Talvieno wrote:It all made sense, Josh. Great to see you posting in the Suggestions board again. I'm sure Cornflakes will be mighty pleased.

Andddd I'm sure he'll restrain himself from commenting on 'coming in waves'

JoshParnell wrote: Andddd I'm sure he'll restrain himself from commenting on 'coming in waves'

'ah dont have to


also, i know my devlogs

JoshParnell wrote:instead of thinking of far-away systems as having some 'simulation granularity' parameter that is static, consider instead if they have a simulation granularity that is a probability distribution -- i.e., most of the time far-off systems will be simulated coarsely, but occasionally will get lucky and receive some real, fine-grain simulation time. Doing so significantly 'smooths' edges between systems with different LODs (i.e., different topological distance from player's assets). (Yes, if you picked up on that, you now realize that system that contain player assets are handled a bit differently, and generally given more attention). [emphasis added]

And that answers a question I've been asking for a while now: "is LT less abstracted/simulated only around the player's current location? Or also around the location of important player assets such as factional subordinates?"

Beyond the difficulties of choosing good "edges" for simulation, and for choosing how to shift from simulation back to a more fine-grained "reality" when needed without losing information that the player expects to remain constant, I still wonder: how well will this simulation scale as the player collects more and more assets?

If reality is less simulated where the player's assets are, and the player collects a lot of such assets, how big can the player's span of control become before game performance is affected (because those locations are less simulated)?

I'm not looking for problems, and I'm not one of those people who takes pleasure in trying to knock down the ideas of others with "did you think ofs." But I have to admit, I do sort of wonder about simulation and performance.

I mean, the hard truth is that we're NOT going to be able to keep up with a good simulation if the player has major operations across 1000 systems. Minor, perhaps. But major projects spanned across that amount of space? At the end of the day I can do lots of clever tricks but I can't make computation disappear

There will be some limit at which the game struggles with performance when you're spreading your operations across an obscene number of systems that need to maintain dynamism with your interaction.

The name of the game is, simply, to push that limit as high as we can Certainly, I would say 99% if not 99.9% of players should never experience it, assuming they have a decent CPU / RAM config.

JoshParnell wrote:I mean, the hard truth is that we're NOT going to be able to keep up with a good simulation if the player has major operations across 1000 systems. Minor, perhaps. But major projects spanned across that amount of space? At the end of the day I can do lots of clever tricks but I can't make computation disappear

There will be some limit at which the game struggles with performance when you're spreading your operations across an obscene number of systems that need to maintain dynamism with your interaction.

The name of the game is, simply, to push that limit as high as we can Certainly, I would say 99% if not 99.9% of players should never experience it, assuming they have a decent CPU / RAM config.

Does the code adapt to high/low CPU usage?
Like if we have a Supercomputer will it automatically simulate in higher quality?
:V

If so, just allow moores law to do it's thing.

Silverware wrote: Does the code adapt to high/low CPU usage?
Like if we have a Supercomputer will it automatically simulate in higher quality?
:V

If so, just allow moores law to do it's thing.

sliders

or even a straight up numerical input "how many GFLOP can your CPU provide"

JoshParnell wrote:I mean, the hard truth is that we're NOT going to be able to keep up with a good simulation if the player has major operations across 1000 systems. Minor, perhaps. But major projects spanned across that amount of space? At the end of the day I can do lots of clever tricks but I can't make computation disappear

To be fair, I think if a player has major assets in what we have to remember is 1,000 *solar systems*, I think we should expect a little less detailed simulation out towards the opposite edges of the players' location. This is a pretty massive scale we're talking about, so I don't think we'd notice in sufficient detail that some of these systems won't be fully simulated.

JoshParnell wrote: assuming they have a decent CPU / RAM config.

Woot - so happy with my rig

Cornflakes_91 wrote: or even a straight up numerical input "how many GFLOP can your CPU provide"

I think I'd go with 111 gflops cf (a nice round binary number)
lucky number 7

(especially considering LT 1.0 will not be multi-threaded)
(oh, I have my CPU's Hyperthreading turned off, so only 6 cores running - my electricity bill has thanked me)

I just built a new rig and did some very basic overclocking. I need to adjust my timings and benchmark but I've been to busy playing Skyrim with all the 4K textures I can find. And rebel Galaxy. And Ck2 with no lag. And HotS, and Space Made. And fallout 4 comes out in a few days and...

