BF3 - Real time destruction or pre-rendered?

J

JoeUser

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 30, 2010
Messages
3,919
Is the destruction in BF3 going to be procedural/real-time (as in blowing something up is different each time) or is it going to be cut and paste like BC2 (where it was the same hole in the wall every time you blew it up)?

I've watched some videos and just can't seem to tell. Don't get me wrong, it looks damn good, but I just want it to be a different experience each time a map is loaded up and not all predictable like it was in BC2.

That is all.
 
Since it's multi-platform, I would expect it to be similar to BC2.
But, there aren't any other shooters doing large scale destruction, so I can't see how it could be a downer.
 
Probably not, but it would just be good to know if they actually tried something new and used PC hardware to a more higher up scale other than just in the graphics department.
 
It's going to be like BC2 but with a little more detail put into the destruction.

Still far more destructable than pretty much any other FPS game we can get our hands on.
 
JoeUser said:
Probably not, but it would just be good to know if they actually tried something new and used PC hardware to a more higher up scale other than just in the graphics department.
Click to expand...

That would equate to making to two different games for real time animation. Things like destruction will be a carry over, but on PC it will look better.
BF3 looks better than console, has 64MP and larger maps, nothing much more than that. Everything else is pretty much the same, the experience is just bigger on PC.
 
It will be like BF2 and people will say it is better than PhysX :rolleyes:. It will be a long time before we get real time physics based real time destruction. I expect to start to see it more and more with the next generation consoles.
 
AMD_Gamer said:
It will be like BF2 and people will say it is better than PhysX :rolleyes:. It will be a long time before we get real time physics based real time destruction. I expect to start to see it more and more with the next generation consoles.
Click to expand...

It's better than PhysX because it actually affects gameplay. PhysX as of now is a flying paper demo that you need an nvidia card to use. We won't be seeing any kind of PhysX destruction for a long time and as of now we don't have the CPU/GPU cycles to spare on it.
 
You won't see a game with actual fully real time simulated destruction with a comparable level of fidelity/visual quality. Even on the highest end PCs, they are still limited in what is doable in this area. You can look at the tech demo's of actual real time destruction, even with the comparably lower visual quality and much less of anything else going on they still tend to run choppy.

Also since destruction actually impacts game play, everyone has to have the same destruction in a multiplayer environment. You cannot for instance scale the amount of physics being done dependent on hardware, since everyone needs to have the same results. This is also somewhat related to why you won't see game play altering PhysX implementation in actual games, since it would significantly alter the game play without PhysX support.
 
limitedaccess said:
You won't see a game with actual fully real time simulated destruction with a comparable level of fidelity/visual quality. Even on the highest end PCs, they are still limited in what is doable in this area. You can look at the tech demo's of actual real time destruction, even with the comparably lower visual quality and much less of anything else going on they still tend to run choppy.

Also since destruction actually impacts game play, everyone has to have the same destruction in a multiplayer environment. You cannot for instance scale the amount of physics being done dependent on hardware, since everyone needs to have the same results.
Click to expand...

Would there be a way to handle the physics portion server side, where you could build in the power needed? Just thinking hypothetically here - say it was a monthly fee and official hosted servers that were built specifically with the game in mind.
 
limitedaccess said:
You won't see a game with actual fully real time simulated destruction with a comparable level of fidelity/visual quality. Even on the highest end PCs, they are still limited in what is doable in this area. You can look at the tech demo's of actual real time destruction, even with the comparably lower visual quality and much less of anything else going on they still tend to run choppy.

Also since destruction actually impacts game play, everyone has to have the same destruction in a multiplayer environment. You cannot for instance scale the amount of physics being done dependent on hardware, since everyone needs to have the same results. This is also somewhat related to why you won't see game play altering PhysX implementation in actual games, since it would significantly alter the game play without PhysX support.
Click to expand...

OK this makes a lot of sense to me...I keep forgetting that everyone playing BF3 doesn't have a 4ghz i7 :-p

I do have to mention that although it used pre-rendered pieces Red Faction Guerrilla had the best and most realistic-ish destruction I've ever seen game wise.
 
AMD_Gamer said:
It will be like BF2 and people will say it is better than PhysX :rolleyes:. It will be a long time before we get real time physics based real time destruction. I expect to start to see it more and more with the next generation consoles.
Click to expand...

In reality, PhysX is still a type of pre-render physics.. It's not real time.

When its real time, the fragments should be dynamic other than any presets...
 
TwistedAegis said:
Would there be a way to handle the physics portion server side, where you could build in the power needed? Just thinking hypothetically here - say it was a monthly fee and official hosted servers that were built specifically with the game in mind.
Click to expand...

If the physics was done server side, latency might become an issue. Trying to get 64 people(for example) all sync'd could have technical problems. Would be damn cool if it could work though.
 
There was that breach game which looked totally shitty, but was supposed to be highly destructible. Also set in a world where the only building material was giant rocks and planks, but nooone had invented cement yet :(

shansoft said:
In reality, PhysX is still a type of pre-render physics.. It's not real time.
Click to expand...

What do you think the PPU is calculating? Which preset to should use? :p If you do the exact same thing, and then repeat it, the same thing will happen...but thats also true of real life.
 
I thought that DICE said there was mass realtime destruction on a whole new level but had to be removed from multiplayer because it was far too demanding with the amount of players involved as well? I swear someone posted a link in the BF3 thread about that a while ago. Good luck finding it though :p.

Anywho, would be nice but so long as some walls crumble to blow cover then thats good enough for me.
 
