How will they handle so many concurrent players with this quality of graphics? [Archive]

Briq

2012-01-30, 10:13 PM

I have faith that the PS2 team will do a good job balancing all the weapons and vehicles in the game because of all the years of experience and data they have from the original planetside. I also believe that they'll do a good job adding new features to the game to make it fresh and keep it fresh. The main thing I'm worried about is how the game will run when hundreds of players are in a small area shooting their weapons, not to mention 30+ vehicles to go with them. This was one of the main issues the original planetside faced and the graphics in ps2 aren't even comparable. Has technology advanced enough to not only handle much better graphics, but more players with a smoother playing experience? Put my mind at ease!

VioletZero

2012-01-30, 10:15 PM

Roy Awesome

2012-01-30, 10:30 PM

Concurrent Player Count and Graphic Rendering are fairly different from eachother. Take Eve Online for example. My computer can handle a very large battle (500+) just fine, but the servers die every time. This is because the server does all the game logic, and concurrent player count hurts them. For Graphics, you just have to deal with your polygon budget. You could theoretically have 10,000 players with 2 polygons per player and be just fine on even the worst modern graphics cards. It's all about optimizing draw distance and balancing draw calls vs polygon bandwidth, something you have to do regardless of the number of players in the environment. More players do lead to more draw calls though.

VioletZero

2012-01-30, 10:32 PM

I'm more worried about processors to be honest.

super pretendo

2012-01-30, 10:38 PM

Servers don't load every player's graphics, that's client side

Sifer2

2012-01-30, 10:42 PM

Well have you seen the quality of the models of units in RTS games now? Hundreds of little dudes running around, and each one looks really nice when you zoom in.

I'm thinking modern game engines just handle this stuff better. I'm guessing juicy details only load when your really close to the other person. But yeah I do hope they don't get too carried away. Since it did hurt the first game when people had a difficult time getting playable fps in large fights.

Death2All

2012-01-30, 10:56 PM

What Roy said.

I'm guessing the game is going rely heavily on culling animations. I.E. highly detailed textures only load when you're at an optimal framerate or a smaller scale fight. Let's just hope they actually program the game correctly so enabling that feature actually works this time around. You actually had to go into the games files and manually change the numbers in a document to get them to work, even then it would still disable if you went into any menu with in the game.

The graphics really do look amazing (Xbox 360 graphics? C'mon, this game is gorgeous) but I still prefer performance over graphics. I really don't care about the individual stitches or hexes finely woven into your armor when I'm shooting you in the face.

Atheosim

2012-01-30, 11:00 PM

I frankly would be fine with HL2 gen graphics as long as it runs smoothly. As DeeTwo said, such fine details are very superfluous in a game like this especially.

PrISM

2012-01-30, 11:03 PM

The visual quality of whatever screenshots and other media that's been shown is by no means a representation of what you'll get in the final release.

Atheosim

2012-01-30, 11:16 PM

The visual quality of whatever screenshots and other media that's been shown is by no means a representation of what you'll get in the final release.

My thoughts exactly.

Logri

2012-01-31, 02:56 AM

For me, now as always, performance > graphics.

SKYeXile

2012-01-31, 03:04 AM

wizards.

Atheosim

2012-01-31, 03:06 AM

wizards.

:(

skoimich

2012-01-31, 03:20 AM

Xbox 360 graphics? i think i need a new TV!

Vancha

2012-01-31, 08:41 AM

Well, the graphics are like early Xbox 360 at best.
Look up CoD2, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Perfect Dark Zero or Quake 4.

PS2 looks better than all of them (for now, at least).

Tikuto

2012-01-31, 08:58 AM

performance > graphics.This has to be the way or else PlanetSide2 is a deformed baby.

wizards.
AGN January: "Wizby"

Sabrak

2012-01-31, 09:11 AM

I'm pretty sure T-Ray stated that what we see in the screenshots is some sort of full detailed version of what we'll see on OUR character, but that other characters in-game will be less detailed, at least in textures.

I think he even tweeted a glimpse of a lower detailed texture.

Can't be arsed to look for the source though...

