Some musings on the hinted 'new graphics'
By
Blue Rabbit,
Posted on: 2008-12-21 19:40 in Suggestions and Ideas
Well, they could just slow down the day and night cycle then 
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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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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There's a saying at Old Trafford (the proper one, not the one where they kick a pigs bladder around for 90 minutes) that goes: "If you can see the Pennines, it's going to rain. If you can't, it's raining."
I think drawing a comparison between a city on Long Island, USA and Lancashire is perhaps over-egging things.
Thelonious Monk
Comparing anything in Lancashire with anything out side of Lancashire is frankly a terrible thing to do to the place you are comparing it with ;P
but honestly, the draw distance fog would not even make my top 10 of things i would like changed about the graphics on the game.
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Doing shadows properly in this game would, bar me and a very small percentage of people on the face of the planet stupid enough to have bought a load of otherwise useless computing power, utterly crush your PC like a US Armoured Division encountering a bunch of half starved Iraqi militiamen armed with rocks in open field combat.
It's not just real time rendering of realistic shadows of at least an entire city block around you, it's real time rendering of realistic shadows of at least an entire city block around you whilst the light source is moving through its day cycle fast enough for you to watch your own shadow moving around you. That's not just difficult, that's utterly, utterly sick. The entire citys shadows would be moving all around you, non-stop. Morrowind managed to beat every bodily fluid imaginable out of computers just by being dumb enough to always be rendering the water at sea level you couldn't even see below you. Constantly moving realistic shadows whilst running through Paragon? The game might as well be presented to us as a series of comic book panels.
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You're absolutely right. I'm not suggesting they implement full dynamic shadows for all objects. That would be insane, even more insane than the WoW shadows recently introduced. But there are other ways to emulate shadows that don't heavily impact performance.
My main beef is that objects themselves don't have much shadowing going on. Increasing the contrast between light and dark is what I really want.
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.
Does it really matter that much I thought CoX was a game that was designed to look like a comic and alot of comics arn't relistic with dodgy backgrounds and things with teh only real attantion to detail going into characters and powers, Which this game far outshines any of the other mmo's I have played by a wide margin.
Well said and your right in the great scheme of things it probably doesn't matter that much as you point out things like backgrounds and shadows are never "correct" in comics there just there to give a impression
Some people are convinced that the fog isn't working as intended on my machine. Either something is VERY wrong, or nobody has noticed just how bad it is. But before going into a rant about that, I'll validate my position by either proving or disproving that it's WAI.
PRAF, neko, or whoever can be bothered, drag a villain to St. Martial at the point -278, 236, -357. That should get you on the very top of a crane. Then, look south, at the Golden Giza (the huge ziggurat-shaped casino). If you can see it, I'll eat my hat. No, really, I'm wearing it right now. Seeing the neon lights doesn't count, as they are unaffected by fog. You should be able to see the giza in all its' golden glory, along with everything around it.
Play with the world detail slider a bit, even if your FPS dips to "I'm flipping through a comic book" levels. Notice how the fog advances and retreats between 50% and 100%, but doesn't budge beyond that. Despite this, the amount of detail and objects increases a lot, even when said objects are behind the fog. If you're feeling insane, use /vis_scale 4 to force 400% detail level (seriously, use with caution) which basically shows every object in front of you at any distance. Well... it WOULD if the fog weren't there. And no, I'm not complaining about that, as 400% detail level isn't allowed for a reason.
Oh, and /vis_scale won't work for 400% if you have your graphics options open.
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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PRAF, neko, or whoever can be bothered, drag a villain to St. Martial at the point -278, 236, -357. That should get you on the very top of a crane. Then, look south, at the Golden Giza (the huge ziggurat-shaped casino). If you can see it, I'll eat my hat.
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Eat your hat, I can see it just fine.
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Play with the world detail slider a bit, even if your FPS dips to "I'm flipping through a comic book" levels.
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I have all my graphics set to maximum already.
The thing though, in the CoX engine, fog isn't directly related to graphics performance. That only depends on the draw distance. It's purely cosmetic, you could remove it without hurting performance, but that would make the game look rubbish. It hides the half drawn objects, it disguises the fact that the game world is flat, not spherical, which would be quite obvious to someone flying, it gives a reason why mobs are invisible beyond perception ranges, it helps to create a sence of distance (It's a technique landscape painters call arial perspective I believe) and most importantly, it's there because fog is part of the real world, and there is no such thing as completly clear air.
I'm all for more realistic fog, and other weather effects, but removing it would be horrible.
I really should do something about this signature.
then you have never bin in holland, if i'm on a high flat i can see very clear at maximum distance.
the fog isn't there to look realistic, it's to remove the strain from the computer.
if you render 500 players, it's a way higher strain then just 200.
even if your computer is strong, eventually your pc moves slower because of everything that shows.
stand on the highest point in mercy at the begin and look to the houses, your pc moves slower then when you only watch something simple.
a slow computer can't see all the houses, that's because the fog is there, and the fog is there to remove the strain of the computer.(unless the twit turns everything on max)
a sense of distance is there already, you don't need fog to do that, it's how the game handles the distances.
