Some musings on the hinted 'new graphics'

'Some' musings? Maybe I lied. What follows are the two bugbears that I have with current CoH graphics.

Firstly, the shadows.

I should conjure up a deadly hex on whoever designed the shadows in CoH. Not only is it a pre-calculated cheat, but it doesn't affect the right things, it isn't correct, it looks bad, it clashes with the fog, and crucially... it fails to convey any sense of lighting. Skyscrapers appear to be equally grey on all sides. There IS a difference, but it is too subtle. Area shadows, those pre-made dark areas that move around, are also broken.

Look here. The transition from light to dark is so jarring you'd think you had been smashed in the face with a frying pan. This particular example doesn't take the angle of the sun into account, so it's plainly obvious that the shadow just starts and ends at the mouth of the tunnel. And that car is completely bright, even though it should be very dark, which looks horridly out of place.

Character shadows are also poor. Human-sized NPCs get a blob under their feet, small NPCs (like those spiderlings there) get nothing. However, in this instance I will admit that stencil shadows, shadow volumes, and shadow maps can be very performance intensive. The real problem, when it comes to characters, is the lighting and shadows on themselves. Like the skyscraper, there is far too small a difference between lit and unlit. It's as if there is complete cloud cover, making everything look murky, even when the sun is shining brightly. So yeah... I don't much like the lights or the shadows. I hate them even more when they show through objects (see just east of the steel canyon green line).

Secondly, the fog.

Look at it. It's an eyesore. The outlines of buildings are shown in perfect clarity, and there is no fog obscuring the sky; yet there's some... magic fog between you and the building, which shapes itself to the outline. Everything just ends up blending into a VERY muddy horizon.

What really cooks my chicken (I can't believe I just said that) is how they're still rendered with all polygons. There's a performance penalty for looking at them, yet the fog completely obscures them. Why, why, why is it like that? What possible gain is there? You're still rendering skyscrapers in the distance, you're just obscuring them for no conceivable reason. Is it to save on textures? Most buildings share textures anyway, and with that in mind I doubt there is any tangible gain from isolating the odd texture. You just end up with a really murky skyline, horrible skyscrapers, and nothing to show for it. You go to all that effort to draw a city, then you erase all your work.

And look to the right... both of my bugbears coming together. Bad shadows showing through the murky fog. That is simply wrong.

The solution? Lift the fog.

Seriously. Get rid of it. Distance culling is not acceptable for a modern game based in a city. Grand Theft Auto 4 only gets away with it because modern consoles have 512MB of RAM, total. That's the minimum spec to play this game, and that excludes the 128MB and above that a graphics card has, plus whatever is on the hard drive for paging.

If NCNC really MUST do some form of distance-based culling, do what GTA4 does and blur things out. At least you can tell they're skyscrapers, and not muddy blobs on the horizon.

Fixing the shadows is more wibbly wobbly. It's the hardest thing to do in games today. I would accept them keeping current shadows, but I'd desperately want some kind of contrast enhancement. Widen the gap between light and dark, make shadows richer, and add highlights to some things. Do the same on characters. Honestly, you'd have no idea how much that would spruce things up.

So in conclusion... ditch the fog, and add contrast. You'll have better looking characters, you'll see skyscrapers from afar, and everything will look richer. We don't need new models or textures for the game world, we just need to use the existing assets better.

tl;dr, I want to turn this... into this.

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Necrobond - 50 BS/Inv Scrapper made in I1
Rickar - 50 Bots/FF Mastermind
Anti-Muon - 42 Warshade
Ivory Sicarius - 45 Crab Spider
Aber ja, nat�rlich Hans nass ist, er steht unter einem Wasserfall.

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Seriously. Get rid of it. Distance culling is not acceptable for a modern game based in a city. Grand Theft Auto 4 only gets away with it because modern consoles have 512MB of RAM, total. That's the minimum spec to play this game, and that excludes the 128MB and above that a graphics card has, plus whatever is on the hard drive for paging.

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That's really simplifying things a huge amount and making darn sure the game won't run on anything but a very high spec machine.

Distance culling has to happen at some point, or you need an infinitely sized map. It's a valuable tool for reducing memory usage on lower spec clients.

As such, the best option is probably to increase the maximum draw distance to larger than the size of most zones and leave things as they are, with the fog you don't like. Then you and those with mega-rigs can turn it up all the way, if they want.

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Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.

Although, with the war walls, we don't actually have limitless maps.

