Domain: savagehelp.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to savagehelp.com.
Comments · 13
-
Re:Motion blur and bloom effects
Not quite.
The eye blur happens for two reasons. The first is the fact that the human eye is "assembling" an analog reading of the light taken over a specific time, very similar to how a camera exposure works. We aren't "digital" beings, in the sense that there is allowance forward and back in our visual processing, but we DO assemble "frames" for the rest of our brain to analyze.
The second is focusing. A fast-moving object moves into, and out of, the focused field quite quickly. Either we keep tracking it (in which case the unfocused foreground and background areas alter) or we don't, and it goes out of focus. We mentally render this as blurring. Directors in 2D movies use depth-of-field to do a quick transition between two speaking characters and ensure the right one has prominence, by keeping the speaker in focus and then quickly shifting focus in/out to bring the other to prominence when the dialogue turns.
The real sin, and unalterable problem currently, for 3D technology is that everything renders in-focus. Motion blurs work to some degree, but a large-scale image with "background" objects sharply in focus gives us headaches. We follow the other visual cues, try to "focus" to distance, try to "refocus" for the fuzziness it causes, and then wobble back and forth till we have sore, tired eye muscles.
The 3D Brendan Frasier Journey to the Center of the Earth was the closest done so far, because they did introduce some background blur, but it still had problems should the viewer decide to focus on something other than what the director wanted them to focus on, visually. Avatar commits the same sin as well, and doesn't even try to do it properly. It's like watching some big pixely, perfect-focus-for-miles video game.
As for the other items they mention - "The framerate of a game is usually directly tied to the processing of its logic." Not true. Indeed, only true if you've got shoddy programmers (the fix for one of the most notorious examples, the jumping-height differences of various iterations of the Quake engine, was to simply lock the calculations to assume a static framerate; the id software programmers, who chose to instead discard "erroneous" round-up errors, wound up widely criticized for STILL making the jumps somewhat randomly framerate-dependent. The truth is that the visual rendering framerate of a game simply does not have to be the same as the internal calculation "frame" rate.
As for input lag... the difference in "lag" between a 30-fps framerate and a 60-fps framerate is 16 ms. Even if you get to 120-fps and have a monitor capable of doing so at your chosen resolution, your difference is 25 ms. Human reaction to visual stimuli is generally in the neighborhood of 150-300 ms.
Even playing on a LAN in the same building, you're looking at random lag times longer than the difference between 120fps and 30fps.
-
Re:Ray-Tracing Extremely CPU Intensive
It depends on the game. For example, the first releases of Quake 3 had different physics depending on your framerate, due to integer clamping of player positions. They fixed the issue in later patches by adding an option to force everyone to run at 125 Hz, but by default it is off.
This allows a couple jumps that are not possible UNLESS you are running at 125 Hz, such as the megahealth jump on q3dm13.
This guide has more information: http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Quake3/FAQFPSJumps.html
-
Re:If gameplay is your thing..
Well if you are only running at a resolution comparable to 480p or even 720p the answer would be - most of the time on a decent computer.
Lowering resolution can only help you so much. There is more than fill-rate both one the GPU and the CPU side. PC games are designed to have the nicest graphics and good framerate on top systems. Any lower than that, you have to mess around with settings.
As an ex PC game developer I learned at my expenses that it's better to put pressure on the user to buy new hardware, than to try to favor framerate and end up with reviews with screenshots that don't look so nice.
I was running Doom 3 running at 1024x768 on the day it was released and getting framerates over 90FPS on a Nvidia 6800GT. 1280x1024 was still over 60 FPS most of the time.
First of all, we have to see what settings you were using and how steady was your framerate. Secondly, yeah, well the 6800GT was the hottest card one could buy at the time... I doubt most people can shell $400-500 every 6 months to keep their framerate.
And speaking of bad framerates, I believe it is the Xbox 360 version of Quake 4 that suffers from stuttering and slowdown versus a decent PC card which runs it silky smooth.