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then you have never bin in holland, if i'm on a high flat i can see very clear at maximum distance.
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Never been to Holland, but even there, where the air is relatively clean, you would see some effect of atmospheric particle scattering whan you looked at things more than a couple of miles away - it would cause distant hills to look bluer in colour for example. Of course, if there are no hills in Holland you might not have seen this effect.
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the fog isn't there to look realistic, it's to remove the strain from the computer.
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As the OP pointed out, the CoX engine doesn't work this way. The game decides to render or not render an object based entierly on the value set in the draw distance. In a foggy zone some objects are rendered even when they are actually invisible because of the fog.
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a sense of distance is there already
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No it isn't. The generated image is entirely two dimensional. Without the fog there would be no way to tell if The Golden Giza was a large object in the distance or a small object near by.
I really should do something about this signature.
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Never been to Holland, but even there, where the air is relatively clean
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I just had to laugh. Some bits of Holland are agrarian, but it's a very small country and the nice, clean agrarian bits tend to be right beside the dirty, smelly industrial bits. The air there isn't that clean.
And, yes, I have been there, on days when you can see for miles (just like Manchester) and days when you can't (just like Manchester ). A lot of it has a lot to do with the amount of water vapour suspended in the atmosphere, I think.
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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then you have never bin in holland, if i'm on a high flat i can see very clear at maximum distance.
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Never been to Holland, but even there, where the air is relatively clean, you would see some effect of atmospheric particle scattering whan you looked at things more than a couple of miles away - it would cause distant hills to look bluer in colour for example. Of course, if there are no hills in Holland you might not have seen this effect.
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holland IS kinda flat, no point putting hils in the story.
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the fog isn't there to look realistic, it's to remove the strain from the computer.
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As the OP pointed out, the CoX engine doesn't work this way. The game decides to render or not render an object based entierly on the value set in the draw distance. In a foggy zone some objects are rendered even when they are actually invisible because of the fog.
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and since when does he work with NCsoft, he can't know, he thinks it works that way.
beside, the fog is there to lower the strain no matter how the engine works, without the fog you have a game that runs just to slow only because of all the objects that are rendered all at ones in one view.
a stronger graphic card with more ram makes it easier, but there is still a limit.
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a sense of distance is there already
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No it isn't. The generated image is entirely two dimensional. Without the fog there would be no way to tell if The Golden Giza was a large object in the distance or a small object near by.
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there is, the smaller something seems to be, the further it is.
in depth paintings, you see the effect already.
big buildings close by, small ones in the distance.
but in the distance there is a big churge, as 3D as it can be and bigger then the houses.
THAT is 3D in distances, unless the game turns the buildings in distance in a 2D picture.
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Never been to Holland, but even there, where the air is relatively clean
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I just had to laugh. Some bits of Holland are agrarian, but it's a very small country and the nice, clean agrarian bits tend to be right beside the dirty, smelly industrial bits. The air there isn't that clean.
And, yes, I have been there, on days when you can see for miles (just like Manchester) and days when you can't (just like Manchester ). A lot of it has a lot to do with the amount of water vapour suspended in the atmosphere, I think.
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Hey hey mate Manchester isnt that bad, on a clear day from my apartment I can see, the Pennine foothills, Peel Tower and the radio mast near Bolton, and if i look hard enough I can see the gunshots over moss side
Art of War Co-Leader - Union *Global@Warscythe*
"The box said Windows Vista or better - so I installed Linux"
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and since when does he work with NCsoft, he can't know, he thinks it works that way.
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It becomes fairly obvious if you tinker with the graphics settings.
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the fog is there to lower the strain no matter how the engine works
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It doesn't, because the engine calculates all the objects in line of sight, draws them if they are in range of the draw distance. then draws the fog, removing objects that have already been calculated, so thier is no saving. This becomes clear if you consider the poor performance of Arachnos maps, which have transparent walls, leading to a high "visible" object count, but a large amount of black fog so you can't actually see far.
The CoX engine is unusual. It is true that most game engines work in the way you describe.
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there is, the smaller something seems to be, the further it is.
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Or it could actually be, you know, smaller.
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in depth paintings, you see the effect already.
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In landscape paintings, you see the the effect of arial perspective. Backround hills and mountains are painted in tones of blue and purple, even though they would appear green if viewed close to.
Example.
I really should do something about this signature.
You can see the giza from those coordinates? How... strange. Before I break out the cutlery, let me see a screenshot so I can compare.
PRAF, I completely agree with your idea of what distance fog should be - a blue/green tinge on objects that doesn't obscure them. I live near a wooded area called Cannock Chase, where there are quite a few spots that let you see for miles. Why, at one point I saw a couple of tower-flat-jobbies in the distance beyond the town I lived. With my camera I could zoom in and make the detail out, but it was very heavily blue tinged. I looked it up on the map later, and the only built-up area past my hometown was 17 miles away from where I was standing.
