Len5 wrote:This is just a nade:
https://starcitizen.tools/images/8/8d/M ... ons_02.png
Does a grenade in a game like SC need this much detail? I doubt it's been put together by one person in a half an hour. And it's been an even bigger waste of time if they put a simpler version of it in the game.
I'd rather have less detail and a sooner release of the game.
There are key elements missing from that render that could tell me how "detailed" it really is. Though, it's obviously a decent amount of polys for what one might consider a "game resolution" model, which I don't think it really is. (I can't really look closely at it on this 'puter. I guess I could, but I don't think it necessary.)
However, keep in mind that high resolution models are used in game creation in order to render things like "normal maps", in outside apps, that can be applied to much lower resolution versions in-game, giving the low-res model the appearance of being much more highly detailed than it actually is in terms of its true geometry. Basically, there would be two versions, one which is the low-res in-game version and one that was used to produce a normal map, occusion map for baking in ambient occlusions, etc, and the like. Only the low-res version with these maps pasted on it, allowing the renderer to "fake" detail for us in real-time, would ever appear in-game.
For instance, once might see an absurdly hi-res "game character" being shown in someone's demo-real for their uber Z-Brush mad skillz... "Fifty-gazillionz polyz!" Then, that's used to render a normal map, giving the illusion of all that intricate geometry, and that map would then be applied to a "hi res" 10k poly in-game character figure. It'd look pretty cool, but if you looked very closely at it, especially the visible edges of the model, you could tell it was a much lower resolution than its initial appearance seems to show. (Kind of like a 2d image that "looks" 3d. We know its not really, really, really, "3d", but from certain angles, it looks like it is.)
Note:
https://starcitizen.tools/Special:MyLan ... tar_Engine
Many of these improvements are aimed at giving the best band for their buck in terms of high-detail rendering in a live engine. I don't know much about the capabilities of these engines/techniques, but they're clearly being optimized for game rendering, giving them some real capabilities for "hands off" scene rendering/generation. (ie: They wouldn't have to produce fifty-eleven things for the same scene/view, letting the engine do all that work for them.) Some of the info there is frustratingly "red links" going nowhere, though.
It was awesome. That's something happening ... 14 years ago. I still remember it fondly like yesterday. 
