HL2 Draw distance.

[lans]

I was slightly worried the way HL2 was drawing some things in the E3 2003/2004 videos.

For example, the draw distance looks pretty good when watching buildings, however when Gordon is driving the buggy on the coastline or the airboat in the narrow ravine - notice how the grass and foliage appears out of nowhere!

Simlarly in the coastline video - plants literally appeared out from mid air.

This being run on a ATI 9800pro and X800 pro, I fear to see the results of the draw distance with a lower end card. Now, It could be that valve purposely lowered the draw distance for the E3 demos but why would they cut out on the eye-candy anyway?

 

[SMT]

It will look fine when you're playing it. You won't care about the grass. Everything is going to be okay.

 

[zitbug]

Maybe if they allow the draw distance to be toggled, it would be fine? At least you could choose for yourself.

 

[Kouler]

There should be an option like the one on UT2004.

 

[lans]

It will look fine when you're playing it. You won't care about the grass. Everything is going to be okay.

It's not just the grass - if you look carefully you can find some draw distance problems with some buildings (keyword: some) in the coastline video.

There should be an option like the one on UT2004.

Notice how I write: "...that valve purposely lowered the draw distance ...". Yes as a modern game HL2 would allow a draw distance scale to your choice. But I'd assume to put it full up if they are running it on a x800 pro to show off in a E3 presentation.

 

[crownest]

Simlarly in the coastline video - plants literally appeared out from mid air

Um, isnt that quite normal in most games?

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Um, isnt that quite normal in most games?

Yep.

IT's fairly standard practice to keep things running at a decent frame rate.

 

[lans]

Um, isnt that quite normal in most games?

True, but HL2 and Far cry are the next generation of games. And boy the draw distance in Far cry is amazing - if HL2 has to outlive Far cry in every term, the draw distance should at least be comparble.

Also, draw distance makes a world of difference. Just imagine you are driving the buggy on full speed and you see no car wrecks in the way. Then all of a sudden they appear out of nowhere and youre like "WTF?" - and fall down the cliff as the rollermines stick on to your buggy...

I don't deny the fact that they aren't that much big of a deal in the long term - but it'd sure be nice if HL2 has a good draw distance.

 

[Asuka]

I wouldnt worry to much about the draw distance. I beleave there will be a cmd to toggle it (farcry had one).

 

[SMT]

True, but HL2 and Far cry are the next generation of games. And boy the draw distance in Far cry is amazing - if HL2 has to outlive Far cry in every term, the draw distance should at least be comparble.

Why? They're two completely different games. Half-Life 2 doesn't involve boating from tropical island to tropical island (as far as I know). Valve has already mentioned that, although the maps will be larger, the transition system will still be similar to that of Half-Life. Why have a resource-hogging draw distance if you don't need to? The point is achieving a convincing effect, not having a superlative draw distance.

Incidentally, the only way Far Cry achieves its draw distance is through very aggressive LOD. It doesn't draw every single shrub on an island half a mile away. Neither will Half-Life 2.

 

[PvtRyan]

Since when is grass popping up out of nowhere something new? Every game that has grass, also has this.
HL2, Joint Ops, Battlefield: Vietnam even Far Cry.
As far as I know, Far Cry, BF:V and possibly Joint Ops seperate foliage in two groups: high growing which would look stupid to pop up (trees, big plants) and smaller random stuff to fill up the boring grass texture (grass blades, flowers) or as BF:V calls them overgrowth and undergrowth.

This has little to do with overall draw distance which determines how far you can look, and is purely done for performance reasons. Every clump of grass is one alpha mapped polygon, you do the math.

And in the map editor, the 'pop up' distance of grass is most likely customizable, like in BF:V.

 

[Crusader]

Stuff appears out of nowhere about 5 foot away in far-cry, too. Generally not the entire mixture of foliage, though, just the odd detailed plant will disappear and reappear as you walk back and forth. I sincerely hope that Valve put an option in to scale from normal draw-distance to no culling of distant objects, just to stop people moaning about this. If it runs like a pig like Far-Cry, so be it, the more reasonable gamers will just keep their's set to normal

 

[RogueShadow]

mmmm... Far Cry, it was totally designed to have the biggest view distance of other games. That would explain something.

 

[The Dark Elf]

True, but HL2 and Far cry are the next generation of games. And boy the draw distance in Far cry is amazing - if HL2 has to outlive Far cry in every term, the draw distance should at least be comparble.

Also, draw distance makes a world of difference. Just imagine you are driving the buggy on full speed and you see no car wrecks in the way. Then all of a sudden they appear out of nowhere and youre like "WTF?" - and fall down the cliff as the rollermines stick on to your buggy...

I don't deny the fact that they aren't that much big of a deal in the long term - but it'd sure be nice if HL2 has a good draw distance.

Actually the draw distance in Far Cry is infact nothing special.. All its doing is drawing the terrain a long way off, a good heavy percentage of everything else isn't drawn at those distances. So FarCry once again shows its not as advanced as its creators wanted people to believe.

Crusader makes a good point also. FarCry uses the popping method, Source uses the fade in method, same as Stalker does. To avoid the popping method on FarCry you need to bring in the fog distance so you don't see the popping, defeating the object of its terrain view distances.

 

[mrchimp]

mmmm... Far Cry, it was totally designed to have the biggest view distance of other games. That would explain something.

Except flight simulators :thumbs:

Lets see how well HL2 performs before we start this discussion. Neither BF:v nor FC have particularry good performance and there distant dependant LOD isn't much good.