84 replies to this topic

[JewBoy]

Vermaxx, on 08 November 2012 - 05:43 AM, said:

You own one of those guns? I just saw it in a gun magazine, didn't think they were selling yet.

They started shipping in late 2008, my SN is in the upper 200s and I got it in 2009, and they're about 3600 of them out now. Check out http://www.thektog.org/forum/f91/ for more info. If youre in the US, you can find them on gunbroker for about $1700 - $1800. If you're Canadian (or need to make it California compliant) thektog has info on exporters and gunsmiths you can use.

Vermaxx, on 08 November 2012 - 05:43 AM, said:

I know you need three VARIANTS to get to master. Do you need three variants of TWO DIFFERENT MECHS? That was the way in closed beta, which is why I never bothered. Because I run mediums and hate the Centurion.

Nope, just 3 variants of the same mech.

Edited by JewBoy, 08 November 2012 - 06:11 AM.

[Vermaxx]

Well then Master isn't such a pain anymore. It is still kinda worthless until there are at least 6 decent modules all fighting for the one or two slots in my mech.

[Taryys]

devs have said that they are going to take a look at this.

[Jack Corvus]

JewBoy, on 08 November 2012 - 02:30 AM, said:

To be fair, most rifles have effective ranges further than most MWO weapons.

BattleTech weapon values are intentionally low to make the original tabletop game playable on reasonably sized maps while still preserving a degree of granularity in mech movement.

[Sprouticus]

The solution to this is fairly simple:

Change it from PIP to full screen zoom.

Yes, full screen zoom is not as good for maintaining battlefield awareness as PIP. But if CE3 is the problem there is just not much they can do about it. They tried PIP but everyone I knows agrees it is a failure.

The good news on that is that they already have teh code for full screen zoom, they just need to add a 4x zoom along with 2x and 3x.

Vermaxx, on 08 November 2012 - 05:43 AM, said:

You own one of those guns? I just saw it in a gun magazine, didn't think they were selling yet.

I know you need three VARIANTS to get to master. Do you need three variants of TWO DIFFERENT MECHS? That was the way in closed beta, which is why I never bothered. Because I run mediums and hate the Centurion.

It was never like that in beta. To get master you simply need elite in 3 variants.

[Krivvan]

Comassion, on 08 November 2012 - 05:34 AM, said:

I'll absolutely grant that there's a serious problem trying to render the battlefield twice.

Solution 1: Pixellate the main outside screen instead and render the zoomed portion at normal detail.

I think you misunderstood the problem slightly. The pixellating isn't something they do to render it easier. The pixellating is because all they're doing is taking the graphics data that's already rendered, copying it and blowing it up. The actual environment is still only rendered once. To have a clear image you need to go all the way back to the source and render it twice, essentially take all the resources it took to do the graphics and double it every time you zoom.

The issue is having two pictures in the first place.

Your second solution is good though.

[Flapdrol]

yeah, the "normal" zoom is way better because it actually zooms and doesnt just inflate 1 pixel to the size of 4 pixels.

pip is very difficult for modern game engines for some reason, red orchestra 2 manages it though.

[Noth]

They do need to improve it. The issues is how without destroying performances with it active. the Cryengine 3 causes rather large performance hits for multiple renders on screen, which is what improving the advanced zoom would require.

[Vermaxx]

Sprouticus, on 08 November 2012 - 06:30 AM, said:

It was never like that in beta. To get master you simply need elite in 3 variants.

Then I mentally checked out a long time ago, after it was announced as being that way. I never bothered to get to Master because I was never ever buying three Centurions.

[Joseph Mallan]

I would like to have a clearer Zoom, but I can understand it if they don't give it. Sniping will become OP. I know I can hit an atlas at 1000M as it is right now, give em a clear zoom and I will be killing you all at that range. 7 of 10 shots in a man sized targets 'head' at 500 M with Iron Sights no problem. So keep the advanced zoom a little fuzzy, so we don't have to hear QQ zoom is OP nerf it!

[sokitumi]

Does anyone else have a hard time believing that cryengine in 2012 has to take major FPS hit to render PiP? Something that a nintendo 64 did swimingly. Or DirectX7 (MW4) handled just fine.. hell even MW3 did it DX(4). As far as I know, crytek doesn't render things out of screen, thus allowing better performance, why isn't this the case for a miniscule zoom area 2nd rendering?

[197mmCannon]

Well I was holding out on the upgrade because everyone said it sucks but your screenshot has shown me that it is indeed worth it.

Thanks.

[Raalic]

JewBoy, on 08 November 2012 - 02:30 AM, said:

To be fair, most rifles have effective ranges further than most MWO weapons. My Kel-Tec RFB with a 18" barrel can do 600 meters easy. Palma competitors go out to 1000 yards with .308 and iron sights. Yet machine guns are limited to 200 meters. 20mm Vulcan has an effective range of 5000 meters, yet AC/2s (20mm) max out at 2000 meters. Dont get me started on missles, Sidewinders dont get a lock untill 1000 meters, yet LRMs are limited to 1000 meters. Also most American ground to ground missles weigh over 2000 pounds, whereas a LRM weighs 11 pounds. When you factor in the airframe, guideance and propulsion systems, the war head cant be bigger than a pound or two. We are essentially shooting glorified Estes model rockets at each other. Hell, even in the 1950s we have nuclear warheads on artillery, so why can't I get a nuke round for a AC/20? It seems that 1000 years in the future, weapons have taken a giant step back.

It's the Star Wars effect, man. The future is cardboard and christmas lights.

[Comassion]

sokitumi, on 08 November 2012 - 07:04 AM, said:

Does anyone else have a hard time believing that cryengine in 2012 has to take major FPS hit to render PiP?

