OFP 3D Technology

[BoarK 0]

I'm just wonder what kind of engine is OFP using: polygonal or voxel or mixed?

[Munkejens 0]

it's a polygon engine homemade by BIS.

they use bitmaps for bushes and trees.

Voxel is only by NovaLogic.

(Edited by Munkejens at 7:30 am on Dec. 18, 2001)

[BoarK 0]

Most polygonal engines are used for indoor environments so I'm wondering how OFP can have such gigantic maps that is suitable for land, as well as, air war fare. There must be some mix in technology. Name another game with maps of similar size that runs on a polygonal engine.

[Adviss 0]

voxels are quite easy to distinguish in a 3d engine, due to their inherent blockiness, even at high resolutions. As Munkejens stated, its not much more than a custom made (and well made, I might add) engine that uses 256 sprites(bitmaps) for the scenery. The reason they can do this is the same reason flight simulators can-the engine is made for a large outdoor enviroment, whereas most fps's use something like quake 3 technology that is ment for extremely detailed enviroments. If you noticed nothing in operation flashpoint screams of detail at a close range. And the engine, imo, isnt terribly suited for air ware fare, unless you increase the viewdistance from 600 meters to at least 2500. Which would make the game, to say the least, sluggish.

[PV 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from BoarK on 7:40 am on Dec. 18, 2001

Most polygonal engines are used for indoor environments so I'm wondering how OFP can have such gigantic maps that is suitable for land, as well as, air war fare.  There must be some mix in technology.  Name another game with maps of similar size that runs on a polygonal engine.

<span id='postcolor'>

They probably have a very intricate LOD system.

[judas 0]

For the record, trees and bushes are polygon models too. The cloudlets (dust, fire and smoke) are the only regular sprites in the game.

[Hidden 0]

As long as it looks as good as this, I really don´t care!

:-)

Just came back from one of the most intense missions in the Red Hammer campaign, driving a truck down the road while bombs fall from the sky with a scary sound and explode in the middle of the road in front of us. Very nice!! I thought we were going to die any second, but we survived (only to be killed later by one soldier who survived my Dragunov..).

Hidden

[kegetys 2]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from judas on 7:18 pm on Dec. 18, 2001

For the record, trees and bushes are polygon models too. The cloudlets (dust, fire and smoke) are the only regular sprites in the game.

<span id='postcolor'>

Actually dust, fire and smoke are made of polygons too. (or actually triangles) they are just aligned to the 3d viewport so that they always face the "viewer", its called billboarding.

As for OFP, everything is triangle(or polygon) based, including menus and all. No voxels or any regular "2D" drawing anywhere. The reason why OFP runs so well is because all the objects and trees have alot of LOD levels, and so does the terrain. As for the size of the map it doesnt matter even if the islands would be 10000x larger the performance would still be equal in the GFX card level, the engine would still _draw_ only part of it, ie. 700 meters away from the camera. Larger maps would just need alot more memory but the performance would be the same.

I would have wished OFP to have better terrain LOD'ing though... setting viewdistance to 2000-3000 makes my computer crawl, it could work very well with better LODing... But still its a great game and a great engine.

[amos m 0]

ok. again. How do we change the view distance?

I seen it b4, but never remember to take notes.

Prob cause I got a celery 400. But gettin a new one soon, so could b handy to know.

[zovirl 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from BoarK on 7:40 am on Dec. 18, 2001

Most polygonal engines are used for indoor environments so I'm wondering how OFP can have such gigantic maps that is suitable for land, as well as, air war fare.  There must be some mix in technology.  Name another game with maps of similar size that runs on a polygonal engine.

<span id='postcolor'>

Ok...Black & White.

The key is in adaptive LOD....

[BoarK 0]

Another question regarding how BIS claim that it's not efficient to have an in progress join option for OFP with it large map sizes. Persistent online games namely WII Online, Everquest etc...have huge world maps, so how is it possible for those games to update their clients with all world information when new clients connect. I'm sure that WII online doesn't have as much details as OFP, ie. fallen trees, but it has much bigger maps. Is the world information cached somewhere off-server so that it could be downloaded at maximum speed when a client decides to connect? What happens in those persistent online games where the client's bandwidth is push to it's limits? Has any one experienced a moment in WII online where alot of players occupy a small area? How does a normal 56k connection handle so much information?

