Fog of War

[EVILPIG]

It's pretty cool to learn that Planetside 2 will have fog of war. I hope that the smoke that accumulates can get thick and greatly reduce visibility. I also hope that wind and weather will affect the fog of war. If it's windy, the fog of war should dissipate quickly. If it's already foggy, the smoke compiled with the fog would make it very hard to see. Enough smoke would engulf ground units and cover them from the air. Also, if the fog of war extends into the sky, it would be interesting to see aircraft dealing with it.

Also, I hope that the VS produce very little smoke, due to their weaponry. Seems the TR would produce the most.

http://www.droid-wallpapers.com/albums/userpics/1/wall_161.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ym8Q9yxUg34/SSqdrJoD0wI/AAAAAAAAHh8/v8h3v17Ugfo/s400/fog.jpg

http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2011/230/b/c/fog_of_war_by_edvardas_bertasius-d471gba.jpg

[Sledgecrushr]

Yeah it would seem natural for smoke to gather in partially enclosed areas like valleys and such. Now imagine rolling up on a forward base to see it consumed with grey smoke, the gunfire and explosions illuminating it from within. This would truly be the belly of the beast.

[lolroflroflcake]

If there was that much smoke I would imagine aircraft would just leave for another area, nobody wins in a mid air collision. Especially since there is no other way to fly the airplanes other then looking out the window, its not a flight sim after all.

[Razicator]

Rofl I was thinking in RTS terms and thought, "Wait, if we don't own the hex, then we can't see??? Dumb idea." But literal fog of war is cool!

[TOCS]

It's great for at least to things. One being performance wise, needles to say the game will generally run better if you can't see miles away. Second being the elimination of campers killing across the continent.

I'm happy to see that we won't get this BF3 style view distance that allows this kind of stuff to happen.

[BNuts]

Makes air to air radar actually a useful cert

[JHendy]

If there was that much smoke I would imagine aircraft would just leave for another area, nobody wins in a mid air collision. Especially since there is no other way to fly the airplanes other then looking out the window, its not a flight sim after all.

Except for the guy on the ground with FRAPS running :lol:

[Rainfur]

Fog of war will be a nice addition. Radar will be useful, for both ground troops (depending on how the physics work) and most definitively the air vehicles.

[NCLynx]

As long as it doesn't turn into BF3 where you can't see anything. Ever.

[Greeniegriz]

As long as it doesn't turn into BF3 where you can't see anything. Ever.

Lol, no doubt.

Fog of war would be a nice addition. Or a regional equivalent:

Deserts have sandstorms pop up...
Tundra/Snowy areas have snow storms...
Forests have fog...
Then add to that the smoke accumulated from weapon discharges...

/excited

Cheers,

GG

[Graywolves]

I look forward to this.

[Gonefshn]

Definitely a very cool addition but it could be overdone. I doubt they will make it too crazy it would upset too many players im sure.

[Whalenator]

My GPU = Fucked.

[Sabot]

Vanu weapons have no smoke discharge, we're environmentally aware! But I guess the NC makes up for it with their raw oil, coal, black gun powder and nuclear powered crap :P

But yeah.. fog is a nice edition.. as long as it's not too much. Too much fog in itself might present perfomance issues? I don't know... but storms I do like, if they're part of a weather system, and not persistent on the continent.

[Mepper]

You can't just create a fog system like some guys here want. If you want fog to be really realistic (affected by wind, vehicles, and slowly moving), this will hurt your performance A LOT.
Maybe not for players inside the smoke, they will only have to render the smoke, and only a little terrain, they will probably get a higher fps there.
But players flying over/looking to a big battle from a distance will still have to render the moving of the fog, the appearence of new fog etc. They see a big part of the normal world, but that doesn't cost much performance (it doesn't move) but then for one little part of their screen their machine will have to go through A LOT of different parameters. Because they should see the smoke exactly the same as the other players, not in the same detail, but the smoke still moves the same way.

And probably this will also cost a lot of network traffic. But I'm not sure about that, because if the server sents you the information that player X fires a rocket, it shoukd be possible to generate all the smoke clientside.

And also this would require probably hundreds of lines of code, and for now at least I guess the code team has a lot more important things to do (bugfixing).