No.

Different software contains different features and is optimized for different things. The Source engine, for example, can totally handle multiple render perspectives - which is why Half Life 2 had TV screens simply rendering a different part of the map, or why Portal works so well in that engine.

The Cry engine likely focuses more on lighting / atmospheric / texture effects and all the stuff that makes this game look so damn good. I don't find it at all hard to believe that all the time spent optimizing the engine to handle these effects is done with the idea in mind that it will only ever have to render one instance of a view perspective. The notion that the engine would have to do twice as much work to render twice the perspectives is actually the more intuitive one. If an engine isn't specifically built with the idea that it can handle multiple perspectives already in mind, it's going to be very difficult (or nigh impossible) for the programmers to add in that capability after the fact. Making the choice to be able to render those additional scenes comes at a cost - you can't optimize all your lighting / atmospheric / texture stuff as much because you have to have enough power available to you to render the additional perspectives if you need to.

Bottom line - if I wanted to make the best-looking game engine I could, I'd also leave out features that involve trying to render more than one perspective at a time, because otherwise I couldn't fully dedicate all my rendering power to just one perspective at a time.


If you want a comparison, it's like min/maxing a 'mech. If you want pure LRM power, you don't put other weapons on the 'mech so you can stuff more LRMs / ammo / heatsinks on there. You say '2012' like it's suddenly just time for a game engine to be able to do everything, but the fact that you have double heatsinks now does not mean that tradeoffs have suddenly gone away.

Edited by Comassion, 08 November 2012 - 07:44 AM.

[Mawai]

Cragger, on 08 November 2012 - 02:45 AM, said:

Horrible, horrible analogy. In real life a optical magnification is collecting an infinite number of photons in a real time universe where physics just 'happen'. Where this is a digital rendition of finite points of data. Take a magnifying glass to your computer monitor, a picture or anything where man has replicated an image with finite points and you'll see the problem.

CryEngine 3 does not support dual renders as the only way to do a PIP is running a second render of the scene at a larger scale or closer perspective, which means you are rendering two scenes at the same time. They couldn't even put a rear view mirror on your mech as that is the same thing. So to bypass this they do the only thing they can which is scale up the render which being a fixed resolution gets blurry.

While I think the costs of the modules are rather silly the advanced zoom is an improvement as while the image is blurred you can more easily hit your target while retaining some peripherial vision.

Maybe the module should be modified to allow for a higher level of full screen zoom as an option ... either use V to get PIP or Z to go to fullscreen 4x if the module is installed.

Not ideal but it gets past the one pass render issue.

Edited by Mawai, 08 November 2012 - 07:57 AM.

[Elizander]

It doesn't look unusable. I might give it a try once I am done grinding some mechs.

[ShastaBlasta]

Thought better PiP resolution was Lostech?

[Cragger]

JewBoy, on 08 November 2012 - 02:48 AM, said:

To be fair, your analogy is even worse. Otherwise why can I press my middle mouse button for 2x and 3x (or whatever factors they are) optical zoom? Even my cheap camcorder has 10x or 12x optical zoom. 1000 years in the future, we have bipedal tanks, space travel and all sorts of other wonders but aparently lost basic optics technology.

Seriously... do you even know how things work in the slightest?

Your camcorder is using an optical lense to convert photons into finite points of data. All your zoom does is change the resolved output resolution. I bet you are one of those people that believes an image can be blown up like they see on CSI or a myriad of other TV shows.

To have the advanced zoom work as people would like it to work would be the same as having your camcorder to a 1x and 200x resolved output (render) at the exact same time. Unless it supports it in both hardware and software it can't do it. Cryengine 3 cannot do this efficiently at the least, this is simply an unfortunate limitation currently of CE3. It is quite literally the normal cockpit 1x render with a 4x magnifying glass held to it effectively hence the loss of resolution.

[Undead Bane]

Daemian, on 08 November 2012 - 07:25 AM, said:

Well I was holding out on the upgrade because everyone said it sucks but your screenshot has shown me that it is indeed worth it.

Thanks.

Don't get it wrong - it sucks. A mech at 800m in this zoom window looks like 5 strange pixels. Which can be hardly distinguished from background.

[Hikyuu]

JewBoy, on 08 November 2012 - 02:30 AM, said:

To be fair, most rifles have effective ranges further than most MWO weapons. My Kel-Tec RFB with a 18" barrel can do 600 meters easy. Palma competitors go out to 1000 yards with .308 and iron sights. Yet machine guns are limited to 200 meters. 20mm Vulcan has an effective range of 5000 meters, yet AC/2s (20mm) max out at 2000 meters. Dont get me started on missles, Sidewinders dont get a lock untill 1000 meters, yet LRMs are limited to 1000 meters. Also most American ground to ground missles weigh over 2000 pounds, whereas a LRM weighs 11 pounds. When you factor in the airframe, guideance and propulsion systems, the war head cant be bigger than a pound or two. We are essentially shooting glorified Estes model rockets at each other. Hell, even in the 1950s we have nuclear warheads on artillery, so why can't I get a nuke round for a AC/20? It seems that 1000 years in the future, weapons have taken a giant step back.

TL;DR

discussing real world mechanics in a video game.

Undead Bane, on 08 November 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:

Don't get it wrong - it sucks. A mech at 800m in this zoom window looks like 5 strange pixels. Which can be hardly distinguished from background.

as it's been said several times, it's currently a limitation in Cry 3 because it requires you to render the map again in that seperate window.

consider it a placeholder until they can contort Cry 3 to your specific desires like it's a circus clown balloon animal.

Edited by Hikyuu, 08 November 2012 - 09:42 AM.