Food for thought... Ideally, at least it seems to be ideal, you would be able to see creatures at extremely long distances such as looking out from a mountain top. I feel that EQ2 already provides a good range of viewing. I wondered, since the further out a creature gets from the viewer and the slower its update rate might need to be, does this apply to graphics and network updates? If a creature was very far away so as to be at 1/20th scale, if it were running in a direction that took the creature in a motion that equated to the viewer watching it move from right to left along the horizon, at that scale, wouldn't something like 60 graphic updates per second be overkill since it doesn't move very far per update, at that scale? Or, perhaps it should be the creature's scale relative to the viewer's scale, since some creatures are very large. So not 1/20th of its own scale but 1/20th of the viewer's scale. Let me try to explain. So if a dragon is 5 times taller than a player, at 1/5th its own scale it is still quite large in appearance, because it would now appear to be the same height as the player. However, at 1/25th its own scale, it is 1/5 the size of a player model and will now appear to be very far away. At that range, it would seem that the dragon might need to be animated at a slower rate. Its network updates about its location wouldn't need to be any faster than it is animated. (Edit: when I say slower animation, I don't mean slow motion animation, I mean fewer frames of animation over a time period. So if a normal animation has 60 frames a close range, then at extreme distances, that same animation might only be 6 frames. Perhaps both still taking 2 seconds to display. At long distance, 6 frames might still look fluid.) In the gameplay interest of extreme viewing distances, can the present scale of a creature model relative to the viewer's scale be used to modify the graphics and networking update rates so as to allow for fewer updates? With fewer updates hopefully translating into less hardware requirements.
It's not a matter of the scale of the creature. It's a matter of whether the thing renders at all. Check out the Guide to Display Settings for explanations of what exactly the various settings are doing.
I'll take a look. You know, if I was in an existing indoor cave complex, for an example, and I was say, 1/20th of my normal scale then the area would be 20 times bigger. You could then even add an aerial aspect to a cave or dungeon. I spent a lot of time in the Sinking Sands. You could even do something like that in an outdoor area like that. You might have to modify building scale but an out door zone could be blown way up in size by shrinking all the inhabitants. You could make Sinking Sands 20 times bigger, maybe. Just a thought.... edit: Though you would probably need to increase the echo effect on sounds in a dungeon. If it wasn't annoying. Making the creatures like 1/20th the size in some of these zones would provide some benefits. One you could still have the long jump range of the raptor but you might not be able to jump cliff walls. Second, flying creatures would take a lot longer to hit the ceiling. You could use the extra space for more content. I am just pointing it out as a possibility, if they ever wanted to do something different with an existing zone. I figure it is possible in theory. Or maybe it would be a nightmare...
great write up! quick question. is there a way to save and load UI configurations? say I have 2 custom profiles 1 for PVE, and 1 for Raids, both are heavily tweaked. is there a /save_uiconfig filename and /load_uiconfig filename ? I don't think there is but ya never know.
Can it dynamically reduce graphics options if it falls below a target frame rate and increase options if it is above a target frame rate? I don't see an option but, It would be cool if it could detect when to increase or decrease the quality.