Anyway, it surely can be a good thing, but the question is: how much gameplay fun do I get, and for what price?

[Greeniegriz]

Vanu weapons have no smoke discharge, we're environmentally aware! But I guess the NC makes up for it with their raw oil, coal, black gun powder and nuclear powered crap :P

But yeah.. fog is a nice edition.. as long as it's not too much. Too much fog in itself might present perfomance issues? I don't know... but storms I do like, if they're part of a weather system, and not persistent on the continent.

Higby did say they have plans for some a great dynamic weather system. Looking forward to that!

Cheers,

GG

[Aaramus]

As long as it isn't everywhere and in places where it makes sense then this will be a really nice addition to the game. I can just imaging the chaos that would happen in a really heavily smoke filled area.

[SpcFarlen]

My GPU = Fucked.

This is what will cause it from getting too crazy. Rendering all those particles will cause a large load on GPUs and many people wont be able to handle it. Higby did say that smoke from bases and outposts will start cloud formations and large battles will also cause clouds the same way. Similar to if you have ever driven in LA near rush hour lol.

But i feel that that will be above the heads of most soldiers on the field, unless at a higher elevation. But i like the idea, dont know how that would tie into a sandstorm very well. Blind, thats how.

[deltase]

This sounds cool but how the performance will be affected? I'd hate to experience low frames just because of a fog, which would make things interesting. So the question is: Is it worth it?

http://i.imgur.com/bWeDA.png

[EVILPIG]

You can't just create a fog system like some guys here want. If you want fog to be really realistic (affected by wind, vehicles, and slowly moving), this will hurt your performance A LOT.
Maybe not for players inside the smoke, they will only have to render the smoke, and only a little terrain, they will probably get a higher fps there.
But players flying over/looking to a big battle from a distance will still have to render the moving of the fog, the appearence of new fog etc. They see a big part of the normal world, but that doesn't cost much performance (it doesn't move) but then for one little part of their screen their machine will have to go through A LOT of different parameters. Because they should see the smoke exactly the same as the other players, not in the same detail, but the smoke still moves the same way.

And probably this will also cost a lot of network traffic. But I'm not sure about that, because if the server sents you the information that player X fires a rocket, it shoukd be possible to generate all the smoke clientside.

And also this would require probably hundreds of lines of code, and for now at least I guess the code team has a lot more important things to do (bugfixing).

Anyway, it surely can be a good thing, but the question is: how much gameplay fun do I get, and for what price?

It doesn't have to be that complicated. It could be as simple as the type of weather affects how think it can get. Not individual particles blowing in the wind.

[meiam]

Could be cool to have really good smoke grenade. You want to invade a facility really fast with defender in it, so when everyone drop in they shower the place in smoke grenade and since they would be all equipped with IR goggle they could quickly dominate the place because the other side can't see anything.

[SgtMAD]

EP, you better call me so I can explain what the term "fog of war" means LOL

[TrenchcoatNinja]

A really sweet idea that probably won't be implemented until post-launch, like dynamic weather. Like Higby said in his interview with Hamma it will be soo awesome for a massive gathering of smoke to denote a battle somewhere in the distance.

[SgtMAD]

do any of you realize that the fog of war is not a friggin smoke cloud or the weather?

[Sabot]

uncertainty in situation awareness

[Xyntech]

do any of you realize that the fog of war is not a friggin smoke cloud or the weather?

Pretty well misnamed thread, yes.

But having battles create atmospheric effects is pretty awesome.

I'm sure we'll have quite a bit of actual fog of war as well, given the scale of Planetsides chaos.

[Sledgecrushr]

This is one of those thngs that contribute to the overall "fog of war". But i think it is an adequate description of this particular situation.

[Soothsayer]

do any of you realize that the fog of war is not a friggin smoke cloud or the weather?

U Mad?

hah sorry, I've never said that but I thought that would be a good first and last time.

We've been told that technology has progressed to the point where old conventional thinking about smoke affecting performance is now largely invalid.

Personally, I don't think that the goal to have a game that can run on machines that are five years old is conducive to ground breaking achievements in game design. I think that SOE's past goal of creating a game that can scale into the future is the better way to go, but oh well.

