Update

[VSMIT]

Obviously, the 1.3 Community Project will be developed for 1.3 Public Beta 5.1.  Modelers should start looking into making higher poly models now that we can use up to 20,000 triangles per model.  Not saying that everything's going to be 20k tris, but it would be nice to see something higher than 2700.

[iron maiden]

Good.

[VSMIT]

Good.

Anything else to say?  Or is that it?

[bb1]

Hold on there; I would say go for a nicer looking textures than higher poly models. Just because we can doesn't mean we should, unless we LOD the hell out of them.

[iron maiden]

that's pretty much it.

[GreenHeart]

Its nice to think of the high polygon models that could be created with those high limits & what can be possibly be created in the bz2 engine.   The one thing we should be aware of is that we have to set a limits on these models.  If we use 20k models then we will also have to create numberous amounts of lod files which may infact might bog down the bz2 engine trying to switch out numberous amounts of lod & texture files.  I can agree on taking the limits slightly higher & leaving the small details to be done with textures effects.
A good custom texture can go a long way into making that lower polygon model to look like it has alot more detail than it really does.

Models may look highly out of place depending on which modeler created what due to their skilled ability to make nicer models due to the limits.  Everything has to have balance other wise we are just possibly wasting resoures & creating other problems.  In the old 1.2 patch i've seen weapon effects & other things get cutout because of to many high poly models on the map so thats something else to think about & fully test in the 1.3 patch 5.1 before going into that high poly limit direction.

[Nielk1]

Mod like you would without the new limit. But know you wont crash if you somehow hit it.

[Zero Angel]

I understand that effects and lighting have the greatest hit on FPS. How do high poly models fare in this regard? Are they expensive FPS wise? If thats the case it might be better to save them for uncommon vehicles and buildings.

[VSMIT]

When it was first included in 5.1, I tested with a 19.5k triangle ship from Infinity.  Didn't slow me down much at all, maybe 1-2 fps.  Didn't try with more than one high-poly ship (read: not multiples of the same one), though, so if there are many, it may have more of a performance hit than I saw there.

[AHadley]

Somebody get General Hoohah back in here, we haven't finished with him yet!

[Avatar]

The single biggest advance the patch made is, I believe, the offload of the graphics portion to the GPU.  With a modern video card triangle creation and fill are very fast, and most of them have virtually unlimited texture memory compared with just a few years ago.

That's the big thing here, to determine who you're developing for.  I still run an Athlon XP 2000 (1.6Ghz, single core processor), 2Gigs of PC800 ram, and a GForce 6200 (almost but not quite ancient, now).  I'm not seeing the same benefit from 1.5 as many of you, I'm sure.   (I'm fixing that, btw, and have parts on the way to finish a 3Ghz Duo Core Intel rig.)

So, while you CAN fill the screen with 20K poly ships and buildings I'd say do it right and include LOD support for older rigs... 

And I mean really, making LODs is not that hard.  Once you finish the high poly model you can easily cut down on the details to make a decent looking low poly version.  One quick and easy way to do that is to make the bulk of the unit one large piece, adding smaller pieces to flesh out the details.  For the LOD you simply remove the extra pieces... which are represented on the base texture but not 'bumped out' in the low poly LOD model.

-Av-

[VSMIT]

Somebody get General Hoohah back in here, we haven't finished with him yet!

If he wants to come back, he can come back.

[GSH]

You don't *have* to use all 20K possible verts. But, if some ships look pretty good at 3-6K, consider that.

And, yes, MAKE LODs!

-- GSH

[Avatar]

Another good use of LODs is for a 'Death Star Trench' type map.  You can add unbelievable amounts of detail to the sections you're sitting on, and get rid of most of it via LODs for distance.  Really makes the setting...

-Av-

[TheJamsh]

I'd really like to see someone make some high-polygon models. Imagine the sabre from Timevirus' site logo in-game! Probably easily do-able now. Get on it!