Levente

2012-01-31, 09:14 AM

Knocky

2012-01-31, 09:22 AM

False Answer:

No holstered weapons will be displayed. No backpack to stuff full of whatever you want.

Real Answer:

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm125/Knocky23/Aliens.jpg

Xaine

2012-01-31, 09:39 AM

This is not 4chan. Please guys :(

On topic, I had the same concerns but then i thought that Planetside is ALL about massive combat. If they made the graphics so advanced that you can only have 10 people on your screen at a time without your PC locking up. That would be amazingly fucking stupid.

On top of that, this is going to be free to play - which means any random can download it, which again, means they have to aim for low PC specs to accommodate more of the market.

They KNOW this game's selling point is MASSIVE COMBAT. If 90% of people can't play it because their computers aren't good enough, then Planetside is severely screwed.

Thankfully, the Devs are not stupid and know this. So we will be fine. :)

LongBow

2012-01-31, 09:40 AM

graphics are handled locally ... it doesn't matter how pretty you are, you only need to send the characters "sliders" once when you first meet. (or when it changes) and almost everything is stored locally, or initialized on entry to an area (probably a bit of both)

The normal game stuff gets sent completely differently. things like position, if your crouched, are you shooting? that stuff... that's the stuff that could slow the game down if your internet connection isn't very good.

(latency or the lag effect, happens because no matter how fast a packet moves it still has a delay no matter how small)

Lay-mans terms....
You only have to say where you are standing, not what the grass looks like, the graphics will not affect how many people can be connected at once!

acosmo

2012-01-31, 09:42 AM

ask tray and he'll be like

forgelight baby

DoubleZero

2012-01-31, 10:05 AM

The graphics look really nice and it's cool how they are aiming for people with upto 4 years old PC's, I can't wait roll on Beta :)

Shogun

2012-01-31, 10:46 AM

i´m still not convinced that ps2 will really look like the screenies we got so far.

anyone saw the screenies from ps1 alpha, that were posted by an ex soe employee ( i think)?

when those screenies were found on the net, everybody was hyped about those first screenshots of planetside 2 because they looked so much better than ps1... until they realized that this were old shots of early developement from ps1.
so ps1 was developed with great optics in mind and was scaled down later in the developement to make it at least a little playable.

so i would not be surprised if ps2 is being reduced in graphics as well.
but the amount of work the team puts into the eyecandy would make no sense if they plan to do this again. and they have the experience from ps1 and 9 years of valuable data. so i think they know what they are doing.

the soe engineers like a challange, and they got a hugh one!

Elude

2012-01-31, 10:48 AM

Relating more toward the 360 graphics comparison argument....

Sure the games graphics from what we've seen don't seem to be mind boggling new but the features sure are. The only game I've heard radiosity based lighting in is Battlefield 3, it was also featured in Cryengine 3 tech demos but I'm not sure if that made it into Crysis 2.

They certainly don't look like the first generation graphics of 360 games but more so the latest in my opinion.

Vancha

2012-01-31, 11:22 AM

If the current level of graphics aren't viable for current PCs, I'd hope they'd do what they did with Everquest 2. When it first came out, running it's graphics on full was a push. It took a while for non-enthusiast hardware to comfortably pull it off.

Coreldan

2012-01-31, 11:23 AM

Isnt that pretty much the story of Planetside as well? :D

EVILoHOMER

2012-01-31, 11:30 AM

I don't know because I got my 7970 crossfire setup now and AMDs drivers are broke again :( Probably take them like 3 months to get Planetside 2 working when it comes out lol, still waiting for them to fix F1 2011 and Red Orchestra 2.

TacosWLove

2012-01-31, 11:33 AM

PS2 looks beautiful, it will blot out the sun with its purdy pictures, and it will do this all with lots of people by the action of little Gnomes that frequent Tray an Higbys sock drawer.