I'm not asking for 17 mile draw distances in CoH, but it does show that fogging everything to the point where only the outline is legible isn't very realistic. Yes, this is a comic book game, but when you look at it you realise they're going for more of a realistic-comic-book look, not cel-shaded hand-drawn stuff. Like a live-action marvel or DC movie with lots of CGI. It looks believable, but it's very much fantastic and blown out of proportion.
As for the ins and outs of rendering, I can indeed speak with authority now that I have a degree in computer games design (barely). Just because something isn't visible doesn't mean work isn't gone into drawing it. Take this fact as an example: when you wish to draw a 3D scene, you render out every single object in a back-to-front fashion. If there are hills in the distance, you draw them. If there is a building in front of it, you draw that next. You keep going, drawing each polygon in order of distance. This gives you something that looks correct, but much work has gone into drawing objects that may not even be visible. If there is a line of very simple buildings obscuring a very complex hillside, you still draw the hillside. Techniques like BSP-culling (putting areas in large boxes and testing if the box can be seen), z-buffers (send rays out from your viewpoint and see what you hit), and LOD (level of detail, simplify objects if they're far away) are used to minimise wasted rendering time. CoX uses BSPs and LODing; z-buffers aren't really worth it on cityscapes, it turns out.
That was a HUGE wall of text, and if you don't already know how 3D rendering works, I'll be impressed if you got this far. (Not you, PRAF, you seem read-up on this already.)
Now, this fogging out is a disadvantage because it doesn't simplify the rendering procedure at all. If anything it gives you a performance hit, as it's an extra step to do. It does indeed cover up for objects that aren't drawn, but you already see a fair amount of object pop-up on 100% detail (that's when trees and such magically appear when you get near them). As for buildings, they're drawn at some level of detail with full textures, lighting and reflections on the windows, yet the fog shows you none of that. Thing is, you HAVE to draw everything that way, just in case the player gets close enough to see any of those things. There is no way to tell if a skyscraper is far enough away to not bother doing any texturing, so the engine does textures, lighting, and reflections for everything. The only reliable way to get that sort of information is to use a z-buffer, which CoX doesn't use.
At the end of the day, I may not be working for NCSoft, but car mechanics don't have to be employees of BMW to tell when your beemer has a broken starter motor.
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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blue/green tinge on objects that doesn't obscure them.
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It actually depends if it is a light source or not. Light sources sould become reddened, as the blue light is scattered out of the beam. Non-light sources appear blued by light scattered into the beam.
Add into that other colours based on the chermicals present: the hydrocarbons formed by the action of sunlight on unburned petrol tend to have a yellow/green cast, water vapour (as you would expect to see in the sea mists around St. Martel or Talos Island) has a slight blue tinge.
See mists should roll in around dawn and disipate by noon.
(ok we can wish!)
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but it does show that fogging everything to the point where only the outline is legible isn't very realistic.
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Quite so, outlines should be blured by the fog, not sharp, as they are in CoX. The landscape painting I linked to shows that quite well.
I really should do something about this signature.
I'm a bit drunk, but I still agree. CoX doesn't deal with fog realisticaally or efficienttly. and where is my screenie?
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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I'm a bit drunk, but I still agree. CoX doesn't deal with fog realisticaally or efficienttly. and where is my screenie?
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How about two?
First a screenie taken in the evening to show that, while the fog is there, glowlines are shown through the fog. Whether thats good or bad I'm not sure.
And second a screenie taken with Depth of field effects enabled - there is some blurring at distance but (IMHO) the fogged areas should be significantly more blurred to look realistic.
Note that both screenies were taken with world detail at 200% which made my graphics card squeal.
And on the subject of graphics, can we have a non-transparent moon please? I could see stars right through in the darker area (which a full moon shouldnt have anyway).
I do not suffer from altitis, I enjoy every character of it.
I'm glad we're on the same page. 
Did you try out the 400% detail haxery?
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.
400% draw distance makes distant objects more likely to be visible through the fog.
I don't know why you find it so suprising, you already know the engine calculates the objects based on draw distance, then adds the fog later, it's clear the apperence and density of the fog is somewhat dependent on graphics processor / driver.
I really should do something about this signature.
Doing shadows properly in this game would, bar me and a very small percentage of people on the face of the planet stupid enough to have bought a load of otherwise useless computing power, utterly crush your PC like a US Armoured Division encountering a bunch of half starved Iraqi militiamen armed with rocks in open field combat.
It's not just real time rendering of realistic shadows of at least an entire city block around you, it's real time rendering of realistic shadows of at least an entire city block around you whilst the light source is moving through its day cycle fast enough for you to watch your own shadow moving around you. That's not just difficult, that's utterly, utterly sick. The entire citys shadows would be moving all around you, non-stop. Morrowind managed to beat every bodily fluid imaginable out of computers just by being dumb enough to always be rendering the water at sea level you couldn't even see below you. Constantly moving realistic shadows whilst running through Paragon? The game might as well be presented to us as a series of comic book panels.
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