FSX, Crysis and framerates

[Geofa 108]

No joke-my pc is 4 years old-but does meet the minimum specs. (3.2 ghz running on vista 32).http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpgForum Moderatorhttp://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[n4gix 4,947]

>With engines like those for Crysis or AceCombat, gameplay is>initiated by loading a map and then the player moves through>this static map. With FS, gameplay is initiated by loading>data around the user aircraft but then the map itself starts>moving as soon as the user aircraft moves and it moves across>the continuous database of information that approximates a>round Earth.>>So, yes, both approaches require only a limited amount of>information to be hold/displayed at any given point in time>but the basic difference is this static map vs. moving map>approach (there's probably an appropriate technical term for>"moving map" I'm not aware of). Holger, that is indeed a critical difference. Where Crysis (and other FPS genre titles) use a static, pre-rendered "area map" for discrete boundaries...FS is continuously rendering a dynamic "area map" at a timed rate...The FS engine tries to optimize the process by re-rendering only those bits which have changed in between frames, but even so there is a massive amount of file I/O as well as data calculations taking place for every single frame!Adding on to the complexity is the need for multiple passes in order to build up all the layers needed to display the finished, single frame...At a locked frame rate of only 40fps, that gives the sim ;)

[Tabs 2,790]

Umm has anyone listened to what myself and others have said about the CryEngine 2's ability to dynamically load map data? From everything I've read it absolutely could be used to dynamically load a flight simulator's terrain data. The terrain would be divided up into "maps" (analogous to FS's LOD cells?) and the engine would seamlessly move between those maps as you fly along. Isn't this basically how the FS engine works too? You certainly are not loading all the bgl's and LOD cells and so on for the entire world at once - it loads what is in view as you fly along. You can watch it happen using a tool like Sysinternals' FileMon. As far as I can tell Crysis does something quite similar as far as the idea. Yes it's loading "maps" but what then are the BGLs FS loads if not the same "map" concept?As for flight calculations - you'd probably be shocked at how slow the CPUs in airliner FMCs for instance are... We also aren't talking about some sort of super high fidelity university-level fluid dynamics simulation of airflow here, FS is an entertainment title. (albeit a very realistic one) Doesn't X-Plane actually attempt to do some sort of airflow simulation like that actually? I didn't think it ran poorly at all FPS wise. (though it didn't have the same level of graphical complexity as FS)

[Tabs 2,790]

Another point here too:I think people are making the assumption that licensed engines like CryEngine2, Unreal 3, Source etc can only do what those games that they were initially designed for do. (Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, and Half-Life 2 respectively) - the engine is just a framework, and the company that licenses it can modify it all they want to get whatever features and whatnot they want. If it doesn't have a flight physics engine, one can be added into it. Unreal 3 does not natively support the sort of incredible stuff that Irrational Games did with water effects in Bioshock for instance - they added that on to the engine themselves. The engine is the core code that renders the graphics and provides a platform for the other things that make up a game to run on. What you see in the Crysis game is not even remotely everything that engine could be used for. I know of a third person MMO in the vein of World of Warcraft being made with it for instance. I really don't think there's anything precluding a flight simulator being made with it unless you think that it should be able to do it straight out of the box with no modification.

[Holger 0]

Hello Ryan,could you provide some links about this "dynamically load map data" point you're making? I haven't seen this mentioned in any of the previews and official docs/movies I've seen.The point I'm making is this: in a fixed-map world, when you move a mile towards the edge the (maximum) view distance shrinks by a mile. This cannot happen in a global flightsim; the current view distance needs to be maintained at all times. Not necessarily on a mile-by-mile basis but not by LOD5 "maps" (the large areas FS stores most of its landscape data in) either.In short, if the engine was capable of loading parts of an adjacent map while the player is still in another map then that would indicate to me that a flightsim application might be possible. However, this would kind of negate the idea of having maps -- spatially enclosed units -- in the first place.Cheers, Holger

[Guest Lith1um]

There is a huge difference in the work load between rendering prerendered maps, and generating the same scene on the fly.Crysis, and just about every other shooter, renders prerendered maps. Virtualy everthing on those maps has been manualy placed in position by a map designer, ie: human contact.FSX generates terrain in real time using actual survey data and autogen. There is a huge difference in the amount of overhead. One thing to consider is the number of calls and system bandwidth.FSX's method is much more taxing on a system, but as someone said, Who's gonna sit there and prerender scenes for the entire world?

[Guest weeniemcween]

I suppose that you could make fluid dynamics as complicated as you wanted to, within weather/turbulence simulation, but fs doesn't have that now (beyond basic thermals and turbulence) and what I'm saying is that another engine could support what we have now. Besides, convincing simulations of fluid dynamics have been done, and they as well do not require a lot of computational power (e.g. plasma pong).Just download the video here. Jean luc is the one who initially referenced it in the ace combat thread and I went to check it out. I used to assume flight physics were very complicated to simulate but that is not the case. Brian Beckman is a phd physicist at Microsoft who has done work developing physics for games, like Forza motorsport. http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=314874 here is his bloghttp://weblogs.asp.net/brianbec/articles/440296.aspx

[Tabs 2,790]

>FSX generates terrain in real time using actual survey data>and autogen. There is a huge difference in the amount of>overhead. One thing to consider is the number of calls and>system bandwidth.FSX is not "generating" terrain in real time. (ala what a game like Spore does with procedural rendering or something like that where it really is real time generation) The terrain exists in the BGLs and it loads those in as you fly along your route. The autogen is mapped to the terrain textures and there are preset models that it picks from when it renders the scene.When terrain for FS is made, there's tools that import the USGS/STRM or whatever source survey data into BGL. You could very easily write such a tool that would import that data into another game engine's "map" format.