I'm dreaming of a persistent map for OFP where it would run for days with people fighting it out 24/7. Maybe in OFP2.

[Krull SGC 0]

I think thats what we all dreamed of Boark. I for one did, but I was hoping for something a bit like the novaworld system the DF games have, I don't like independent servers providing all of the games, sometimes it is ok when you want to try something different, but not all of the time.

Anyhow, what I got instead was the most comprehensive single player game I have ever owned (well after CM), and I can't get enough of it.

Though maybe you are right about OFP2 (assuming they don't think of a better name), Codemasters and BIS are no doubt listening to the constructive comments being made about OFP, and maybe they will give "OFP2" a heavy MP slant, though hopefully they will build on the SP aspects too, because they already have that down to a fine art, hey maybe we might even get a game in the future which is both a great SP and a great MP game, now that would be something, don't you think?!?!

[judas 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from Kegetys on 7:44 pm on Dec. 18, 2001

Actually dust, fire and smoke are made of polygons too. (or actually triangles) they are just aligned to the 3d viewport so that they always face the "viewer", its called billboarding.<span id='postcolor'>Of course

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">The reason why OFP runs so well is because all the objects and trees have alot of LOD levels, and so does the terrain.<span id='postcolor'>I don't think the terrain (i.e. the ground) has any LOD at all. Try a huge viewdistance, low "visual quality" and high "framerate" setting (to remove most of the vegetation). It certainly looks like the number of polygons in the ground is the same at the horizon as close up.

(Edited by judas at 12:19 pm on Dec. 19, 2001)

[Gorgi Knootewoot 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from zovirl on 2:39 am on Dec. 19, 2001

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from BoarK on 7:40 am on Dec. 18, 2001

Most polygonal engines are used for indoor environments so I'm wondering how OFP can have such gigantic maps that is suitable for land, as well as, air war fare.  There must be some mix in technology.  Name another game with maps of similar size that runs on a polygonal engine.

<span id='postcolor'>

Ok...Black & White.

The key is in adaptive LOD....

<span id='postcolor'>

And Giants. Also big maps in Sacrifice. Also in that dumb game Evolva and in Ghost Recon. All big terrain and polygones.

[kegetys 2]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from judas on 1:17 pm on Dec. 19, 2001

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from Kegetys on 7:44 pm on Dec. 18, 2001

Actually dust, fire and smoke are made of polygons too. (or actually triangles) they are just aligned to the 3d viewport so that they always face the "viewer", its called billboarding.<span id='postcolor'>Of course

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">The reason why OFP runs so well is because all the objects and trees have alot of LOD levels, and so does the terrain.<span id='postcolor'>I don't think the terrain (i.e. the ground) has any LOD at all. Try a huge viewdistance, low "visual quality" and high "framerate" setting (to remove most of the vegetation). It certainly looks like the number of polygons in the ground is the same at the horizon as close up.

(Edited by judas at 12:19 pm on Dec. 19, 2001)

<span id='postcolor'>

There is LOD in the terrain too, there has to be or it woudlnt run on any modern computer. If it looks the same close and in the distance, it just means the LODing is done well. With terrain its kinda easy to make a good LOD as the terrain doesnt have any sharp corners/details of which you could see when the LOD levels change.

Ghost recon doesnt have very big maps btw... But all flight simulators do. Look at MS Flight Simulator, it has like the whole world

[Gorgi Knootewoot 0]

Ghost Recon sucks also, but the graphics are great.

Serious Sam has big maps also, and they have a great outdoor to indoor thing. But when i play SS, i get a sore finger because there are so many monsters to shoot.

[MrLaggy 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">And Giants. Also big maps in Sacrifice. Also in that dumb game Evolva and in Ghost Recon. All big terrain and polygones.

<span id='postcolor'>

Trespasser is the game I think of when playing OFP, aside from the lack of boobs and crates and not holding the gun at arm's length. Hey, anyone fancy creating raptor models for OFP ?