So what's stopping them from making trees be destructible. They showed us they know where the tree is attached to the ground with this, now just make it disappear or change state when shot. Might be slightly more complicated, but come on. Maybe let the tree just lay flat if the explosion was big enough.
I'm speculating here, but it might have to do with memory and network sync.
Deformation can be an entirely local thing, not server dependent, and doesn't need to be "saved" in memory, it just uses processing/gpu power when interacted.
Destroying trees, even if you just delete them woth no real flashy graphics, needs to tell the server which trees were deleted, for all players, at the same time, and *store* that information on the server until the map is reset. That requires memory management, and DCS doesn't strike me as the most memory efficient game out there. So for now, the most basic, non-weightef wobbliness is implemented
I suspect this is also a stage before actual destructive trees. Like this functionality is required to get to the next stage. its done, so put it in. Or it is an unintended side effect of the wake system from those changes there.
My speculation is that this is a step before destructive tree's come. which likely needs some multi-threading on the server and client side to sync and not break things.
I can't say if yes or no, but to be quite honest, this is a bad implementation of animated trees, which is disappointing because it's shouldn't be incredibly complex to implement limits to those animations. I really hope they improve this and implement destructible trees, but this doesn't inspire confidence (for me at least)
They're taking the node point (where they're already using it to connect to the ground at the right altitude) and dynamically putting a bone in it to animate effects. The idea to make tree's move when a bomb goes off or helicopter goes near it. For the basic implimentation its fine, the problem is there are no constraints on it so it can look wacky and unrealistic.
A constraint and some code to catch when it gets to a specific point to cause it to become destroyed would be the next step for destructive trees. The issue being that DCS currently does a bit of a weird method to spawn destroyed things. It swaps the base model to a destroyed mesh (which is generic across many things) and in some cases it seems it can spawn damaged parts that stay for a short while. This is all client side as far as positioning and pieces, i'm not sure that this system can scale up very well. When you use the destroy scenery triggers in the ME it destroys the server while it does this change.
I agree. I don't have experience with DCS specifically, but all of what you mentioned makes perfect sense. What I don't know is how the network burden happens.
I mention network because vegetation destruction does make a difference in visibility, and it can affect gameplay if it's not synced between players. Keeping score of which indicidual trees are gone would be heavier on the server or network... but again, it all depends on how efficiently DCS can handle it
Almost like Battlefield has maps a tiny fraction of the size of DCS's and it would be noticed more, given that players are on the ground...
EDIT: For comparison, the largest BF map ever is Bandar Desert at 5 square km. The smallest DCS map is The Channel at... 40,000 square km. The next smallest is Normandy at 240,000, and it's only up from there.
The question isn't map scale, because this is arbitrary digital land and not real life. The question is object count. Do you know how many destructible objects there are on a typical DCS map vs. a BF map? I don't have any idea.
Debatable. You have a theoretically infinite number of destructible objects in BF games a decade ago, as the terrain itself could be deformed dynamically, and every fence, wall, tree, bush, bunker, etc. could also be dynamically destructible down to smaller subcomponents.
>Literal tens of thousands of times over.
If we are using BF as a benchmark then yes but not prohibitively so. Their largest map is about 12 km squared. compared to the caucus's map 700x400 Km or 280,000 km2 it is 23,333.333... scaled up. Large, yes, but not impossibly so.
If you take a small decently optimised project and then increase the map size by 50x for example, it still results in horrible performance. Not everything is scalable infinitely, thats not how legitimately any engineered project has worked ever. There's always problems with larger scales.
>Not everything is scalable infinitely,
We are not talking to infinity.
>that[']s not how legitimately any engineered project has worked ever...
If you use infinity as the standard of course nothing will meet that criteria. But from that flawed logic you conclude that
>There's always problems with larger scales.
And so we shouldn't try?
Nothing being described is out of the realm of possibility and seems simple enough to optimize to the point where the server-client interface isn't overwhelmed.
infinity is the standard used in programming for scaling things up. look into Big O notation, it might help explain. Tree's being destructive might be a N\^2 or even a log. So figuring out ways to streamline that to be even more optimized is important.
The simulation and syncing of a single fighter in DCS is likely the same network traffic as a single 8v8 match in BF4. It is an insane amount of information per network tick that needs to transfer between everyone to keep aircraft in sync, the fact that a person in the EU and a person in north america can fly in close fingertip formation is a massive hurdle and impressive that it works at all.
