Outdated graphics?

[VonBeerhofen 67]

Somwhere at an idyllic location near Cote  d'Azur, :)

Hires model 256 pixel texture in 8 bit for the Final Cut addon:

VonBeerhofen

[Jel 37]

Sadly some EAW graphics remain out-dated and will never be fixed. The aircraft and TMods look great, but the problem is in the terrain tile system.

Flying close to the ground you see the individual pixels, because a terrain tile has a side length which is equivalent to  4096 metres. With 256x256 pixel tiles that means that a single pixel is 16 metres x 16 metres.
Compared to the much finer resolution in the TMods and the aircraft the terrain resolution is pathetic, and the TMods stand out like dogs' balls on a canary

Edited July 19, 2019 by Jel

[Stratos 3,259]

17 minutes ago, Jel said:

Sadly some EAW graphics remain out-dated and will never be fixed. The aircraft and TMods look great, but the problem is in the terrain tile system.

Flying close to the ground you see the individual pixels, because a terrain tile has a side length which is equivalent to  4096 metres. With 256x256 pixel tiles that means that a single pixel is 16 metres x 16 metres.
Compared to the much finer resolution in the TMods and the aircraft the terrain resolution is pathetic, and the TMods stand out like dogs' balls on a canary

Sadly have to agree.

[VonBeerhofen 67]

There are tilesets which are 4 times higher in resolution Stratos and use 512 x 512 or UHR textures. Add to that the capabillity of true color and those problems should  no longer be much of an issue. There is a downside though, first of all loss of FPS, depending on the power of the system in use and how an OS deals with the program, since true color tiles in 512 take up app. 16 times the space of most 8 bit sets. Another issue is distance shimmering, which depends on the GPU's power and the way it reads the tileset. Lores tiles in the distance aren't always used by all videocards but they can cure that problem partially and improve FPS when in use.

So it's a bit of a trade off really. A huge tileset may well be a good solution but then again who's going to create a world using 1000 tiles or more and make the drawings for it. Maybe in a few years from now such a set could be finished and a TM created for it. I'm not going to create it for sure, even though by now I have around 1000 tiles ready for various purposes. I guess I'm used to these issues and it has never bothered me much, my weight lies on dogfighting and groundpounding in EAW, plenty of choices to fly other sims which make use of more modern technology but I never found one which gave me as much fun as EAW does, also ofcourse because I do not have the source code for them, which is 75% of my fun.

VonBeerhofen

[Jel 37]

Even with 512x512 tiles a pixel is 8 metres wide. Some TMods are in the order of 8 metres wide, so you have an entire TMod with detailed graphics sitting on one pixel.

In reality there is little improvement. This problem will never be fixed, but the game-play is what really makes EAW

[+gerwin 459]

A very simple method to get some extra detail in the ground textures is a 'detail/noise texture overlay'. But it is game graphics engine thing. Strike Fighters 1 and 2 do this.

You can see the detail texture effect in the bottom left here. IcelandNA map. Tiles themselves are 256x256 pixels.

[+gerwin 459]

When zooming in on the EAWpro screenshot: I see aliased polygon edges.

Maybe you should consider setting "forced anti-aliasing" in the Nvidia or Radeon graphics control panel? It softens the edges and IMO it is very noticable.

[VonBeerhofen 67]

Gerwin,

It's a personal choice, it's not set as it would slow down my old gForce2MMX when we're battling it out online. My view is that a tileset shouldn't have 3D objects drawn on them at all, that's what the 3D models are for. Still, with these models being switched of at not too far distances it does help immersion a little. It's not close to a realistic world and merely a game.

Being a modder from the C64 era, I agree with Jelly's view that graphics don't really always improve gameplay. I've played many C64 games which were later graphically enhanced but those games were still the same as the old C64 version, they only looked a little nicer but didn't bring anything else to the table.

EAW is about flying over continents and essentially it's possible to shrink the EAW world into just a small theatre which is crammed with all the objects and tiles this game can handle, thus improving it's graphics. But such a small theatre would be like a kind of IL2 and take away what EAW is all about. There isn't anything wrong with that approach and several attempts have been made already, to me they're boring and I quickly run out of interest when I polay them because you can only revisit such addons again and again but you don't have sufficient choice to keep you interested.  EAW kept my interest for nearly 20 years now and a small theatre rarely kept my interest for more then 2 missions. I never revisited them either.

It doesn't change anything in the fights themselves, but it's OK when people have fun with them for two days or even more, but it just doesn't have my interest unless there's a real difference with the 308 taget locations the stock game is capable of and where each one has it's own strategic challenges. Besides that, all full addon worlds have another 308 of such targets and I'm still interested in playing those after 20 years, if only for the various flightmodels they use and the impact of them on both AI and human skills, but they have way more then just that.

