Steel Beasts Dynamic Terrain Will Come After New Terrain Engine

[Rinix]

Here's a video of Steel Beasts with high resolution terrain, courtesy of WarUlf:
 

[Cougar11]

Here's a video of Steel Beasts with high resolution terrain, courtesy of WarUlf:
 

Me likey

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk

[Asid]

Here's a video of Steel Beasts with high resolution terrain, courtesy of WarUlf:

Thanks Rinix 

[Rinix]

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11302-eta-on-terrain-patch/?page=6#comment-175722

A mere patch without the new terrain has been discussed as a "plan B", but my intent is to stick with plan A and release both bug fixes and new terrain in one final package.

[Asid]

It could be a while yet. Hopefully it goes well.

Thanks for posting Rinix 

[Rinix]

You're welcome. http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11302-eta-on-terrain-patch/?page=6#comment-175774

Of course all kinds of tricks can be used to reduce the size of the problem, we're doing it all the time. But even then the fact remains that SB Pro version 4.0 does a lot more things per simulation/render cycle than version 3.0 (e.g. vehicle suspension), and with version 4.0 the line of sight calculations have increased by up to a factor of 512 (actually it's much less, but increasing the ground resolution by that factor also means that up to as many more LOS calculations could be needed). To put it in context, LOS calculations have the potential to be the biggest frame rate killer of all factors, in any simulation involving line of sight tests. So even if certain elements are only used within a "bubble" around certain actors, with many, dispersed actors the savings aren's as great, and you can't just randomly generate stuff if you need correlation - e.g. two players in a network session observing the same spot must have the same 3D representation of that spot's surroundings.

I guess what I want to say is that CPU cycles per frame are a finite resource, even if the limit is growing with new processor generations. So, whenever you add something there's a price to pay, and the question always is whether that price doesn't exceed the value of that new feature.

I also agree with inexus' reply when he says that Steel Beasts needs to move on to a newer graphics API.

[Rinix]

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11302-eta-on-terrain-patch/?page=6#comment-175784
Ssnake's attitude of characterizing performance improvements as "buzzwords" speaks volumes as to why nothing has been done about multithreading, or a newer graphics API or GPGPU compute or instanced rendering.

When you increase LOS calculations by a factor of 512, no amount of multithreading will be able to offset that. That's not to say that multithreading isn't a worthwhile goal to pursue but it's always easier to throw buzzwords into a discussion than actually implementing the change. As far as crowd funding is concerned, all I can say is that I will not participate in any public debate of our business strategy. I'm here to explain our position to visitors that have no degree in computer science (why certain things are easy to do, but mostly why other things are hard, and that there's no free lunch in high performance computing).

[Rinix]

Some more info on WarUlf's video: http://www.terranis.se/en/news-5609627

The Terrain was built for SBPro using TerraTools new SBPro High-Res Export Node and LIDAR data on behalf of customer for an operational research project.

The customer must be Sweden, since it's using the Strv 122.

[Rinix]

BigBadVuk posted and asked if they could get more info on when the next release would come. Of course, all he got was snark. But at this point, it's got to be asked if eSim Games is hiding something. After how long we've been waiting, and how little communication there's been, I'm starting to believe that's what's happening.

[Rinix]

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11799-graphical-issue-when-looking-through-tis-at-distance/#comment-176037
Just Ssnake mentioning the upcoming version number again.

The road Z-fighting will be addressed in version 4.1
For the rest, we'd need a logarithmic z buffer. Doable, but not trivial to change.

[Asid]

Thank you Rinix for keeping us informed 

[Rinix]

This was posted a while ago, but it sums up the issue with the "It will be ready, when its ready" attitude: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11302-eta-on-terrain-patch/?page=6#comment-175956

In his case it didn't end well.

[Asid]

In the mean time I enjoy my 7cm per pixel in flight sim 

[Rinix]

http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11302-eta-on-terrain-patch/?page=7#comment-176232

At the moment the team needs to work on a number of open contracts where we're approaching deadlines. There was a window of opportunity at the end of September, but that one didn't work out. Right now a release would be tough to manage.

haraldhe says it all: http://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/11302-eta-on-terrain-patch/?page=7#comment-176242

Ssnake means to say: paying customers are more important then private people entitled to free updates/upgrades.-_-

[Asid]

There was a time in the not so distant past when it seemed that eSims policy was that the private (military) contracts were the primary focus and the public (PE) license was secondary.....Many people felt that they were made to feel "lucky" to be able to purchase a license. This is with a product costing $125 + $40 regular upgrade fees.......