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@Golden Girl

City of Heroes comics and artwork

That's my point, GG. Make the maximum distance available exceed the size of a typical Zone and the OP gets want he wants without crippling the performance for everyone.

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Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.

I think you misunderstood me. That, or I didn't explain it enough.

Removing distance culling and extending the draw distance a large amount achieves the same goal. If they want to implement a form of distance culling that doesn't involve greying things out, so much the better.

My real beef with the current 'fog it out' system is how it doesn't save much on performance. You can still see skyscrapers a long way away, depending on the current world detail setting. If you increase it to 200%, skyscrapers remain highly detailed far beyond the distance that the fog obscures things, yet you still pay for the detail in tens of frames a second. And please, don't say "you have no idea how the engine works" to me. I know I sound arrogant here, but believe me, I see absolutely no payoff for such aggressive fog. If you want to fog out truly distant buildings, so be it.

I don't want to cripple performance for people, I just want a better system than The Grey Death of Doom. That doesn't mean increasing the minimum requirements.

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Necrobond - 50 BS/Inv Scrapper made in I1
Rickar - 50 Bots/FF Mastermind
Anti-Muon - 42 Warshade
Ivory Sicarius - 45 Crab Spider
Aber ja, nat�rlich Hans nass ist, er steht unter einem Wasserfall.

Yes, you certainly do sound arrogant.

I think I'd be better off leaving you to it. So I shall.

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Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.

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Yes, you certainly do sound arrogant.

I think I'd be better off leaving you to it. So I shall.

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Chill out man. I don't want to be "that guy" on the suggestions board that can't handle criticism. Please, argue with me!

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Necrobond - 50 BS/Inv Scrapper made in I1
Rickar - 50 Bots/FF Mastermind
Anti-Muon - 42 Warshade
Ivory Sicarius - 45 Crab Spider
Aber ja, nat�rlich Hans nass ist, er steht unter einem Wasserfall.

Suggestion: if you find the shadows so annoying, have you tried to turn them off in options? perhaps "no shadows" would annoy you less than "bad shadows" ?

Question: what was your Depth of Field Effects setting (options, advanced graphics settings) when taking 'fog' the screenshot ?

Agreement: a (optional, can enable/disable in game options) more advanced fog (and perhaps other weather) graphics upgrade would be nice.

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I do not suffer from altitis, I enjoy every character of it.

Paragon City is by the sea. Seaside places often have fog. It is also a major city. Major cities are often shrouded in smog. I used to work on the 13th floor of an office block in Manchester. I don't think I can remember ever seeing a haze free view from the window. If anything Paragon City is clearer than most cities in my experience.

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I really should do something about this signature.

It's certainly a lot cleaner!

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@FloatingFatMan

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Very true.

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I really should do something about this signature.

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I used to work on the 13th floor of an office block in Manchester. I don't think I can remember ever seeing a haze free view from the window.

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PRAF, mate, they never cleaned your windows. I used to do a load of work on the roof tops around Manchester, and the view out over Stockport toward the Penine foothills was one of the few pleasant things involved in the job.

This was a public service announcement by the Manchester Board of Tourism.

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Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.

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Yes, you certainly do sound arrogant.

I think I'd be better off leaving you to it. So I shall.

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Chill out man. I don't want to be "that guy" on the suggestions board that can't handle criticism. Please, argue with me!

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If it's any consolation, you won't be 'that guy' you'll be one of a fairly long list of guys who can't handle criticism.

Basically, if you want to argue, present valid arguments rather than saying "don't argue with me, I'm right, you suck."

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Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.

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I used to work on the 13th floor of an office block in Manchester. I don't think I can remember ever seeing a haze free view from the window.

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PRAF, mate, they never cleaned your windows. I used to do a load of work on the roof tops around Manchester, and the view out over Stockport toward the Penine foothills was one of the few pleasant things involved in the job.

This was a public service announcement by the Manchester Board of Tourism.

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It wasn't that. One day the window blew out in a high wind, and it still didn't make the view much clearer.

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I really should do something about this signature.

Egads, that must've have been some pea soup thick fog if the high winds didn't blow it away!

I like the fog and the shadows as they are to be honest... then again, I don't spend that much time outside, I'm usually busy doing missions or whatever to notice if a building has 4 different shadows or if the outlines of buildings should be perfectly crisp or not.

I do like the fog in DA though... sometimes, that is. Sometimes I hate it.

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Rabbits & Hares:Blue (Mind/Emp Controller)Maroon (Rad/Thermal Corruptor)and one of each AT all at 50
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Yes, you certainly do sound arrogant.

