HiFlyer]

X-Plane 10 decided to address this by loading more tiles out to a further distance, but it eats memory like pac man, and I think only the fact that the sim is 64 bit allows them to pull it off. 

[Daikan]

X-Plane 10 decided to address this by loading more tiles out to a further distance, but it eats memory like pac man, and I think only the fact that the sim is 64 bit allows them to pull it off. 

Obviously, there's more to it than just loading tiles into memory.

For example here's an interesting quote by Ben Supnik on the subject of LODs:

Not drawing an object is great for framerate. Not only do we save the time on the animations and attributes, but X-Plane never has to process the texture or geometry data, and that’s where the real framerate win comes from. Therefore the most important question for object LODs is “what is the maximum LOD” – that is, what is the farthest distance before X-Plane can stop drawing your object. X-Plane is pretty efficient at recognizing cases where objects, or even whole classes of objects, are simply too far away to draw.