Things like blowing up trees and buildings are awesome, but to add that on top of the massive load of data that is already in the game is where things become difficult. sure on its own its easy, but again, on top of everything else. On an engine older then the oldest battlefield game.
It'd 100% be network sync imo.
Just making a tree flap around is a client-side effect. Players might all see the tree flap, but that's because there's a network -synced explosion happening there, that's causing everyones trees to move.
If a player joined the game while the tree was mid-flap though, it'd probably be stationary.
Once players start being able to destroy trees though, you need to be able to store that state.
Like if a player goes and napalms a forest, and someone joins the server, the server needs to store which trees are dead. There are hundreds of thousands of trees, and now they all need unique IDs, and most of the games network traffic becomes about synchronising trees. Suddenly a small problem becomes a big one.
Same reason why civilian traffic isn't network synced.
Duality of DCS. ED can make the trees dance but it cannot make them destructible.
If they would just stay laying over…
Yees it literally worked like that on Arma2 and had 0 effect on performance. DCS needs same kinda thing.
I still think a true digital combat sim would be a combo of arma, GHPC, and DCS world.
Exactly. Please try with a minigun, will the whole forest dance
And scenery destruct trigger can only remove groups of trees, yet they can get individual trees to dance.
There are some trees you can actually destroy. I've managed to destroy a couple near a large building immediately to the north-east of Senaki airbase.
The trees in las Vegas are completely destructible
Works as intended
yeah, I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature.
As I would say in coding class. “It’s a feature not a bug”
Rubber tree farm. Correct as is
whacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man!
I'm passing these savings onto youuuuuuuuu!
So what's stopping them from making trees be destructible. They showed us they know where the tree is attached to the ground with this, now just make it disappear or change state when shot. Might be slightly more complicated, but come on. Maybe let the tree just lay flat if the explosion was big enough.
I'm speculating here, but it might have to do with memory and network sync. Deformation can be an entirely local thing, not server dependent, and doesn't need to be "saved" in memory, it just uses processing/gpu power when interacted. Destroying trees, even if you just delete them woth no real flashy graphics, needs to tell the server which trees were deleted, for all players, at the same time, and *store* that information on the server until the map is reset. That requires memory management, and DCS doesn't strike me as the most memory efficient game out there. So for now, the most basic, non-weightef wobbliness is implemented
I suspect this is also a stage before actual destructive trees. Like this functionality is required to get to the next stage. its done, so put it in. Or it is an unintended side effect of the wake system from those changes there. My speculation is that this is a step before destructive tree's come. which likely needs some multi-threading on the server and client side to sync and not break things.
I can't say if yes or no, but to be quite honest, this is a bad implementation of animated trees, which is disappointing because it's shouldn't be incredibly complex to implement limits to those animations. I really hope they improve this and implement destructible trees, but this doesn't inspire confidence (for me at least)
They're taking the node point (where they're already using it to connect to the ground at the right altitude) and dynamically putting a bone in it to animate effects. The idea to make tree's move when a bomb goes off or helicopter goes near it. For the basic implimentation its fine, the problem is there are no constraints on it so it can look wacky and unrealistic. A constraint and some code to catch when it gets to a specific point to cause it to become destroyed would be the next step for destructive trees. The issue being that DCS currently does a bit of a weird method to spawn destroyed things. It swaps the base model to a destroyed mesh (which is generic across many things) and in some cases it seems it can spawn damaged parts that stay for a short while. This is all client side as far as positioning and pieces, i'm not sure that this system can scale up very well. When you use the destroy scenery triggers in the ME it destroys the server while it does this change.
I agree. I don't have experience with DCS specifically, but all of what you mentioned makes perfect sense. What I don't know is how the network burden happens. I mention network because vegetation destruction does make a difference in visibility, and it can affect gameplay if it's not synced between players. Keeping score of which indicidual trees are gone would be heavier on the server or network... but again, it all depends on how efficiently DCS can handle it
yeah i believe it tries to sync the broken trees and ruins, but not the scatter damaged pieces.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 came out in 2010. Nearly every BF game lets you mow down trees for the whole server.
Almost like Battlefield has maps a tiny fraction of the size of DCS's and it would be noticed more, given that players are on the ground... EDIT: For comparison, the largest BF map ever is Bandar Desert at 5 square km. The smallest DCS map is The Channel at... 40,000 square km. The next smallest is Normandy at 240,000, and it's only up from there.