[WarpD 824]

There are some serious misconceptions going on about what FSX does and doesn't do versus what Crysis does and doesn't do.1) FSX is generating terrain real time. If you think otherwise, then you don't grok what the statement actually means.2) No matter what the physics guy stated... flight physics is absolutely not simplier than the ballistics of a bullet. A bullet's ballistics is 'canned', if you purchase 100 rounds all 100 rounds exhibit the exact same ballistics behavior. Aircraft are dynamic objects that change and manipulate the aerodynamics on the fly.If flight physics is so simple... then by all means, explain why the Physix chip can't do it but CAN handle ballistic trajectories. ;)

[Guest JeanLuc_]

pardon me asking: "explain why the Physix chip can't do it but CAN handle ballistic trajectories" where does it say so?out of my mind: could it be because there is no "flight sim" API for the Physix chip yet? or could it be the main driver for the Physix chip, which lead to its design, was rope/cloth/particule/breakable simulation?Any 3D engine is capable of rendering 3D worlds. They differenciate in their capability to simulate real life lighting (that includes how they manage shadows, rays, HDR etc...), to simulate physics models (vehicule movements, collisions), to simulate deformations and animations (grass moving with the wind for example), to simulate network communications (multi-players), to simulate sound (sound emmitters, occlusion, 3D positioning, doppler and sound effects) and a number of other things.The FSX 3D engine is no different from the standpoint of the purpose of the engine, it is just it seems not developped as good as what can do 3d engine professionals.I have been studying 3d engines for a while now, and I fairly think I'm correct with the above. If not, please, just let me know! I'm willing to learn!

[btacon 1,772]

and it's pretty smooth on my high-end machineQ6600XP SP2Nvidia 8800GTXRegardless of whether the Crytek 3d engine is capable of handling FS type duties, (and I think it is), it is a fact that it is way ahead of the FSX engine from a graphical perspective. That is to be expected if one considers the FS engine is basically years old, not changed much since FS 2002 days.Sure there have been improvements, but the engine is still designed with a "legacy" viewpoint, as is evidenced by its ability to ingest even FS2002 aircraft in certain cases.http://www.simviation.com/fs_compatibility.htmMy point? The only way for the FS franchise to move truly into the next phase of 3d graphics modeling is with a total rewrite of the core engine...something that Aces has already aluded to I believe.MHO,bt

[McCrash 3]

>Read this at another forum:>>"I'm getting 12.85 FPS on the SP demo!!>>1920x1080, All graphics settings to HIGH. 0xAA>>There's a VERY HIGH setting that I don't dare try.">>Sound familiar? It's about Crysis.>>http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1234849>>Microsoft isn't the only developer programming for the>future.I had to load the newer '169.01' driver release to get Crysis to run.I thought it sucked. Nothing new and the game was boring. That driver release caused a minimum of 15 fps loss in FSX.Had to go back to the '158.27' release.

[Guest]

They haven't alluded to a full rewrite, only dropping some backwards compatability which means FS11 is probably going to be DX10 only. The question is can ACES make it look like a modern game and have it actually be playable? FSX RTM couldn't do it and SP2 is a tiny baby step forward.

[Tabs 2,790]

>1) FSX is generating terrain real time. If you think>otherwise, then you don't grok what the statement actually>means.I have no idea what you mean here. If it's "generating" the terrain in real time, why do I have 20+GB of terrain BGLs, textures, models etc in my FSX folder?When you say Crysis is "prerendered" I don't know what you mean either - if it was prerendered you wouldn't even need a good video card because it would just be playing back a video or something to that effect.Both games *render* in real time - they do not create their "maps" in real time.

[PhilTaylor 45]

Actually Ryan, you are wrong here.The full world at 1m would be way bigger. The US is typically 30m and outside the US the data sets can vary up to about 90m depending on what the national owning authority paid for in terms of satellite time. IIRC, we shipped 3m LIDAR for Mt St Helens in Accel to support a mission. That one area alone is like 100m on disk. So depending on the LOD, interpolation is happening on the bgl data as well as a tesselation to triangles for the hw rendering. And depending on how far you fly from origin, a retesselation has to occur to avoid floating point errors creeping in. This is due to the WGS-84 64-bit float coordinates the data-set is stored as, and the 32-bit float coordinates we have on the graphics hw to render with.This just points out that actually reading the source and understanding the algorithms and assumptions built-in ( and all programs are but a specific implementation with a set of assumptions and compromises ) to each engine, this is nothing but speculation.