Wish List for next incremental release

Started by The Geostation, January 11, 2007, 11:10:24 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

The Geostation

Hi all,

It struck me that it might useful to start a thread for Planetside where we can express the features we would most like to see in the next incremental release of TG2.

So, in order of priority for me:

1) Transparent water and foam
2) Addressing known issues
3) Rendering optimisations and multi-threading
4) Distorted Perlin noise
5) Possibly more atmospheric effects (I tried to recreate the bliss effect but failed)

I'm sure there were a couple of others I thought of, but this list will do for a start.

Andrew Randle
The Geostation
Andrew Randle
The Geostation

Tim O'Donoghue



Njen

I think he is referring to what's commonly known as 'bloom' in photography, or 'soft glow' in vfx, no?

Dark Fire

At the moment all I would like to see is rendering optimisations - I haven't been able to render enough images to have finished playing with all of the new features yet. Perhaps putting settings tips in the GUI would be a good idea as well, as it is very hard to judge how much effect different settings have just from looking at a bunch of numbers and sliders.

rcallicotte

Just an observation and not because I know what's really happening behind the programmer's den -

I realize that we've been asked to express what we want in TG2, but has anyone thought that maybe the developers actually have a list they've been working on for some time and probably already have the first release requirements worked out?  Depending on when we want the next release, we shouldn't probably expect (am I wrong?) that the next release will contain a lot of our present wishes...unless it's by chance.

So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

The Geostation

Hi Calico,

The intent was really to provide a means of market-related feedback to Planetside.   Of course I'm sure that Matt, Jo and Oshyan will have a development plan in place, but may find that this kind of feedback (in a single thread) to be valuable.

BTW, to answer 3DGuy, the bliss effect can be summarised by the lighting in the attached.

Best regards,

Andrew Randle
The Geostation


Andrew Randle
The Geostation

rcallicotte

Sure, I understand.

I've seen so many people saying what they wish for, though, I wondered how realistic these concerns are to the developers for this first release, that is.


Quote from: The Geostation on January 11, 2007, 02:19:47 PM
Hi Calico,

The intent was really to provide a means of market-related feedback to Planetside.   Of course I'm sure that Matt, Jo and Oshyan will have a development plan in place, but may find that this kind of feedback (in a single thread) to be valuable.

BTW, to answer 3DGuy, the bliss effect can be summarised by the lighting in the attached.

Best regards,

Andrew Randle
The Geostation

So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Dark Fire

Quote from: calico on January 11, 2007, 02:22:11 PM
I've seen so many people saying what they wish for, though, I wondered how realistic these concerns are to the developers for this first release, that is.
Most of the 'wishes' are generic things the developers really should be working on anyway:
Quote from: The Geostation on January 11, 2007, 11:10:24 AM
2) Addressing known issues
3) Rendering optimisations and multi-threading
Quote from: Dark Fire on January 11, 2007, 01:06:41 PM
At the moment all I would like to see is rendering optimisations...putting settings tips in the GUI would be a good idea as well...

jo

Hi Andrew,

Quote from: The Geostation on January 11, 2007, 11:10:24 AM
It struck me that it might useful to start a thread for Planetside where we can express the features we would most like to see in the next incremental release of TG2.

Just to be reasonable about expectations, "incremental" to me suggests a new release with fairly minor changes and bug fixes, not something with significant new functionality or optimisation. To me that would be a "major" release.

Quote
So, in order of priority for me:

1) Transparent water and foam

I don't have much to say about this.

Quote
2) Addressing known issues

We're always doing that :-).

Quote
3) Rendering optimisations and multi-threading

Multithreading is definitely a "major" sort of thing. The reason we didn't do it prior to the first TP release despite it being such an important thing is that we wanted to get a release out before we started on it, because it's likely to cause a great deal of upheaval in the code and will need extensive and lengthy testing to make sure there are no sneaky bugs, something multithreaded code excels in having.

Quote
4) Distorted Perlin noise

What do you mean by that ? Distorted how ? If you know what you're after, you can very likely achieve it using function nodes. That's one of the great things about function nodes, if you can imagine it but we don't provide it, you should be knock something up yourself. Of course we're always happy to hear feedback on what you think is missing from the function nodes.

Quote
5) Possibly more atmospheric effects (I tried to recreate the bliss effect but failed)

I'm not really certain, but it may not be possible to recreate the bliss effect. My understanding has always been that bliss was something stumbled upon by accident and is rather like a bug ( side effect might be a better way to put it ) in the v0.9 renderer. Bliss was never something Matt set out to do. It was just kind of a fluke ( good or bad depending on whether you like bliss or not :-)). It's not like we had a bliss settings panel in v0.9.

Regards,

Jo

Sarge-David

i just wish for easier and easier user interfaces
just...each thing have like a little this is a good idea or thats some other good idea little notes

3DGuy

I still don't see what exactly is meant by this bliss effect... is it the reflection on the water.. the layer of clouds.. what?

Sethren

Quote from: The Geostation on January 11, 2007, 11:10:24 AM

4) Distorted Perlin noise


There is warping and turbulence features in the node system if that is what you want to do, not to mention displacement that does all sorts of warping effects anyways.

The Geostation

Quote from: 3DGuy on January 11, 2007, 06:29:14 PM
I still don't see what exactly is meant by this bliss effect... is it the reflection on the water.. the layer of clouds.. what?

Hi 3DGuy, it's the sun/cloud/sky interaction causing two sets of concentric circles illuminating the atmosphere - kind of like lines of electromagnetic flux.   There are some tutorials on how this is done, but is created through the use of tiny cloud particles in line with the camera.

Andrew Randle
The Geostation
Andrew Randle
The Geostation

The Geostation

Hi Jo,

Yep you are spot-on about the definitions of incremental and major releases.   A major release would be TG3, whereas an incremental release is TG2.x.   In my full time work we use the same terms for Mobile Internet standards releases, and a major release tends to break backwards compatibility (unless the legacy standard is implemented in parallel).

With multi-threading, I could quite imagine the upheaval and sneaky bugs, and I'm also glad the preview was released before this huge task is done.   Probably will be a task made easier(ish) when the rendering optimisations are done.

Regarding the Distorted Perlin function - looks like I'm going to have to learn about those "little blue boxes"  ;D   Distorted Perlin was used to create the landscape shown in the picture above.

Best regards to you and your efforts,

Andrew Randle
The Geostation
Andrew Randle
The Geostation