Tray had the sensibility to capture a family unit of these Gnomes (which are currently breeding). When placed in the server habitat, Tray immediately recognized the superiority of Gnomes vs the traditional hamsters and hence forth proclaimed:

"We shall have thousands of players compete directly with our new found Gnomes. No longer are they delegated to garden duties! LIVE FREE GNOMES MAKE GAME HAS LOTS OF PEOPLE!"

captainbaka

2012-01-31, 12:26 PM

Rbstr

2012-01-31, 12:49 PM

I agree graphics dont matter to much but im pretty sure the 360 has a 250mb
card and these days you can get 750mb/1gb for like $150.

Ah, ranking graphics cards simply by the video memory.
What a great way to buy a shitty graphics card.

(and also, memory comes in powers of two, so you get 256 or 512 or 768mb or 1024mb=1gb)

Sirisian

2012-01-31, 01:20 PM

The main thing I'm worried about is how the game will run when hundreds of players are in a small area shooting their weapons, not to mention 30+ vehicles to go with them.
I imagine SOE will have their servers well equipped. Regarding how it will runs on the client-side depends on your computer. For me it will run fine. :lol:

Also the concept of hundreds of units in the same area shooting their weapons is laughable. Small battles spread across a large front line is the goal it seems. I doubt we'll see a 500v500 battle for a bridge basically.

Princess Frosty

2012-01-31, 01:21 PM

By offering scaleable graphics and doing some clever optimization when it comes to which players get drawn on the screen, and at what quality.

Like PS1 it will almost certainly have an aggressive LOD for rendering low quality players and vehicles at distance, plus modern hardware is extremely fast, if you're sporting even a mid range card you're going to have more than enough power to render hundreds of players with little issue.

The graphics look fantastic for an MMO but you have to remember that MMO standards are somewhat lower than regular FPS standards, this is not going to look like BF3 in DX11 in max settings, and thats fine, but the lower requirements free up the GPU to render lots and lots of players which is where PS2 will really shine.

SuperMorto

2012-01-31, 02:11 PM

why dont you all just have a look at the in game footage here, it can clearly be seen in all its glory:

New Planetside 2 Game Footage Full HD (enhanced by Morto) - YouTube

Tasorin

2012-01-31, 02:33 PM

For me, now as always, performance > graphics.

This! +1 for Common Sense.

Metalsheep

2012-01-31, 02:55 PM

While the graphics are good, and the new engine is great. PS2 isnt really scratching the surface of what a lot of New/Gamer PCs can do. While Planetside 2 is one of the most beautiful games I've seen in a while, its still not the pinnacle of graphics technology. Consoles have been holding a lot of games back graphics wise for a while. Since you cant go and just upgrade your consoles GPU. I wouldn't worry about the graphics vs # of players. Most of that is server side. And we can only assume that the videos and screen shots of Planetside 2 we have seen are on special Dev machines optimized for Planetside 2 testing. That may be what the game looks like at absolute maximum graphics.

Not everyone is going to load up PS2 and play on UltraMAX or even High. It's likely the majority of players will leave it at whatever the Default is set to. (I know I'm cranking it up to MAX though :D Gamer Rig ftw.)

Hamma

2012-01-31, 04:18 PM

Nobody knows the answer to the OP's question. Personally I cannot wait to see what forgelight is capable of.

SKYeXile

2012-01-31, 04:23 PM

Look up CoD2, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Perfect Dark Zero or Quake 4.

PS2 looks better than all of them (for now, at least).

lol PS2 looks as good or better than anything out there except for maybe Cryengine 3, id like to see that handle thousands of players though.

Jimmuc

2012-01-31, 04:23 PM

didnt T-Ray say that the reason they could get great graphics is because of the way that they could make it, bit hazy but wasn't that they would ask how much room they got tot work with and then they would go to town on making that bit of space look awesome while keeping the memory usage to an minimal. please correct me if im wrong :D

Levente

2012-01-31, 05:28 PM

People who say these graphics not good enough are blind deaf or mad. sure maybe the Tank doesnt have 10k texture on it but if you look at the game SCALEWISE it just blows everything away

Belight

2012-01-31, 08:42 PM

Well they say the engine is built for MMOs, so I'd imagine they have some tricks up their sleeve. DarkFall was able to host large battles, I'm sure a big budget company can too!