I think I'd be better off leaving you to it. So I shall.

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Chill out man. I don't want to be "that guy" on the suggestions board that can't handle criticism. Please, argue with me!

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If it's any consolation, you won't be 'that guy' you'll be one of a fairly long list of guys who can't handle criticism.

Basically, if you want to argue, present valid arguments rather than saying "don't argue with me, I'm right, you suck."

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He didnt actually say that, Raven. And, as a critiscism here, you *do* tend to simply snap peoples heads off with suggestions that are 'impossible'. Not everyone knows the inate details of graphics and such, and how hard/easy they are to code/make/whatever.

I know that Id love a better looking game that didnt need so much high spec stuff, but I doubt thats possible. And more realism in game would be nice.

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I'm a bit disheartened (well, a lot) that people think I'm being that bullish. Believe me, that wasn't my intention. But you ask for valid arguments, so I'll get into some more.

Some people have said that mist and smog are to be expected on coastal towns. I can live with that. But no city has this much dirty air, and if it really IS that misty, why can I see the sky with perfect clarity?

The problem with City Of is the sheer levels of fog encountered. If indeed, heavy mist from being on the coast, and heavy smog from pollution really does cause things to look like CoX portrays them, then I must ask this simple question: Why can I see skyscrapers in perfect clarity in Los Angeles? This is both a coastal city and the most polluted city in America. But look at it. This city has the most smog and sits mere miles from the coast, yet it is completely clear. Sure, there's a bit of fogging, but everything doesn't turn grey and blend into the horizon.

Something else I want to add is how that picture exemplifies the lighting problems in CoX. You can see that it is an overcast day, with heavy clouds obscuring the sun. The dark areas are how CoX portrays all outdoor areas; dull, without contrast, and lifeless. The sunny areas are rich, with deep differences between the shadow and the light. Now, I'm not saying we should implement cloud shadowing, but the sky is pretty clear in CoX. Instead of drawing everything overcast, we should draw buildings as if the sun is shining brightly... which, for the most part, it does.

Now, on the concern of performance. My real bugbear with how CoX fogs things out is how it no longer saves performance. On 100% detail level, skyscrapers turn into slightly lower poly versions of themselves, which is mainly hidden by the fog. But on the 200% setting, buildings remain at high polygon levels for a very large distance, and despite that they're fogged out. We are asking our computers to work hard on drawing full-detail buildings, then throwing away the result.

I'm not saying this is the worst approach for speeding the game up. There are many methods that can be used for distance culling. You can simplify objects, you can cull things, you can blur them out, the options are many. For a game based in a city, there are quite a few methods that are better suited to it, methods that save performance just as well. Computer hardware may have advanced, but so has the software. There are methods out there now which people didn't know about in 2004.

This all brings me back to one conclusion: get rid of the fog. With that gone, purged from the game, NCNC can implement a better method for getting more performance. There is no need to raise the minimum spec if it's done right. And if NCNC were looking to add fluff for high-end PCs, they can do that, just as WoW has added in dynamic shadows. Personally, I think that was a cheap way of doing things.

I'm a bit short of time, but I can elaborate more if needed later. I hope this is satisfactory.

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Necrobond - 50 BS/Inv Scrapper made in I1
Rickar - 50 Bots/FF Mastermind
Anti-Muon - 42 Warshade
Ivory Sicarius - 45 Crab Spider
Aber ja, nat�rlich Hans nass ist, er steht unter einem Wasserfall.

I think some of your problems may be on how you have your graphics setting set up so you may want to play about with them a bit and see if you cant get somthing more to your likeing.

The screen shot you have of the tunnel entrance in all honesty i can see a great deal wrong with it while yes the shadow is rather sharp its entirly possible to get similar shadows in the real world so its not all togeather unrealistic i will agree tho that the car appears have been painted in day glow yellow.

As to fixing it i suppose its a case of balance is it worth giving more processing power/time to better shadow if only very small percentage of the gaming community will notice and appreciate the change?

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Necrotron - I read the OP, and appreciated your examples with the shadows under the bridge, the lighting, and the car involved in the mix. You clearly spotted something that you felt needed 'improving', and you came to the correct place to 'suggest' an improved system. Obviously, we don't expect every player of a computer game to be a coder, a scientist, a programmer, or even 'someone that knows somewhere between nothing and everything about graphics in some way or some degree'. I just wanted to say that your suggestion, to me, sounds valid. Although I don't let the graphics get to me (I just love the gameplay), there is no denying that yes, the lighting could do with some work. The fog, I'm not so sure (not really thought about it much) so I won't voice any opinions on that one.