Quake 4 would be PC game. There is a fundamental difference between a game written for a specific system and a port. In this case one has to consider the OpenGL to Direct3D transition among other things. -
The emperor has no clothes?
I'm so glad they've found that you don't need to buy an "expensive" video card, just a $300 one. Personally I can't see spending over $150, and even that seems extreme to me now that my days of trying to eke out every frame in Q3 to hit the magic number have passed.
-
DOOM III and Windows 98
The official requirements for DOOM III for Windows were, IIRC, 2000 and XP. However, after calling down curses on id and Gates, biting the bullet and installing XP (grr), I found out there were easy ways to run DOOM III under 98. (Here's a pretty straightforward example.)
I'd already run most of these 98 tweaks to allow it to boot with 512+MB RAM, so I could have saved myself a lot of time, etc., if only I had known. >:/ -
Re:Why?
Even if your monitor cannot refresh at more fps than the game runs at, the game will continue to feel more responsive at a higher framerate, which adds to the quality of the gameplay. http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Quake3/FAQFPSJumps
. html -
Re:[OT] weak video card
Here's a web page that has soom good tweaking information:
http://www.viperlair.com/articles/howto/software/t weakd3/
And another page that has a list of recommended settings based on how much RAM your card has:
http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Doom3/FPSVisuals.ht m
In particular, for some reason the game initially detected my card as having 64 MB of RAM, but I have 128 -- I noticed a huge improvement after manually setting the appropriate values for 128 MB. Sometimes messing with the options in the video menu will reset the values, though, so make sure to make a backup of your config file after you've got it working nicely. -
More resources for new playersFirst, click on the MatureAsskickers link under my name. We're an old "tribe" (T2 speak for clan) of a little over 100 members. We have a very active forum and patience for newcomers. Our Files and Links areas should have all you need to play except the game itself.
If you're looking for competition and don't want to be hammered with childishness while playing, check out the Blood Eagle Mini-League, a collection of teams who allow new teams in by invitation, sort of like an upper class golf club. Most of the teams are looking for new players with similar maturity.
One of the bigger leagues is Team Warfare. The TWL forums has this thread full of essential resources.
When I learned the game I found the Upset Chaps Guides to be invaluable.
-
Re:Umm...
Two things I find with higher framerate:
1. Even though the human eye tends to blend frames into motion at such low framerates, I find that the higher the frame rate, the smoother the motion. Though, for my eyes, this tops out somewhere around 90 fps or so. Its not that I see anything lower as choppy, its just that the higher rate seems to flow better. Might just be my imagination, and isn't necessary for gameplay.
2. The Quake engine physics are framerate dependent. There is a good explanation here about it.
Though, overall, I don't find frame rate having that large of affect on my abilities in game; except when they get down to the low 20's range. And fortunatly, for me, my system tends not to get quite that low. Also, I'm not exactly that great at my choosen online game (Wolf:ET) anyhow, so, YMMV.
-
Re:No Quake?
Precisely: Ping/Jumping Study here (http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Quake3/FAQFPSJump
s .html) -
Re:Why jumps are connected to FPS.
http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Quake3/FAQFPSJumps
. html
No, that's pretty much the problem. -
Real link
That was one of the most entertaining and interesting reads I've come across in a while.
Here's a clickable link:
Why Your Framerate Affects Jumping -
Re:Observations on an Old System + GeForce MX200 PI can't help but wonder if the processor or bus is the bottleneck, or if the MX400 card had've worked the display might be a touch faster - but it doesn't really matter. The MX200 is "good enough".
Your CPU/bus is the bottleneck.
To be competitive @ QIII you should be running at 100 FPS (some say 120 feels even better) 30-40 is the bare minimum. Check out The Upset Chaps Guide to get your framerate up.
For under US$ 350 you could have a Duron 850, mid range MoBo, case, AGP MX 400, & 256MB of PC133 SDRAM. For an extra US$ 100 or so, you could have a high end MoBo with an upgrade path & 265MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM.
Your kernels will compile a lot faster too :)