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.

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

Except for the guy on the ground with FRAPS running

[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]

Originally Posted by NCLynx

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?