Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> clipka <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > As the player normally can't move too fast, there's probably plenty of time to
> > "swap in" scenery data by and by.
>
>   I wouldn't say there's "plenty of time" because the CPU, the GPU the
> I/O buses and the graphics bus have to do quite a lot of other things
> at the same time, at 60 frames per second preferably.

Let's look at it this way:

Traditionally, games have been organized in individual "maps"; Let's say such a
map would usually load within 30 seconds, and you'd spend at least 5 minutes in
there.

If the game layout was roughly one-dimensional (say, a FPS in the classic
corridor-type setting), a simple approach at hiding the loading times would be
to pre-load the data for the next map. That would gives you 300 seconds to
perform a 30-second loading operation. For two-dimensional games (vast
landscape to travel freely), the task of choosing which "maps" to load would be
less straightforward, but I guess it wouldn't significantly change the amount of
data to be provided, if the algorithm is designed smart enough.

So this takes 10% of your resources, right?

Wrong.

When it comes to moving data, by far the worst bottleneck in your computer
system is the hard disk. In classic games, while loading a new map the
processor is just as bored as the player, waiting for the disk hardware to
retrieve sector by sector. (Don't expect the stuff to be readily available in
the hard disk's tiny internal cache; so this will *not* push SATA to its
limits.)

So it takes 10% of your total *hard disk* bandwidth. Say, when was the last time
you played a computer game and your hard disk was constantly busy?

I guess that leaves us with, say, 1% of CPU and GPU bandwidth to be set aside
for preloading maps - at most. And it's a task that can be easily priorized:
There's no strict deadline to get the job done; for instance, in the heat of
the action it can safely be deferred until after the fight (all the more since
you usually don't move very far during a hot battle).

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> I guess that leaves us with, say, 1% of CPU and GPU bandwidth to be set 
> aside
> for preloading maps - at most. And it's a task that can be easily 
> priorized:
> There's no strict deadline to get the job done; for instance, in the heat 
> of
> the action it can safely be deferred until after the fight (all the more 
> since
> you usually don't move very far during a hot battle).

Especially if you keep a low-res (both mesh and texture) version available 
for the surrounding parts of the map anyway, if there is any slight delay 
with the high-res versions loading it's not going to ruin anything.  This 
happened in GTA San Andreas, if you (maybe with a little hack (-:) drove or 
flew really fast then you could actually see these low-res models for a 
second until the high res ones could be loaded.

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"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > I guess that leaves us with, say, 1% of CPU and GPU bandwidth to be set
> > aside
> > for preloading maps - at most. And it's a task that can be easily
> > priorized:
> > There's no strict deadline to get the job done; for instance, in the heat
> > of
> > the action it can safely be deferred until after the fight (all the more
> > since
> > you usually don't move very far during a hot battle).
>
> Especially if you keep a low-res (both mesh and texture) version available
> for the surrounding parts of the map anyway, if there is any slight delay
> with the high-res versions loading it's not going to ruin anything.  This
> happened in GTA San Andreas, if you (maybe with a little hack (-:) drove or
> flew really fast then you could actually see these low-res models for a
> second until the high res ones could be loaded.

No hack! It happened all the time to me on the PS2 version, usually when I was
letting off some steam or trying for stunt bonuses in the super-taxis. When you
came to an abrupt halt, the low-detail high-speed versions of buildings etc
could be visible for up to half a second, sometimes more. I couldn't comment on
how this reflects on my gameplay :-}

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> No hack!

Even on Bioshock on the XBox360, if you suddenly turn around and look 
closely at something (machine, person, etc) you can see at least two or 
three levels of detail being drawn in - Smooth stuff, then clothes, then 
dirt/blood/etc, kind of thing.

I don't know if it's because it's bringing it in off disk tho.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Even on Bioshock on the XBox360, if you suddenly turn around and look
> closely at something (machine, person, etc) you can see at least two or
> three levels of detail being drawn in - Smooth stuff, then clothes, then
> dirt/blood/etc, kind of thing.
>
> I don't know if it's because it's bringing it in off disk tho.

Maybe there's a trade-off between frame rate and frame quality. I've never
played Bioshock, but certainly GTA:SA wasn't dropping frames while this was
going on. By contrast, I've been playing Fallout3 recently (and loving it, I
might add), and while I've not seen any detail changes, occasionally the frame
rate drops when there's oodles of stuff going on.

I'd rather see the detail switch than the frame rate lower, personally, but
still...

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Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I've been playing Fallout3 recently (and loving it, I might add)

  Btw, at the beginning of the game there's a quite detailed face editor
for your character, which is fun to play with. However, I'm wondering what's
the point. As far as I can tell, you can't see your own face in the game in
any situation, not even when changing the camera to 3rd-person perspective
(because the playable character always looks in the same direction as the
camera, and thus you only see the back of his/her head, never the face).

  At least in Oblivion you could see your face in the inventory screen,
but this is not the case in Fallout3.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > I've been playing Fallout3 recently (and loving it, I might add)
>
>   Btw, at the beginning of the game there's a quite detailed face editor
> for your character, which is fun to play with. However, I'm wondering what's
> the point. As far as I can tell, you can't see your own face in the game in
> any situation, not even when changing the camera to 3rd-person perspective
> (because the playable character always looks in the same direction as the
> camera, and thus you only see the back of his/her head, never the face).

There's the paused combat mode - during the slo-mo sections you often see your
character's face. Enough that I've since gotten him a haircut, even!

If you sit in chairs you get a glimpse too (although this doesn't seem to serve
any purpose).

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Maybe there's a trade-off between frame rate and frame quality.

It does ever so occasionally get slow when you're in a complicated space 
with lots going on, with the frame rate dropping to maybe 3 or 4 frames a 
second if you're flying head over heels thru a bunch of enemies.  But that's 
maybe once or twice in a full play thru of the whole game, if that.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Warp wrote:
> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> I'd rather watch a virtual aquarium all day long or even play Wii Sports than
>> watch this virtual soap.
> 
>   Btw, 20th Century Fox has bought the rights to make a The Sims movie.

Wasn't it going to be about people figuring out that they're Sims?

Personally, I'm much more interested in this movie:
http://gamerthemovie.com/

-- 
Chambers

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Chambers wrote:
>>   Btw, 20th Century Fox has bought the rights to make a The Sims movie.
> Wasn't it going to be about people figuring out that they're Sims?

OK, that *is* Roosterteeth's "Strangerhood" movie.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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