Polygons disappear at long distance...

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Alborda

Beta Tester for his own life
Sep 25, 2001
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When I play on very large maps, some polygons disapear at long distances, letting me see trough walls, and showing nasty visual glitches. Another thing that´s happening is that when I am passing by a large object it disappears, even it should be seen. The last happens only with some objects not "carved" on the map (like a humvee)
This glitches are very notticeable on the map "frozen"

My system:

amd
512 MB ram
geforce 4 mx 440
windows 98
latest directX, detonators and Chris´s opengl (with settings taken from the sticky help on this forum)

thanks!
 

Beppo

Infiltration Lead-Programmer
Jul 29, 1999
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Meshs not BSP structures change their number of visible polys on a distance. This depends on the MLOD (Mesh Level of Detail) setting that you can set in our performance menu. The higher the value the more polys will be removed, the lower the lesser of course but with the cost of a bit of your available performance.
A value of 0.1 only cuts off polys if very far away for example.

The deco meshs like humvees aso use a simple rule within the UT engine. If their pivot (center point) is not visible to the player then they are no longer relevant for them. Means that online the deco mesh will vanish if the pivot is out of view. A mapper can avoid this by setting the bAlwaysRelevant flag to True for his decos but the more objects do use this flag the higher is the needed bandwidth for playing this map. This multiplies for each player of course.

Our players would vanish too if they would not use the bAlwaysRelevant flag like the UT players do. So a UT player vanishs if his 'belly' is no longer in view (after a few secs then) and so a player leaning behind a wall, standing behind a window or crate would vanish online. So we use this switch to avoid this in INF with the cost of a higher load on the bandwidth.

The nasty visual glitches are BSP holes normally that can pop up within the BSP structure at certain angles, sometimes even removing full structures out of your view. Our team worked on the official maps a lot to remove all the visual glitches that occur in bigger sized maps or maps with a lot of 'complex' structures but even in our official maps you can sometimes see little spots showing a BSP hole.
However some maps within the TbT map pack still have some bigger BSP holes cause there wasn't enough time and man power available to get them all removed by them but as said in another thread already the guys are offering to update them if needed.

Beppo
 

yurch

Swinging the clue-by-four
May 21, 2001
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Beppo said:
The deco meshs like humvees aso use a simple rule within the UT engine. If their pivot (center point) is not visible to the player then they are no longer relevant for them. Means that online the deco mesh will vanish if the pivot is out of view. A mapper can avoid this by setting the bAlwaysRelevant flag to True for his decos but the more objects do use this flag the higher is the needed bandwidth for playing this map. This multiplies for each player of course.
Wouldn't the fact that they were disappearing and re-appearing mean the server is sending out/geting info constantly to determine when they are relevant to whom?
It seems to me alwaysrelevant for stationary objects would be using less overall bandwith (except I guess for the initial startup) because then the non-moving objects require no further updating, unless of course they had moving or destructable abilities, which would then obviously create net traffic.
Any light to shed on this?
 

Hadmar

Queen Bitch of the Universe
Jan 29, 2001
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Dosn't the server know which player is where and in which direction he looks and so knows what's relevant to whom anyway?
 

yurch

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Hadmar said:
Dosn't the server know which player is where and in which direction he looks and so knows what's relevant to whom anyway?
Right, but then there's the process of sending to the client the positions and attributes of the things he's 'allowed' to see.
 

Beppo

Infiltration Lead-Programmer
Jul 29, 1999
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@Hadmar ... ehhh I guess you haven't read what I said about HOW the engine determines relevancy... if you do not see the pivot you do not see the whole object. So a tree or telephone pole behind a wall will vanish if the wall covers its pivot. It will even vanish if you stand right in front of it and you then look down so that its pivot gets out of view. Same for a truck or humvee... if the pivot is not in your direct view the whole truck vanishs.
In addition to the visual check for the pivot you have sounds that can make you be relevant for someone else. But this is only working in shorter ranges and not if you ie stand in a window 50-100 meters away sniping.

@yurch ... sure if the location, rotation aso doesn't change then the stuff is normally only send right at the start of the match or better at the time the player joins the server. He will get all relevant objects locations aso. This consumes bandwidth only once. However if the amount of objects is pretty high then this can produce a bit too much bandwidth useage.
 

Hadmar

Queen Bitch of the Universe
Jan 29, 2001
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Beppo, I did read your post. I was refering to yurchs "sending out/geting info". If the server knows who is where why does it need to ask the client what's relevant to them and waste bandwidth in the process? It's clear that bandwidth is used up for sending the info. I guess I could have prevented the confusion if I had added the qestion "what extra info does the server need to get from the clients?" to my post.
 
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Lt.

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Aug 11, 2004
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Thread necro!

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