Static Mesh support?

[DeclaredEvol 10]

Not sure if everyone knows what that is... it can be useful for lowering the polycount of an island making it more bearable to play. But I was hoping it would be included into the ArmA 3 to replace the Objects that took up memory and performance. To be quite honest Static Meshes can take care of 500,000 Objects and only drop FPS down by like 3-5. It is also a way to build buildings from scratch on games without having to ultimately make the entire model and save it. Saving us a lot of resources and a lot less stress for collision and even giving us physics and destruction without much choppiness. I read into it about Cryengine, Frostbite and Unreal Engine, and it isn't that hard to do for anyone else. Plus it being used in ArmA III would mean probably the best performance for most players considering loading a lot of buildings and objects in towns and then re-rendering them every time a player looks down a scope would save people a lot of hassle on tweaking the game. It would also give people the ability to fight inside of buildings and create buildings and large ones on the go. The Source Code is out there I bet, so it could be a useful asset. Perhaps I'd like to know if you guys have something similar to it?

A while back for the Unreal Dev Kit I made this test map::: With Static Meshes... and I also made tessellation and destruction much more affordable.

---------- Post added at 02:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:47 AM ----------

Only like 5% of that map is actual Geometry, the rest is highly detailed objects that "DON'T HAVE TO BE COMPILED". So loading maps can be almost instant ;D

Plus you don't have blobby looking objects and textures anymore... thank you!

Edited July 5, 2012 by DeclaredEvol

[nodunit 397]

Is this one of those things where the system runs a check for cloned objects and multiplies them, using resources from only one to read from the others and compile it into one full mesh or something?...Not sure I understand.

[Leon86 13]

dont you need dx11 hardware for this? arma 3 will run on dx10 hardware as well.

[DeclaredEvol 10]

Oh no, this can be ran with dx6 if you wanted. But this stuff lets you put infinite meshes on a map and throw in physics. Or even destruction, I'll make a demo of it soon. But for now, watch this for a quick view on its detail.

Everything you see in these videos are Static Meshes or Skeletal Meshes... and if you are running a decent rig you can play these maps 40+ FPS. The amount of Ray Tracing is astonishing, so if you lag that would be the reason. But if you ask me, this is what ArmA 3 needs in order for people to have more performance concerning the Frames Per Second in towns and Terrain. It doesn't take much to make maps like this if you learn how to use the editor, so for instance... you could make anything with max detail and excellent performance. There is rumor in Unreal Engine 4 you can actually have infinite terrain with as much detail as you want. The game runs fine either way, but these are not "VIDEOS" this is game play... some of it with scripting acting for characters.

---------- Post added at 09:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:16 PM ----------

I'd honestly rather see the Developers of ArmA to use Unreal Engine 4.0 in Real Time than having to work on tiny little spots in their original engine. If they licensed the Unreal Engine 4.0 they'd be saving a LARGE deal of trouble in the long run and their simulator would reach market standards of 10 stars. Most companies promote Unreal Engine 4.0 as being one of the most valuable Game Engines in the world, and it being used on a Simulator means MONEY. It sounds almost like BI just nailed their coffin shut when they said Physics was only used through CPU, Physics and simulation of realtime is what Graphics Cards are made for is also why they have 1000+ Stream Processors or more.

Edited July 5, 2012 by DeclaredEvol

[onlyrazor 11]

I'd honestly rather see the Developers of ArmA to use Unreal Engine 4.0 in Real Time than having to work on tiny little spots in their original engine. If they licensed the Unreal Engine 4.0 they'd be saving a LARGE deal of trouble in the long run and their simulator would reach market standards of 10 stars. Most companies promote Unreal Engine 4.0 as being one of the most valuable Game Engines in the world, and it being used on a Simulator means MONEY.

We've had this discussion before. The conclusion was that it would take too damn long, it would cost too much to license another engine, etcetera. Maruk himself put an end to the discussion, and in this community, his word is the word. I'm looking for the thread now.

Okay, I tried, but the thread got deleted, apparently. All I managed to salvage is part of my own post quoting Maruk, made in... December 2011. Man.

There are of course many different engines around, each has its own strengths and also weakness, nothing is black and white.

Edited July 5, 2012 by OnlyRazor

[DeclaredEvol 10]

Razor, posting that is not exactly going to make any difference. First of all, we don't have any ability to stop the Developers from making those decisions but we can at least inform them that it could give them MUCH more in the end. For instance, if they bought the lisence for this... of course its MUCH more expensive than just one person using it for private use. However, these guys will end up spending their asses off trying to perfect their issues. In the end, they will make much more money from using a API than making one and it also cleans out the difficulty of selling the product. This here is probably one of the best engines out there to sell with. You're being very arrogant, and not seeing passed their opinions.

[onlyrazor 11]

Razor, posting that is not exactly going to make any difference. First of all, we don't have any ability to stop the Developers from making those decisions but we can at least inform them that it could give them MUCH more in the end. For instance, if they bought the lisence for this... of course its MUCH more expensive than just one person using it for private use. However, these guys will end up spending their asses off trying to perfect their issues. In the end, they will make much more money from using a API than making one and it also cleans out the difficulty of selling the product. This here is probably one of the best engines out there to sell with. You're being very arrogant, and not seeing passed their opinions.