AMD_Gamer said:
It will be like BF2 and people will say it is better than PhysX :rolleyes:. It will be a long time before we get real time physics based real time destruction. I expect to start to see it more and more with the next generation consoles.
Click to expand...

That's because PhysX is so utterly rubbish :)
 
DeathPrincess said:
It may not be perfect, but it's still the best engine around right now. Look at what it's being compared to. Havok is shitty, bullet isn't worth mentioning. etc. etc. :(
Click to expand...

At least havok has the basic ability to use all of the power of a CPU, considering CPUs are 99% of the physics processing hardware used today, PhysX's struggles to use even half of the resources of a quad core CPU, it's pathetic.
 
It's not a question of physics processing client-side, but server-side. ;)

A building that blows up dynamically has to be exactly consistent with all clients, and also while it's happening.

That a massive amount of additional data to have to suddenly synchronise between clients and server.



I don't think we'll see fully dynamic destruction in MP games for the foreseeable future. :(

It's a netcode limitation.
 
the press release a couple months ago said that they were limiting the destruction below BC2 levels.

They made this decision based on watching long BC2 matches where the maps would essentially get levelled, thus making it very difficult for one team to take points because of the lack of cover.

However, there will still be destructible surfaces, you just wont be able to collapse every building on the map. And falling walls and debris will be able to get you kills and points and whatnot.


Now this is just conjecture, but what i think we are going to see is buildings where you can blow out the outside walls and use the rubble to kill people, but you wont be able to take out the internal structure. Or maybe a mix of both collapsible and non collapsible buildings.

http://multi.systemlink.me/2011/07/new-battlefield-3-information-limited.html
 
spine said:
It's not a question of physics processing client-side, but server-side. ;)

A building that blows up dynamically has to be exactly consistent with all clients, and also while it's happening.

That a massive amount of additional data to have to suddenly synchronise between clients and server.



I don't think we'll see fully dynamic destruction in MP games for the foreseeable future. :(

It's a netcode limitation.
Click to expand...

You're right but I think it's actually both. Still have to consider a LARGE amount of calculations to be done to process the event even on the client side. I would be happy if there was a few maybe 5 or so different scripted destruction animations/models instead of the same one.
 
thesecond is essentially right, there was no destroyable buildings in the beta, and the developers have said they don't plan on adding them. The scope of the urban maps don't make for destroyable buildings, you can just take out the facades (the sides of buidlings)

I think there's essentially 3 types of destruction they talked about, minor which is chipping pieces off objects, major which is blowing holes in walls and the sides off buildings, and then scripted which are where entire buildings can collapse but that's mainly limited to singleplayer and scripted sequences in multiplayer like when map transitions open up in rush.
 
AMD_Gamer said:
It will be like BF2 and people will say it is better than PhysX :rolleyes:. It will be a long time before we get real time physics based real time destruction. I expect to start to see it more and more with the next generation consoles.
Click to expand...

It doesn't even seem to me that PhysX is needed for something that would do.

Red Faction had the feature it sounds like everyone really wants to see ten years ago, where you could blast holes in almost any wall you wanted by hitting it with the rocket launcher several times. It definitely wasn't just at predetermined locations, my buddies and I had a pretty good time just playing around with that for an hour, at a LAN party we had one time.

The map would need to be built with knowledge of how resistant the materials different things in the world are made of, and then figure out how big a crater your rocket makes based on some simple function.

Seems to me that this is most likely left out because it makes the game much harder to balance if players can fundamentally alter the map whenever they want.
 
OK so is single player going to have dynamic destruction? It should/could right?
 
DeathPrincess said:
There was that breach game which looked totally shitty, but was supposed to be highly destructible. Also set in a world where the only building material was giant rocks and planks, but nooone had invented cement yet :(



What do you think the PPU is calculating? Which preset to should use? :p If you do the exact same thing, and then repeat it, the same thing will happen...but thats also true of real life.
Click to expand...

what I mean preset as in Fragments of material. You don't just blow things up and make pieces fall out according to preset fragments.. It should be dynamically break out like in real world.

All physics engine pretty much do the same thing right now, there is nothing to make physX stand out....
 
I think people are underestimating how demanding actually simulating everything in real time is and overestimating the power of PCs. Yes the typical PC on these forums have very high performance in comparison to the average gaming PC or consoles, but it doesn't mean they don't have limitations.

Another interesting thing to consider is that a realistic simulation isn't always the most exciting effect. Most people typically want more stylized and exaggerated effects as long as they are plausible.
 
limitedaccess said:
I think people are underestimating how demanding actually simulating everything in real time is and overestimating the power of PCs. Yes the typical PC on these forums have very high performance in comparison to the average gaming PC or consoles, but it doesn't mean they don't have limitations.

Another interesting thing to consider is that a realistic simulation isn't always the most exciting effect. Most people typically want more stylized and exaggerated effects as long as they are plausible.
Click to expand...


Another thing is that people whant realism. But , at the same time, they do not want to stuck somwhere in the wreckage. I guess if BC2 would have been realistic at the end of the round there would be no place to run in the city because everything will be covered with debris.
 
almalino said:
Another thing is that people whant realism. But , at the same time, they do not want to stuck somwhere in the wreckage. I guess if BC2 would have been realistic at the end of the round there would be no place to run in the city because everything will be covered with debris.
Click to expand...

Not hard to overcome just make characters automatically mantle over small debris, it's not like in real life you can't walk on something that isn't flat ground. The reason it's not done is because it's too much work to keep track of all the debris it would kill the frame rate on the average PC.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top