Rbstr

2012-01-31, 08:57 PM

The answer is pretty obvious. Compared to other, current, games it won't look as good if you hold frame rates constant. A hypothetical example: You might run BF3 on Ultra right now, but in PS2 you'll be looking at high or medium.

Big deal. Computers get faster and cheaper so buy a new one if your Pentium 4 can't run it well.

cellinaire

2012-02-01, 12:28 AM

Well, the graphics are like early Xbox 360 at best.

Sure, the art design is great but when paired up to recent titles it doesn't hold up as a PC title.

The graphics are also clearly designed with scaling down a lot in mind.

Which is good. I am not some graphics fanatic who has to have good graphics.

...I'm sure you do have an idea of what you're saying, right? Right?

"The graphics are also clearly designed with scaling down a lot in mind."

Yeah, normally many games these days have scaled-down graphics for release but the difference is not that significant like you mentioned. And you sound like you are an SOE staff or someone like that. :cool:

(and "it doesn't hold up as a PC title.". Is this a joke? I mean, I say this as a person who have seen/played enough of Crysis1, 2 in extreme, BF3 ultra, and Skyrim ENB/texture pack)

VioletZero

2012-02-01, 12:34 AM

...I'm sure you do have an idea of what you're saying, right? Right?

"The graphics are also clearly designed with scaling down a lot in mind."

Yeah, normally many games these days have scaled-down graphics for release but the difference is not that significant like you mentioned. And you sound like you are an SOE staff or someone like that. :cool:

I'm not trying to give the impression that I work at Sony. Those are just personal observations.

cellinaire

2012-02-01, 12:41 AM

I'm not trying to give the impression that I work at Sony. Those are just personal observations.

Yeah, early Xbox 360 graphics. Great observation. :D

VioletZero

2012-02-01, 12:43 AM

Yeah, early Xbox 360 graphics. Great observation. :D

Yeah...the graphics aren't great.

What about it?

Levente

2012-02-01, 01:59 AM

Yeah...the graphics aren't great.

What about it?

u mad bro?

Elude

2012-02-01, 02:15 AM

Early xbox 360 graphics... Gears of War was near the top of the list in graphics back then.

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/744/744356/gears-of-war-20061107035019971.jpg

Planetside 2 yet to be released...

http://www.planetside-universe.com/media/main/psnext/screenshots/20111122_4ecc0c3727119.jpg

Anyway it's a bit of a laugh to compare honestly, but the xbox 360 has pushed itself recently and I would definitely qualify recent games on it to being comparable by Planetside 2. Early xbox 360 games though? Hell no lol.

Atheosim

2012-02-01, 03:33 AM

Yeah, I hate it when people don't know how to differentiate between current graphics and 2-4 gens ago graphics...

skoimich

2012-02-01, 05:31 AM

I hope they don't try to spend time on making this game look pritty and forget about the gameplay :D

Canaris

2012-02-01, 10:48 AM

You know lots of people unfairly accuss SOE of not doing enough to keep up game preformance and that every time there's a hiccup that "the hamsters fallen off the wheel"

Well my recent tour of SOE HQ has lain my fears to rest,

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1lx63WQfc1c/TE2tnI5U79I/AAAAAAAAAkw/qKZRbAqA6Os/s1600/hamster+wheel.jpg

As we can clearly see they've doubled up on all wheels and switched to cheaper human fuel. Hamsters are to cute and expensive.

So in closing I'll be buying a new gaming rig just for PS2 so I can see all the best parts of Auraxis the way TRay and the Artist team meant it to be seen in their dreams :D
From the shots that Higby and TRay have been putting out it's going to be beautiful

FirstChaos

2012-02-01, 10:11 PM

Two words Forge Light !

Crator

2012-02-01, 11:06 PM

Easy, magic!

acosmo

2012-02-01, 11:48 PM

as always, quality posting brought to you by Canaris

LongBow

2012-02-02, 09:23 AM

ok, to repeat myself ... No graphical quality does not affect how many players can be connected simultaneously ... graphics assets are handled locally and not by the network.

second up, yes all assets are being built to be scaled down ... that is because you can look at them from really far away, the further you are the "lower the resolution" on that item ... try reading a bus timetable from the other side of the street!