Just dont render friendlies! its not like they're gonna heal you or drop ammo, if they can see me they're just going to shoot me or run through my fire, it would be best if we cant see each other and can see more enemies. and for the nubbins: if it aint rendered, you cant hit it.
The big render change is in jan we as so everyone assume. Currently infantry is rendered in a radius around you, this means that allies behind you are rendered as well as enemies in front. From what I've seen everyone assumes the jan patch will include changes to render only things in your field of view (lots of engines do this its why when you turn sometimes you can see the textures flicker.)
Objects not in your FOV do not actually render - but you do continue receiving updates on them from the server. The "rendering" issue is an issue where the server isn't sending information about players beyond a certain radius. But there could be a lot of improvements in choosing more effectively in what to include and omit here as well. Good omission rules would permit a greater 'general' radius. Good inclusion rules would permit always including critical elements. (Shot by, shot at, and squad-spotted really should be minimums for always-include) PS1 for example heavily separated "indoors" and "outdoors" - which greatly assisted in reducing packet sizes and as a consequence network load and server-network latency.
Actually I've heard this same suggestion before, of not rendering friendlies. But just imagine how immersion breaking that would be - I think if implemented it would make for a worse experience than we already have. Not to mention it would totally break all support classes. This *bug* is a fundamental game problem. SOE should not have released the game with such a problem. If the servers can't handle that many players in one place on average, then cut the capacity for concurrent players. Honestly, 2000 players per continent means nothing when you can only see 20 enemies at a time, and on top of that a few are blinking in and out of existance only 10 feet in front of you.
With proper infantry rendering we'll also see new balancing issues. Dalton anyone? It should be interesting.
