Infantry Render

Imagine how fun this game could be if 100% of all infantry rendered! It would be awesome wouldn't it? Imagine.. being able to snipe from a tower and being able to see all your enemies instead of only vehicles. And people wonder why everyone plays engineer and heavy assault only. It's VehicleSide 2.

So I look at the roadmap, and I see new guns.. new continent.. new class changes. And I see nothing about rendering? Rendering needs to be fixed! Stop adding all this other crap and get rendering fixed! The ideal thing would be for 100% of all infantry to render, I mean all vehicles are forced to render why not force players to render as well? If you lag so what? I'd rather have slight fps lag than not be able to see my enemies.

SOE, make 100% of all infantry render.

- A loyal PlanetSide 2 Player.

Well, I can agree for them to make Infantry rendering a bar you can pull up and down. Because well, some of us have sub-par gaming computers. I for one would most likely not be able to play the game anymore if the game started rendering all infantry.

The option to make infantry render would be even better.

EDIT: I mean the slider of course, but as I said.. all vehicles already render and it has caused no performance issues for me. I'm sure it could render all infantry too without effecting much. But yea if you could move it up or down in options that'd be nice too, but it just doesn't seem like something they'd do.

Render distance is about technical limitations, it'd not there to screw players. A better solution would be to make all AV projectiles render (flak, missiles, LAZORS when they introduce them) so that enemies can see where they're firing FROM. Realistically, you're not going to see the dude anyway...you're just squandering your PC's resources. But by making the projectiles render, any threats to vehicles become obvious.

You may say "but Dingus, you glorious and handsome man, why can't we see them BEFORE they decide to shoot us?"

Good question, and a fair one. You, in reality, might see them at 500m. But more likely is that they'd be on their guts, blending in. Between camouflage, sited positions, cam netting, cam cream and natural concealment, you'd never see an ambush outside of 50m, let alone 300. It'd only be the signature back blast of their launchers that would give them away. Is that 100% fair from a gameplay perspective? No. But it does allow players to stage ambushes, and demonstrates the necessity of infantry close vehicle support when approaching chokepoints. Seeing the projectiles only saves hardware resources and allows vehicles a chance to fight back. I think it's a fair compromise, because the more units the game has to render, the more everything chugs to a halt.

MAX's I'd have rendering out to 5-600m though. They're big walking tanks and shouldn't be able to 'blend in' like the little guys. Somewhere in between full distance and infantry render distance would be about right.

At this point I would lend my support to adding a client-side slider so you can set your own render distance (for everything).

Of course people will cry, "That's not fair! People with newer computers will have an advantage". Well, guess what? It's not fair now. You are getting killed by people you can't even see NOW. So I don't think it would get any worse for some, and can only get better for others.

Yep. Except for the part where it affects server performance too.

I'd imagine they could make everyone render for everyone if we had 64v64 matches going or something. Realistically the numbers will be in the triple digits on each side, and it won't work.

People used to pop in literally in shotgun range once you had a large battle going on, like the crown or old Tech Plant defense with only one shield gen inside the actual facility and a teleporter from spawn to inside. We've come a LONG way since then.

Let's start with the fact that at a distance of 500 meters infantryman looks like the size of a pixel.

And your average Biolab fight would turn every client within a mile into PowerPoint; Multiplayer Edition.

SOme of you guys do not understand how thing work. You cannot have a "slide" for infantry render, becasue it is cut off on server, based on current load of proximity.

If you could pull your slider up and have bigger render then someone else, you would see him and he would not see you, right? And that would not be ok.

Because I can't be bothered retyping, allow Quantum to tell you what he already explained in this same thread (if you'd bothered to read it)

It will be no worse for some, and better for most. Now if only they'd add proper multicore support...

My point is not only with vehicles, you already see vehicles.. it's not with maxes either. I decided to make this thread because I was on the crown earlier, trying to snipe. There was a rock just below me that was about.. 150m away at maximum that I KNEW there was tons of TR behind, but I could not see any of them. So I would jump down and check the rock.. then they would start appearing everywhere around me and I would die.

I know that feel, and it annoys me too. But things render in a radius at the moment, and things track from that same circle. Unless they develop some kind of FOV-based render algorithms....I don't know how you'd do it though. It'd need to be an exclusively infiltrator bit of code, and it could be game-breaking. If they implement it with clever code and not a blanket-brute-force-global-render-distance-increase it'll be pretty neat to see how they manage it.

I'm sick of infantry I'm looking at phasing in and out of render at random. If an infantry renders he should stay onscreen until he is dead or leaves the area.

Let me quote WIKI on ps1:
PlanetSide is a massively-multiplayer online first-person-shooter computer game published by Sony Online Entertainment and released on May 20, 2003. <----- notice this
Unlike most shooting games, in which small-scale matches take place in essentially an instanced map, PlanetSide battles can involve hundreds of players in a single fight. <----- notice this

I played PS1 with an OCed celeron @800mhz, and i could see all of my enemies, culling didnt even exist.

Now its 2013, i have a quad core PC @3.00ghz and PS2 cant render the same amount of players on screen that PS1 could.

Put it however you like, to me it sounds a terribly bad design choice, not a technical issue.

It is technical and really can't be fixed anytime soon those of you who can't handle the way things are now might as well take a least 12 months off from this game. Just being honest.

They could have mentioned this "culling" thing before taking my money then .
I wouldnt have spend a single euro if i knew about it.

Yeah, good data there. On the graphics side, completely ignore the increases in texture quality, poly count, render distance and shader complexity. And that's just the stuff that I, as a layman, am aware of.

In terms of calculation, how about complex drop? How about non-hitscan projectile calculation, often with thousands of rounds at once? How about architecture, and decorative mesh collision? How about dynamic shadows?

Your comparison doesn't work because the engine is a lot more complex, as are the assets. I get what you're saying, but you missed the whole freaking point.

Also, dirty dualcore peasants. Blame them, I feel free to

Honestly who cares about texture quality, poly count, shader complexity and dynamic shadows IF I CANT SEE MY ENEMIES 50 METERS AWAY.
If i wanted shiny graphic i would play Crysis, not PS2. Im looking for massive battles, not for dynamic shadows.
Gimme the option to turn down graphics and see my enemies; if they CANT they have to tell us, honestly, like GW2 developers did.

So long as I can still HIT those targets not rendering if I can figure out where they are from said projectile, then we're all gravy



But at least seeing the bloody projectiles would be a really REALLY good start.

Making any HA with a rocket launcher in hand a higher render priority would also work wonders

Watch the interviews they can't fix it there is no "quick fix". You could see in on Higbys face when he was asked. That is when he first brought up the threat based rendering. The reason I say a year is it will take at least that long to get the threading optimized enough to be loading 4 cores or more equally. At the present state there is no way in hell that you will be seeing even 150 meter infantry rendering.

Take all the people that are getting 20-40 fps in big battles now move infantry rendering out even 10m do you know what would happen?