3 ms·
Yes. Extreme draw distances: large open-world games or those with very long, content-intensive environments need to resort to tricks to unload parts of the wor
by ynx 4y ago
Yes.
Extreme draw distances:
large open-world games or those with very long, content-intensive environments need to resort to tricks to unload parts of the world that are not visible or quickly accessible. Extreme draw distance can mean keeping orderS of maginitude more objects resident, which could mean a lot more materials loaded, more draw calls, more VRAM usage, or more swap.
Higher resolution shadows:
Hard shadows tend to look bad, soft shadows tend to perform bad, and worse with more lights. It takes a lot of deep GPU knowledge to do these in a visually convincing and high quality manner. The difference between "good enough" and "perfect" will easily cost you double digit fps at a minimum.
Full quality textures:
As with the draw distance caveat, implementing LODs is rather work-intensive. Some people will tell you that you can automate it, and they're half-right. If you are looking for top-notch game quality, that absolutely does not cut it, but if you're not trying to go the extra mile it can be serviceable.
Games are super inconsistent in how far they push technology vs push the art, but there is rarely a "turn the dial to 11" knob ready to turn. The production requirements and technical limitations mix in unpredictable ways.
Other times, games push ridiculously far in certain directions that later become mainstream, and execute well enough that, after they are copied into other mainstream games, they feel deficient - not in spite of their success, but as a direct result of it!!
- int_19h 4y ago> Extreme draw distance can mean keeping orderS of maginitude more objects resident, which could mean a lot more materials loaded, more draw calls, more VRAM usage, or more swap. The point is that all of this merely requires more resources at runtime, not any additional work on behalf of the developer. So, by allowing limits higher than is practical on hardware at the time of release, the game can scale somewhat better on future hardware. What's the downside? High-res textures are a different thing, since they actually have to be painted. Or upscaled, I suppose, but that's still code somebody has to write.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago> High-res textures are a different thing, since they actually have to be painted. Ah, I want to clarify again—I was imagining the developers already had higher quality original textures, which they had downscaled for release. The textures in Assassin's Creed II, for instance, have the look of images that were saved down to a lower resolution from larger originals. But I could be wrong, or even if I'm not, it might be less common nowadays. As you say, the goal is to include things that only require computational resources at runtime (even an order of magnitude more).