As for fog of war in it's literal sense, I think this was attempted later on in Planetside's lifetime when they added the detection overlay to the map. I didn't really use it that often because it had some problems. I don't know if I would petition to have it added again unless they really revamped it.

Of course, I was never really playing the continental strategy game, maybe it was useful to those guys.

[Runlikethewind]

do any of you realize that the fog of war is not a friggin smoke cloud or the weather?

Its both/and not either or. The term "fog of war" includes the real "fog" generated by ordinance in the form of smoke but it also includes the a kind of metaphorical "fog" that you're hinting at resulting from lack of communication, uncertainty and things of that nature.

[Raka Maru]

Hehehe :D

Not sure if EvilPig was trying to be funny, but he was obviously trying to talk about the weather/atmospheric system.

We don't need the RTS definition of Fog of War because there is no need to artificially "hide" other units from you, whether soldiers, tanks, or deployed buildings. We all know in Planetside, that if you want to find out what's happening in another part of the continent, you have to send recon. Thus "Fog of War" is persistent and not a greyed out region of the map.

Back on topic, smoke grenades, or bad weather will just not let you see targets that good, but you should be able to shoot through just fine and get lucky. Higby said in the interview, they want to expand on this a lot, post launch. :)

[SKYeXile]

EP, you better call me so I can explain what the term "fog of war" means LOL

thread title sounded cool.

[Toppopia]

How much would our computers be affected if instead of fancy particle effects for sandstorms and clouds. Just make it so our view distance is reduced. In cases it would increase performance, no need to be fancy, because if you are being blinded by smoke or clouds, just lower our view distance, accomplishes the same thing. And lets us run better when it is smokey/cloudy.

[IMMentat]

As long as its not all about reducing draw distance to speed up game performance I think a fog of war could look good.

[Toppopia]

As long as its not all about reducing draw distance to speed up game performance I think a fog of war could look good.

If its a clear sunny day, i would expect to see very far. Like what we have been seeing in the videos.

[EVILPIG]

The meaning of "Fog of war" as it pertains to situational awareness in warfare is derived from "fog of war", being the smoke and haze that can make battle confusing. I know the difference and thought I was clear as to which one I was speaking of. Hence, the pictures.

[Noivad]

do any of you realize that the fog of war is not a friggin smoke cloud or the weather?

I saw the thread and thought it was about the real fog of war. Then the bitter ytuth.

It would be very cool though if they had area where the radar did not work because of a resource presence. An area where you actually had to look for the enemy instead of it showing up on a mini map. Always did like the Radar Hack in PS1 bases killing the radar. Makes for more intense gaming. :evil:

[Raka Maru]

The meaning of "Fog of war" as it pertains to situational awareness in warfare is derived from "fog of war", being the smoke and haze that can make battle confusing. I know the difference and thought I was clear as to which one I was speaking of. Hence, the pictures.

Yeah you're cool. :)

[Sledgecrushr]

I saw the thread and thought it was about the real fog of war. Then the bitter ytuth.

It would be very cool though if they had area where the radar did not work because of a resource presence. An area where you actually had to look for the enemy instead of it showing up on a mini map. Always did like the Radar Hack in PS1 bases killing the radar. Makes for more intense gaming. :evil:

If you cant see the enemy due to dust and smoke, then they wouldnt be on the minimap.

[SGTalon]

In the future, technology with reduce the effects of the "Fog of War"

Between satellites, remote sensors, UAV's, and instant communications, the only thing that will cause a lack of information like a "Fog of War" would be active jamming type of situations.

[EVILPIG]

In the future, technology with reduce the effects of the "Fog of War"

Between satellites, remote sensors, UAV's, and instant communications, the only thing that will cause a lack of information like a "Fog of War" would be active jamming type of situations.

We're talking about visual restrictions.

[DirtyBird]

GW2 has an effective "fog of war" in one of its zones.
A town is under attack and being hit by ranged projectiles.
If you are in that town it is extremely difficult to see thru the smoke and haze from the attack. Very much like the pics in the first post.
You have the effect of the smoke moving and it basically has a limit on the range at which you can see.
Difference is that effect is a permanent one and if PS2 are doing something similar I hope its situational.

[Grognard]

EP, you better call me so I can explain what the term "fog of war" means LOL

Yeah, this confused me a bit in the begining until I reaized he was being utterly literal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_of_war