Your ultimate game

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Richard M

I don't understand that though, every modern GPU is capable of moving the pixels around.
I can't help thinking that the gfx card companies are doing things in a very inefficient way.
Surely you could display whatever you want on the screen, like render a 2d image of how the view should look like outside your aircraft window then render that in real time?
There's no need to render all those things in real time that are hundreds of miles away imo when you can emulate what they look like in 2d then use blitter features to put the textures on the cockpit window?
Maybe I'm totally out of sync but the way I see it, games like that should be far more efficient than they are at the moment..

The thing is, playing an FPS, you see what? maybe 50-100 yards or so in front of you, in a plane, you can literally see hundreds of miles

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by Bifta

The thing is, playing an FPS, you see what? maybe 50-100 yards or so in front of you, in a plane, you can literally see hundreds of miles

True, but the distance is purely artificial.
Think about it.
If you have 1000m in 3ds Max and you zoom in 10x you suddently have 10x the resolution therefore 10,000m.

100 miles could be 100 real miles or simply 500cm zoomed in massively, it really means nothing in gaming terms because you can make a 3D object as big or small as you want.
Real world measurements mean nothing because it isn't the real world.

[greencreeper]

It's a pity you can't add more than one graphics card to a PC. Maybe if you could, say, install two cards and set one as the master and the other as slave. That way you'd have two GPUs working on the graphics. Maybe even dual GPUs on each board. You'd have plenty of power then. Failing that, distribute the processing somehow, so each of several PCs is responsible for a part of the image and one PC brings the parts together as a whole.

Just thoughts

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

It's a pity you can't add more than one graphics card to a PC. Maybe if you could, say, install two cards and set one as the master and the other as slave. That way you'd have two GPUs working on the graphics. Maybe even dual GPUs on each boar. You'd have plenty of power then. Failing that, distribute the processing somehow, so each of several PCs is responsible for a part of the image and one PC brings the parts together as a whole.

Just thoughts

Sorry, but as in the soundcard (5.1) thread, you are behind the times again.
NVidia have just brought back SLI, which means 2 graphics cards working together to produce one image,
http://www.nvidia.com/page/sli.html

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by Richard M

Sorry, but as in the soundcard (5.1) thread, you are behind the times again.
NVidia have just brought back SLI, which means 2 graphics cards working together to produce one image,
http://www.nvidia.com/page/sli.html

Flaming hell. Is there nothing these days they can't do? They've even got the intercard communications sorted with this "Express PCI" lark. I can see I've got some reading to do

This grade A muppet is off to bed.

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

Flaming hell. Is there nothing these days they can't do? They've even got the intercard communications sorted with this "Express PCI" lark. I can see I've got some reading to do

This grade A muppet is off to bed.

I suggest you spend the next year reading www.tomshardware.com

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Richard M

True, but the distance is purely artificial.
Think about it.
If you have 1000m in 3ds Max and you zoom in 10x you suddently have 10x the resolution therefore 10,000m.

100 miles could be 100 real miles or simply 500cm zoomed in massively, it really means nothing in gaming terms because you can make a 3D object as big or small as you want.
Real world measurements mean nothing because it isn't the real world.

Well, perhaps it's the diskspace they're thinking off too, imagine having the entire world mapped in full 3d, there'd have to be literally billions of different textures.

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by Bifta

Well, perhaps it's the diskspace they're thinking off too, imagine having the entire world mapped in full 3d, there'd have to be literally billions of different textures.

Sure, lets put some grass there and oooh! lets put a mountain there!
Seriously though, I'm quite shocked to how a game like MS Flight Sim can manage such pathetic graphics and still be called "stunning" in the gaming press..
There's so much more that can be done with todays technology, it just isn't used - all people seem to care about is shader model x etc.

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Richard M

Sure, lets put some grass there and oooh! lets put a mountain there!
Seriously though, I'm quite shocked to how a game like MS Flight Sim can manage such pathetic graphics and still be called "stunning" in the gaming press..
There's so much more that can be done with todays technology, it just isn't used - all people seem to care about is shader model x etc.

I don't think it'd be feasible to collate that much satellite data either, they've collated zoomed out data covering the entire planet (apart from the North and South Pole which p*sses me off a bit) but then if they have to zoom in obviously that creates more data to collate and incorporate, and if you have to zoom in enough to get enough detail to texture the buildings then it's going to be a neverending task. Personally I think all they'll do is create better texture meshes, the Switzerland addon mesh is pretty stunning with it's mountain ranges and lakes etc, it's not perfect but it's getting there, you'll never see a flightsim (at least not in your's or my lifetime) that'll get close to what you'd actually see if you were for example coming in low over London to land.

Saying that though, Flightsim seems to concentrate on non graphical realism, pretty much everything is there apart from the world which unfortunately is still secondary to the actual simulation of the flight, perhaps they'll address it a bit more in FS2006 now people have more powerful video cards at their disposal.

Originally Posted by Richard M

Posting this because I'm slightly bored and can't be bothered to play UT atm.
If you had unlimited resources to make a game, what would it be like?
What would you do in this game and what genre would it be?
Describe your ultimate game...

Depends on the Genre, For a football game i would bbut the engine behind Pro evolution soccer 4 and combine it with the licences of FIFA and then that will be great

I would like to create the best story/action/rpg game by getting a team of professional writers and give it as much money as possible for graphics, get john williams to score the game and professional actors to do the voices. Also the development of the game will be handed to Free Radical (makers of timespilters, secound sight and also has most of the staff that made goldeneye)

But I am happy with games now, I would much rather spend the money improving the following games which are excellent:

Grand Theft Auto - This has got to be the best game ever, it is loved by those who dont have a huge iintrest in game 'casual gamers' and those who study it all their lives 'hardcore'. It offers free movement allowing the player to move around a virtuall, living city with boats, planes and cars. Free will go round killing, doing missions, being a taxi, also you can use many guns, do the story. Good soundtrack. Fun police races. basically GTA is perfect

Pro evolution soccer also is great, the best football game by miles. No.4 includes real names, teams and kits and a few other features

[MadGamer]

Originally Posted by Bifta

My ultimate game would probably be a version of Microsoft Flight Sim with a proper, fully renderered world taken from live satellite data in real time detailing every tree, house, hill, river and road running on some form of massive curved screen so you can see detail out of the side windows without having to use the virtual cockpit, it'd also have a form of ATC which would interpret your verbal requests to the tower. It'd also be housed in a replica 737 fully wired up cockpit sitting in my shed in the back garden. Theoretically this is already possible, with the obvious exception of the fully detailed world, but finding a 737 cockpit kicking about isn't an easy task.

Now that would be nice. Especially if you could use all the controls in the planes and use your own voice commands for ATC.

The real time thing would require one heck of a fast broadband connection and the ability to 'fly' anywhere and see around would face hhuge legal issues as you could follow someone, or fly around army bases etc etc

[MadGamer]

Originally Posted by Damien

Grand Theft Auto - This has got to be the best game ever, it is loved by those who dont have a huge iintrest in game 'casual gamers' and those who study it all their lives 'hardcore'. It offers free movement allowing the player to move around a virtuall, living city with boats, planes and cars. Free will go round killing, doing missions, being a taxi, also you can use many guns, do the story. Good soundtrack. Fun police races. basically GTA is perfect

Yep got all of the GTA's on PSone PS2 and PC, and they kick a**.