Wait, what? Arrogant? I'm just saying, you're not the first to suggest it. Unreal Engine, Cryengine, etcetera. I don't think it'd be a good decision to switch engines, not only mid-development, but without even testing how UE4 would handle 900km^2 terrain. Maybe for Arma 4, maybe for some separate game, but making Arma 3 run on Unreal tech would be time and resource consuming, and BIS might not even recoup the costs of making it.

[dmarkwick 261]

I expect the Unreal engine is player-centric though right? This is the point that most proponents of other engines don't realise.

[tremanarch 6]

i dont like the u4 engine.. it looks shitty, as for consol,es. tiny mini levels with some eye candy..?! no thx.

[onlyrazor 11]

But, hey, on the other hand:

imPJ9a1KwEw

[DeclaredEvol 10]

@Razor, I wasn't out to insult you but you can't listen to the Developers too much. They are not always very wise...

I'd say the only thing I wanted to point out is that it is even easier to work with Unreal Engine considering you don't have to worry about as many limitations and it also has an EXCELLENT Software Development Kit for people to work with. Just think, it is one of the ONLY Software Development Kit's out there designed for Users to create and modify content. As to where something like ArmA II or Frostbite only lets people modify values and "Hack" them to create off of them. Exploitation is the only way anyone will ever make material with ArmA if they don't put the game open source with a few legal copyrights. Making characters and vehicles or weapons is easy as cake with the UDK, the only thing I could down side is that the Editor takes a decent machine to run with. Redesigning certain key features or making something like ACE mod would be much more convenient with that; than having to use CBA, which can take a while and there are no tutorials on what does what with that. Since ArmA script is generally in the Format of C and C++ class structures. There is obviously no way to 'literally' program for ArmA.

Unfortunately you are right, Bohemia Interactive will never come around to using UE4 nor anything else. But if you ask most of developers, UE4 is a bit more clean and easier to work with than others. And it being a engine relatively in the making for 17 years means it would take Bohemia Interactive around 5-10 years to ever catch up to what they've done. After all it has taken almost 10 years for BI to catch up to Physics and other modern Research and Development (R&D). With all of that said, you guys better start opening up the books on hacking or you'll never get too far with this work. Enhancing Graphics, changing key principles like Data Structures and making better Physics support is impossible without using some kind of Hacking Technique. Look at Boris with his ENB Series, he uses Rogue .DLL files that attach to the Process that is running and it injects material that enhances and adds small key portions of Graphical Effects. If you want to work with something like ArmA to improve its capabilities, you might as well do something with the UDK or what ever else there is out there. That doesn't have limitations of copyright and unfriendly user composition.

[hyzoran 17]

Using Unreal Engine would require most of the game to be remade as the two engines are quite different. Also, offtopic a bit, I lost all respect for Epic Games since they dont care about making good games anymore as they can sit on their asses with their engine and they would still make money, not to mention a deal they have with Microsoft that prevents them from making a true sequel to the original Unreal game even if they wanted too.

[DeclaredEvol 10]

Haha Hyz, didn't know you played ArmA... I thought I've seen you in Unreal :P

---------- Post added at 05:26 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:23 AM ----------

Using Unreal Engine would require most of the game to be remade as the two engines are quite different. Also, offtopic a bit, I lost all respect for Epic Games since they dont care about making good games anymore as they can sit on their asses with their engine and they would still make money, not to mention a deal they have with Microsoft that prevents them from making a true sequel to the original Unreal game even if they wanted too.

Back to the topic, you may be correct. I know Epic probably has quite a few contracts up their ass, but the closest contract they do have is the one where they can't release games that were on the Xbox 360 for other Systems without Microsoft's Permission. Notice how their other games don't have registered restrictions. More than likely their PC Exclusive game will be good, and it is also still a possibility it is Unreal.

[Foxtrop 10]

With static mesh you mean like modificable polygons like the BSP games? also ARMA2 replace the objects in the distance with Lods with lower polygons for now the best way to do it until the voxels engines evolves, I like the idea of create buildings easier than modeling them up in 3dmax, but lets think it right is needed those fancy features in a combatsimulator? would be risked the server-client speed to use physics in every building? also RealVirtuality is a very diferent engine than any other BSP based engine, born for a diferent proposite and evolve in a diferent direction we should think what features could be made in that evolutive direction, like ambient effects, more things about realism, the idea of REPLACE the objects too far is a great idea but for that exist the LODS, maybe just stoping any kind of animation or not drawing it if they are too far(I think arma2 do this already) would be enough

[Tom1 10]

I've got the idea the core game is already done at the moment they are just doing some heavy tweaking and tuning now that the barebones engine improvements/additions have been added. Be a bit silly to change engine now. I've always seen those pretty engines that show off pretty maps with a shit tonne of detail packed into a small space (console games pretty much) to be unoptimised for massivly open worlds...

[dm 9]

I'd honestly rather see the Developers of ArmA to use Unreal Engine 4.0