Don't get downhearted when opinions in here appear to be 'shot down'. Many items that are put in the forums for 'discussion' are not 'discussed' - they are simply 'commented on' with various levels of 'bad delivery'. I hope you aren't deterred from posting by these people, as I believe that you have valid opinions, just like every one else here.

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[B][COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]@Winter Flare[/COLOR] - [url="http://sites.google.com/site/thenewguardians"] The New Guardians[/url] - [url="http://www.badge-hunter.com/index.php?/page/view_player.php?id=339"] 1211 Badges [/url][/B]

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But no city has this much dirty air, and if it really IS that misty, why can I see the sky with perfect clarity?


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Sounds to me you have never actually been to a city. Paragon has to be one of the cleanest cities in the world.

And yes, if you look up in Manchester, you can see the sky. It's if you look across (especially from a high vantage point) that you see the smog. It's to do with the way the particles scatter light.

It could of course be that through some quirk of your computer Paragon looks much foggier than it does on mine.

Certainly a graphics upgrade could improve the way the engine handles fog, particualy for people with high spec graphics cards, but I would be inclined to make it more foggy, not less, for the sake of realism. Oh, and the fog should have a slight yellow/green tint to it.

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I really should do something about this signature.

WinterFlare, that's much appreciated. You were complimenting me so much I was expecting a "...but you're wrong" at some point. And don't worry, I won't stop voicing my opinion. The main reason the jabs hurt is because of the community. If this was the WoW forums, I wouldn't care, but I hold the CoH community to a very high standard, so I take everything that much more to heart.

PRAF, I've been to Birmingham, Leeds, London, Orlando, Las Vegas, and many others. You're absolutely right that smog is more visible at low angles. Yet look at it again. At low angles the distant sky is bright, unaffected by smog, yet skyscrapers are completely obscured. Go to the area in question, one of the cranes in northwest St. Martial.

As another note, there IS one area where the fog is outstanding... Dark Astoria. It uses very close in fog to great effect, and it also obscures the sky just as much as buildings. The result is an extremely oppressive feeling zone, which nails the aura that they were going for.

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Necrobond - 50 BS/Inv Scrapper made in I1
Rickar - 50 Bots/FF Mastermind
Anti-Muon - 42 Warshade
Ivory Sicarius - 45 Crab Spider
Aber ja, nat�rlich Hans nass ist, er steht unter einem Wasserfall.

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And, as a critiscism here, you *do* tend to simply snap peoples heads off with suggestions that are 'impossible'.

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And you do make judgements without reading the thread, Techie. Try reading the first reply I gave him. I suggested a compromise which I thought would satisfy the OP and everyone else. Instead, I got told I didn't understand what he was talking about, I got told what I could and couldn't say, and then I got told to chill out when agreeing with him.

So pardon me if I'm getting fed up of you defending people against me. You're not perfect either.

Merry Christmas.

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Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.

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Yet look at it again.

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Just looked at your image, and it is showing way way more fog in St. Martel than is visible on my machine. It must be your graphics card/settings.

It doesn't look all that unrealistic though. If anything there is to much obscuration of the sky background, but insufficient reddening.

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I really should do something about this signature.

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Yet look at it again.

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Just looked at your image, and it is showing way way more fog in St. Martel than is visible on my machine. It must be your graphics card/settings.

It doesn't look all that unrealistic though. If anything there is to much obscuration of the sky background, but insufficient reddening.

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Yea, agre with PRAF, i went over to st martial and it's much less foggy than it is on your screenshot. Not sure what setting causing it look like that tho.
Can't say i have much "fog" at all, it just blurs out at a long distance.

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And, as a critiscism here, you *do* tend to simply snap peoples heads off with suggestions that are 'impossible'.

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And you do make judgements without reading the thread, Techie. Try reading the first reply I gave him. I suggested a compromise which I thought would satisfy the OP and everyone else. Instead, I got told I didn't understand what he was talking about, I got told what I could and couldn't say, and then I got told to chill out when agreeing with him.

So pardon me if I'm getting fed up of you defending people against me. You're not perfect either.

Merry Christmas.

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Excuse me, did I ever hint I was perfect? I DID read the thread, all the way through, thanks very much.

Ending commenting on this, anyway. You want to be the grumpy goit of the community, be my guest.

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