VonBeerhofen

 

[+gerwin 459]

5 hours ago, VonBeerhofen said:

Gerwin,

It's a personal choice, it's not set as it would slow down my old gForce2MMX when we're battling it out online. My view is that a tileset shouldn't have 3D objects drawn on them at all, that's what the 3D models are for. Still, with these models being switched of at not too far distances it does help immersion a little. It's not close to a realistic world and merely a game.

Ah, I know that card. And indeed it is not quite up to doing FSAA at decent framerate. It is a budget card often found in Pentium III systems.

Don't worry I won't nag about it. Because you are creative and enjoy what you do, so all good. Besides that I am also by choice sticking to certain older Hardware and software.

Though I don't really play flight simulations on the oldest of these systems. Because 320x200 pixels is not that great for depicting aircraft at longer distances, or a cockpit HUD. 640x480 is a lot better already.

As to the detail texture system. Well I like the idea in all its ways. 3D acceleration, when it started to become available in 1997, made surroundings look washed out. Because of the small textures and the interpolation of those textures. A detail texture gives the eye something to focus on, at hardly any rendering cost. You call it a 3D object? but it is just as 2D or 3D as the tiles themselves.

As for the other things about EAW. I will have to believe you, as haven't really tried it much. I am kinda stuck to Strike Fighters 2, and most of my time on that is spend tinkering and modding, instead of actually playing it.

Edited July 21, 2019 by gerwin

[VonBeerhofen 67]

The card isn't as bad as you think lol. It's capable of displaying EAW at 1920 x1080 but it's not very fast by design that's for sure. The screenshots were taken with it but it doesn't display as good on that card as it does with the computer I'm using now.

VonBeerhofen

[+gerwin 459]

Yes Geforce 2 MX was really great value for money at the time. But as soon as GeForce4 MX 440 became available I preferred those instead, not the bottom tier models though. The more serious cards of that time were the Geforce 4 Ti-4200 up to Ti-4800. With increased power draw and matching annoying cooling fans.

[RIBob 39]

May I interject with some possibly uninformed and ignorant comments?  Nothing new, lol.

I recently got Microsoft "Crimson Skies" to run on my win 10 "gaming computer".  This computer is not cutting edge, but not far from it.

After installing "CS", patching it, and installing some Mods, I found I was finally able to activate some features in the game graphics selections, namely "Shadows".  Had never been able to do so before.  This simple feature. once activated transformed the graphics in some scenarios.  Absolutely stunning was the difference.  Previously, all the gfx choices were maxxed-out; at least those that the game allowed.  Some were downgraded by the game, and resisted any attempt on my part to select them--"Shadows" being a case in point.  In lesser computers, the game disallowed some gfx options.

What is possible for a different game bears little direct application to EAW.  Apples and oranges.  I get that.  I also get that EAW has come inherent gfx challenges.

That said, the addition of the ostensibly simple gfx addition of "Shadows" feature to "Crimson Skies" was a HUGE boost to the visual depiction of the game.  Not possible, even with the fairly ancient Crimson Skies game without a fairly good computer set-up.

The point here is that modern computers, perforce running modern Operating Systems and modern GFX cards can wring much more out of older games, such as EAW, than one might suspect.  Some obscure gfx features, once activated, and in conjunction with all of the gfx features being able to be turned-up to max can help to give the EAW game (and other games) some additional life.

The desire to keep EAW viable and compatible on older computers is understandable, and laudable.  However, the future is with more powerful computers and modern graphics cards.  Past a certain point, older computers become quite expensive to keep running.  BTDT. 

FWIW, I spent some money and time upgrading my Win 7 Pro computer today; namely cloning and installing a 2 Tb SSD.  I'll keep the older comp for a while, but I know it will only be for a while.  The future is elsewhere.

Newer, more capable, computers can possibly allow unexpected advantages compared to older computers, as depicted above.   There is a synergy available in being able to activate/max-out various gfx features.

Now, I understand game playability as opposed to gfx features.  I prefer playability, if forced to make a choice.

With a modern computer, one is not forced to make such a choice; one can have both.

Submitted for discussion. 

 

[+gerwin 459]

This crimson skies anecdote is not really a typical example, in fact it is very weird. The game is from 2001. Why would the 'Shadows' option in a game be unselectable until a computer from 2019 gives the game a go? I suppose it is just a true observation from your point of view. But it is not like the crimson skies developers have been anticipating computers 18 years into the future, then wasted their time on complicated Shadow procedures for people in 2019.

The usual graphical enhancements that relatively new and powerful systems can bring to old games, are enhancement that don't require the old software routines to do anything different. Full Scene Anti-Aliasing for example, because the windows graphics' driver does all. Sometimes a higher resolution is possible without much hacking, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes a graphics driver wrapper can do some graphical effects, like bloom and color adjustments, if one likes the look of that.

I am reasonably knowledgable in running old games for the heck of it, and usually understand the the main technicalities involved. But the crimson skies example is too weird to reflect it to other games.

 

Edited July 27, 2019 by gerwin