A way to make MASSIVE ships and planets possible and bigger sectors/view distance (poly version)

[Valiant70]

I don't think this would help much, as I don't believe that rendering is the actual bottle neck. When you experience lag when moving towards large structures, this isn't because of physics (which are computation heavy, regardless) or graphics, but simply because I/O (reading it from the disk/transferring it via IP) is expensive.
Also, those planets models are actually static. Proof? Look at an old cookie planet from farther away.

Assuming rendering was so much more expensive, an actual model still wouldn't do much in terms of performane (also, generating them would be expensive, too).

Rendering isn't a bottleneck. Yeah, and Eiffel tower was built by my crazy uncle who went back in time. Rendering is the number one issue on most people's computers. Most players do not have access to Milky Way 2 to play Starmade on.

 

[NeonSturm]

Yes, Space games need to be big!

Partially true too.

Space games need Space and compareable tiny spots where peoples gather.

Fights should occur because of posed treats and for beautyful, comfortable places or strategic places.
Fights should also occur to supress the spread of memes which are incompatible with a person's ideology.​

No,Small is better for gameplay!

Partially true too.

Without first-person perspective, Space appears like an empty and cheerless|funeral place.

That needs details - you have to identify an environment which you want to be in or which you want to have (partially at least) in reality.​

Somewhere in-between is the sweet spot.

Too extreme opinions are not good ​

 

[Lecic]

How would this possibly work with block destruction?

 

[NeonSturm]

@Lecic : How would this (=details? ) possibly work with block destruction?

+—————————+—————————+—————————+—————————+
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 | I see 4x4x4 = 64 blocks which can individually die.
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 |
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 | I see 8 byte for their position.
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 |
+—————————+—————————+—————————+—————————+
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 | With 2 bit you can have either:
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 |
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 | empty, block1, block2, block3 for 16 bit
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 |
+—————————+—————————+—————————+—————————+
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 logic bit per (0.5m)**3 block == 8 per (1m)**3 block
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 |
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 | And because we don't need orientation (the form defines orientation),
| 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 | . now use 30 bit for 3 IDs and 10 for shared hp (max 1024)
+—————————+—————————+—————————+—————————+ . the history of "recently damaged blocks" will know how how the damage is distributed.
2 columns = 3 byte, 24 in total.

Now as we can derivate orientation, have 3 different blocks (or 0,1,2 at the same spot), 8x as many logic bits all in a 2x2x2 m cube and a very detailed shape...

What do we want more?

 

[aceface]

sounds good.

 

[Visitor]

It's hard to not smile seeing thread like this when such a big part of community is somewhat tired of oversized ships and tries to actively limit/balance them in comparison with the smaller vessels (if not in capabilities, then the maintenance costs).

If they'd be really well optimized, I certainly wouldn't mind bigger planets - ones that actually would encourage use of small transport dropships/shuttles and have space for actual 'infantry' gameplay - with sizeable ground and underground structures. I am less interested (in fact, not at all) in bigger ships than ones currently built by people. Even if they'd be balanced and not affect the performance much, we already can have dreadnoughts the size of a village.

 

[wagfeliz]

Planets and stations are different then ships. Ships are rigid body, planets/stations are close to solid body. What means they cant move, so its easy for computing. Of course just the devs can say what should be the limit, but I dont think the same optimization for planets/stations will work for ships.

 

[Ithirahad]

If there's anything here that I agree with, it's generally that SM needs a change in scale. Crappy, 2oo-meter-wide planets that still create lag despite being ridiculously small just won't cut it... However, this Level of Detail thing I dunno about. If we had something like a giant ball of square planet segments then LoD would be easy and look good, but on these dodecahedronal planetoids it's inevitably going to look weird no matter how it's done... And it just plain wouldn't work for ships.

 

[Blaza612]

I actually like the idea. I agree that it needs to have a larger scale to everything to make it feel more like space. The use of LODs would be far more efficient than having to manually press a button in-game to go to a low-poly version of the ship. :P