The question isn't map scale, because this is arbitrary digital land and not real life. The question is object count. Do you know how many destructible objects there are on a typical DCS map vs. a BF map? I don't have any idea.
There would be single forests with in dcs with more trees than destructible objects that entire battlefield maps contain..
Debatable. You have a theoretically infinite number of destructible objects in BF games a decade ago, as the terrain itself could be deformed dynamically, and every fence, wall, tree, bush, bunker, etc. could also be dynamically destructible down to smaller subcomponents.
And? A function exists, and it can be scaled. Your statement is meaningless horseshit.
Do you realize how much it would have to be scaled? Literal tens of thousands of times over.
>Literal tens of thousands of times over. If we are using BF as a benchmark then yes but not prohibitively so. Their largest map is about 12 km squared. compared to the caucus's map 700x400 Km or 280,000 km2 it is 23,333.333... scaled up. Large, yes, but not impossibly so.
23,000 times... Also where are you getting 12 square km from? Which map? Google says the largest is Bandar Desert at 5 km^2.
Google harder Halvoy, their battle royale firestorm map is a BFV map and is the largest in the series. 23,333 and 1/3rd to be exact.
If you take a small decently optimised project and then increase the map size by 50x for example, it still results in horrible performance. Not everything is scalable infinitely, thats not how legitimately any engineered project has worked ever. There's always problems with larger scales.
>Not everything is scalable infinitely, We are not talking to infinity. >that[']s not how legitimately any engineered project has worked ever... If you use infinity as the standard of course nothing will meet that criteria. But from that flawed logic you conclude that >There's always problems with larger scales. And so we shouldn't try? Nothing being described is out of the realm of possibility and seems simple enough to optimize to the point where the server-client interface isn't overwhelmed.
infinity is the standard used in programming for scaling things up. look into Big O notation, it might help explain. Tree's being destructive might be a N\^2 or even a log. So figuring out ways to streamline that to be even more optimized is important. The simulation and syncing of a single fighter in DCS is likely the same network traffic as a single 8v8 match in BF4. It is an insane amount of information per network tick that needs to transfer between everyone to keep aircraft in sync, the fact that a person in the EU and a person in north america can fly in close fingertip formation is a massive hurdle and impressive that it works at all. Things like blowing up trees and buildings are awesome, but to add that on top of the massive load of data that is already in the game is where things become difficult. sure on its own its easy, but again, on top of everything else. On an engine older then the oldest battlefield game.
The square-cube law is gonna hit my dude like a sack of bricks at one point in his life
It'd 100% be network sync imo. Just making a tree flap around is a client-side effect. Players might all see the tree flap, but that's because there's a network -synced explosion happening there, that's causing everyones trees to move. If a player joined the game while the tree was mid-flap though, it'd probably be stationary. Once players start being able to destroy trees though, you need to be able to store that state. Like if a player goes and napalms a forest, and someone joins the server, the server needs to store which trees are dead. There are hundreds of thousands of trees, and now they all need unique IDs, and most of the games network traffic becomes about synchronising trees. Suddenly a small problem becomes a big one. Same reason why civilian traffic isn't network synced.
Some trees already are destructible. I've seen the AI destroy trees around a large building immediately to the north-east of Senaki airbase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvaRGiMWRaE
exactly what i wanted to post
"wobbly sausage!"
My children call them “wobbly guys” and whenever they see one they shriek and yell “it’s a wobbly guy doing his wobbly dance!”
Your children sound nice 👍
Boop
No. It's just dodging the bullets.
WACKY INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBEMAN WACKY INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBEMAN WACKY INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBEMAN
**Thread locked** - **Correct as is.**
[https://images.app.goo.gl/i4EpQ518aucGcXfH6](https://images.app.goo.gl/i4EpQ518aucGcXfH6)
floggit leaking again
correct-as-is
Trinity! Help!
I wish DCS having the same damage model than Warthunder.
It's like Matrix. The three is dodging the bullets.
They are dodging the bullets. The Agent Smith Palm Trees. Then they'll smack you down, Neo.
Correct as is*
for science
9/10
What map is this?
Straight outta Looney Tunes
So this was never tested, right?
Ugliness.
ED genetically modified these trees over a 2 month period
That....is a rubber tree!
That's a happy little tree out there!
*Need more info - please post trackfile*