The issue with realism in games

It does not scale that way. Like I said before, look up how object oriented programming works and you'll understand, and if it still seems fuzzy, take a programming and logic course at your local college.

It doesn't handle the rendering. Here's what the server does, paraphrased from a post done by one of the devs of the system.

Basically what happens is the server cheats a little. They don't wish for it to send information to everyone about what everyone is doing. For example if you're in a NC warpgate, the server does not need to tell you what everyone in the VS and TR warpgates is doing. So it doesn't render them. It also doesn't have them interact or interacted by you.

Right now the range is 300m for infantry. Say someone is at 400m, but you saw them move out of range. You know exactly where they moved to. So you line up and fire. What happens? Not much. Even if you are dead on.. heck even if you were cheating nothing would happen. But what actually happens?

The server sees you at xy coordinates. It sees the target outside that range. It doesn't show them up. And the rounds you fire don't even show up to them, just as any rounds they fire don't show up. They also have no effect if they 'hit' the location said above. That's beyond GPU rendering as you can tell.. in fact is has NOTHING to do with the GPU other than the Server telling your Client that nothing is there to render which tells your GPU not to show it.

To put it simply, saying infantry don't render past 300m is a misnomer. What it really means is Infantry do not exist past 300m. And the reason is because the server doesn't transmit data to you about them past 300m. And the reason for this is to reduce transmit load on the server.

This is not speculation, this isn't guess work, and it isn't something I'm making up. The developers have stated this is how it works.

They've constantly tweaked it. It used to be 300m hard cap, now its adjustable by weapon used. For example heavy assaults with lockons will render exist further, as will engies on AV turrets. There's also been times where the engine bugged out and rendered them further out. More recently before this year started there was a patch cycle where it was out to 500m. I didn't see a performance hit on my end.. but it was interesting to be hitting out that far with the Railjack.

With a little more tweaking, I think the servers could handle it. As for players' machines.. they've got the slider in options they can tone down as needed, many already do so they wouldn't notice anything anyway.

How I'd do it is like I said before, anything you can't hit physically won't render (to an extent.. still want indirect fire to be an option). And maybe make it dynamic. If a guy is in the middle of a biolab, they don't really need to know what's going on outside, even directly outside in some cases. Just have to be clever on the algorithms.

You both are describing the same thing but it's you who said

Packets are obviously going to stuff alot of those in at one time. Now we also have to take into account that at 6000m, not EVERYONE will be included in there that's on a continent. In addition I would use some sort of method to ignore things outside of Line of Sight. I mean there is no reason to render something you cannot see nor interact with. At least past a certain distance.

That's why he mentioned occlusion culling. Reading it I also assumed that the LoS thing is somehow supposed to be done serverside with some dark magic, which it cant because sqrt(x^2+y^2+z^2) is the only thing server can realistically calculate which means radius/zone buckets. And yes, 6km is pretty much everyone on the continent once you substract ****** terrain and deadzones around the map and most battles happen to be halfway between gates so most people are clustered near the center. 6km is simply way too happy, you could try arguing something like 2km first.

As for not rendering things out of LoS client side it's obvious they wont be rendered because any remotely modern gfx stack will take care of it, but rendering is half the story. You have to deal with the data in the back and nothing changes the fact the game still has to keep tabs on all people in a huge radius, it still has to keep that data in memory, it still has to perform realtime checks on it to decide whether or not its needed, and the server has to push all that data in all directions. Dots on the minimap don't fall out of the sky, even if you and the other dude are completely isolated, his spotted/dildared *** is going to be shown so every dude in the memory is going to be tested for 3d rendering and for hud stuff. Any smart stuff you can do here to improve costs CPU which cuts into performance from the other side so **** sucks one way or another.

They are already quite clever, this game wouldn't run otherwise. I ***** about bases and stuff but i have no problems admitting that the tech behind it is impressive. The potential of the game was mostly wasted because they pushed unoptimized garbage out the door which forced their hand in quite a few design decisions we have to struggle with.
And they can't get any more clever without literally rebuilding half the game from scratch. Relatively old engine doesn't do anybody any favors either, that's fo sho. Low hanging fruits are already picked, specially when PS4 is such a limited platform and they worked their *** of to make it work. The game is more in the maintenance mode than anything, no huge changes are going to happen.

Games run on "good enough" and the intersection of "smart" and "cheap computationally" is not that big. I am also pretty sure the devs read tech stuff on gamasutra and know about the tricks already.

If your idea would work, long-distance battles (let's say Quartz Ridge to Indar Excavation site) would become dominated by snipers and vehicles. This isn't a bad thing, per se, but it'd probably be less enjoyable to many. After all, I doubt many people enjoy running across open plains and getting gunned down. It didn't work in WWI, and it wouldn't work well here. I fear that most battles would become stalemates with everyone hiding behind those weird coral things and anyone who steps out would be killed immediately.

Then don't run across open plains. Use transport.

You mean there would be a reason to use snipers and vehicles for some bases? If snipers and vehicles are a bad thing, why are they in the game? I'm starting to sense an agenda here. You might want to purge that. I've got a nasty habit of tearing people's images apart when they let agendas guide their opinions and suggestions.

And like FateJH said, use transport. You can still Gal drop behind lines. Kind of like a Mounted Cavalry push.

... I just said that it's not a bad thing

More organized squad play, be it with galaxy drops or organized armor pushes, is always a good thing. However, I, at least, tend to ignore squads that aren't from my outfit due to generally poor management. If this was somehow addressed, then I would have zero objections to more vehicle/sniper oriented open battles.