Yeah, that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Went with the i7-4790k and the Nvidia GTX 970. 16g of 2400 Ram which I can't even fully utilize, even after I work on the timings.

One of you really technical types care to consult on the OC when I get around to it? Everytime I look into it I find something new that makes my head spin. Any good references you know of that are not too comprehensive?

JoshParnell wrote:I mean, the hard truth is that we're NOT going to be able to keep up with a good simulation if the player has major operations across 1000 systems. Minor, perhaps. But major projects spanned across that amount of space? At the end of the day I can do lots of clever tricks but I can't make computation disappear

There will be some limit at which the game struggles with performance when you're spreading your operations across an obscene number of systems that need to maintain dynamism with your interaction.

The name of the game is, simply, to push that limit as high as we can Certainly, I would say 99% if not 99.9% of players should never experience it, assuming they have a decent CPU / RAM config.

Is there any potential to spread the far off systems into other threads? Away from the main simulation thread?

MyNameWuzTaken wrote:I just built a new rig and did some very basic overclocking. I need to adjust my timings and benchmark but I've been to busy playing Skyrim with all the 4K textures I can find. And rebel Galaxy. And Ck2 with no lag. And HotS, and Space Made. And fallout 4 comes out in a few days and...

Yeah, that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Went with the i7-4790k and the Nvidia GTX 970. 16g of 2400 Ram which I can't even fully utilize, even after I work on the timings.

One of you really technical types care to consult on the OC when I get around to it? Everytime I look into it I find something new that makes my head spin. Any good references you know of that are not too comprehensive?

I enjoyed reading your post, MyNameWuzTaken. I decided to let someone else build my new rig this time and they did all the overclocking in exchange for cash. I had to say something because you mentioned Skyrim and 4K textures. I went for twin GTX970's in SLI and Skyrim looks beautiful and plays like a dream. I've had a few hiccups with the cards but every time they recover the game looks and plays even better.

It's like the darn things are learning.

Ringu wrote:

JoshParnell wrote:I mean, the hard truth is that we're NOT going to be able to keep up with a good simulation if the player has major operations across 1000 systems. Minor, perhaps. But major projects spanned across that amount of space? At the end of the day I can do lots of clever tricks but I can't make computation disappear

To be fair, I think if a player has major assets in what we have to remember is 1,000 *solar systems*, I think we should expect a little less detailed simulation out towards the opposite edges of the players' location. This is a pretty massive scale we're talking about, so I don't think we'd notice in sufficient detail that some of these systems won't be fully simulated.

This is a great point. If no one can tell the simulation detail went down, it's immaterial if it did. Kinda like quantum mechanics. I like.

GTX 970s aren't optimized for 4K res AFAIK, but I'm glad it runs well because I might consider upgrading to a 4K monitor before I buy a 980 TI.

On Topic:
If automatic hardware scaling isn't in place, I think it should be an option in the game as a manual slider (That can be easily accessed via settings and changed mid game) to affect the "Simulation distance" of the game (Similar to visual distance, as the distance increases the textures become less and less detailed, As the distance of systems increases they're simulated less and less, though a (SLIDER) set area around the player would always be fully (Or closely) simulated.

I like to immerse my self in games, and knowing that the next door neighbor is frozen in time until I visit him just doesn't cut it for me, of course people with PotatOS may not mind, but I have confidence in my computer's ability to handle large-ish operations.


For reference and because I'm somewhat proud:

Intel i7 4790K - 4.5Ghz OCed
GTX 970 FTW (EVGA) (Won't overclock for god knows what reason, crashes all the time when OCed)
16GB DDR3 2133 RAM (G-Skill Ripjaws X)

I'm only upgrading to the 980 Ti for the novelty. ^_^

Black--Snow wrote:I'm only upgrading to the 980 Ti for the novelty. ^_^

Yes, this build is just a stopgap for me too, Black--Snow. I was going to wait for the arrival of Star Citizen, the game, but was overwhelmed by the dreaded hardware desire. *chuckle*

I feel better now.

I didn't know that about the 4K textures Black--Snow, thanks for telling me. I haven't noticed any issues from it though. I decided not to go with the 980 TI because I figured the 970 would be good for a few more years at least.