In my pursuit of making SC:FA mroe aesthetically pleasing to my eye, I've noticed a certain aspect of graphics effects that cause visual glitches when viewing the action unfold from certain viewing angles and distances.

When viewed from the standard perspective angle, none of these effects look glitched. That's because you're viewing the graphics from above. However, some of the graphics effects are actually 2-dimensional (2D) in nature. As a result, when you view the graphics effects from a perspective below the viewing angle and / or at a distance, the effects look glitched and usually results in blocks appearing.

Here is a view of a Cybran Megalith Experimental firing its heavy protocannons from the standard gameplay viewing perspective. The graphics look perfectly fine to the unsuspecting eye.




But when viewed from a distance, the graphics glitch becomes readily apparent, as manifested by the white squares of light:




When viewed from above, the graphics of the cannons firing still look perfectly fine:




Only when viewed from the horizon plane is the 2D nature of some of SC-FA's graphics effects readily apparent (it's the flat halo of light above the Megalith):




The 2D nature of the graphics effect is also noticeable when viewed from ground level (the flat halo of light above the Megalith):




In summary, I think it's regrettable that GPG chose to take the "lazy" route with its graphics by making them 2D. Since GPG chose to make Forged Alliance a game where the action can be viewed from a number of angles and distances, then GPG should have made its graphics effects 3-dimensional (3D). Instead, GPG chose the easy way out and made some of its graphics effects 2D.

The explosion flashes being rendered the way they are is probably just a technical simplification, so that they can always be rendered on top of everything. Otherwise it would look awful, if they intersected the actual geometry. It's basically a little trick, that works when viewed from the perspective, that you use the most. It's nothing "lazy". You cannot just simply make them 3Dimensional.

Computer games always employ tricks here and there, to accomplish certain things. It's a compromise often. You should read John Mavor's blog post about the Total Annihilation graphics engine for instance, there you can see how many 'tricks' were done there alone . John Mavor also wants to do such a blog post for the SupCom engine. I think the flashes may come up there as well.

You're right. "Lazy" was too harsh and a poor choice of words. Still, other games have found ways to better render explosions and graphics effects when viewed in a multiple viewing angle perspective world that weren't as 2D as SC-FA's graphics effects.

I've also had to remove scorch marks and craters graphics effects and decals from SC-FA in my mod, since they also disappear and re-appear when viewed from differing angles in the original game.

Well, you'd have to wait for John Mavor's blog post about the SupCom engine, if you want a definite answer, why it the way it is. I would assume it's simply for performance reasons.



I'd rather have them disappear and re-appear when viewed at an angle instead of removing them completely... without the craters and scorches, the battlefield is far more boring . The top down view is the most important view, you should go for the highest quality and performance there (from a developers point of view).

Not me. I prefer consistency of graphics effects. It just increases the "believability" of the game for me when scorch marks and craters don't pop in and out of existence.

Besides, as others have mentioned in other threads, the scorch marks and craters don't even look realistic. They look more like cheap decals pasted on the ground.

Which they are. But still, for the normal top view it's fine.

Remember, this game was designed several years ago now. I do not know if you were around then, I suspect not, but believe it or not SupCom was by far the best looking RTS for several years. It wasn't just by a little either, the difference from things like AOE3 and others at the time was astounding. It maxed out top end PCs for several years.

Even now, with much, much more powerful hardware it is infeasible to develop universally 3D graphics with the same level of detail as FA in a game with a full 3d rendering and physics engine. We still do not have the raw computing power necessary to calculate the graphics output from thousands of on-screen 3D effects in real time. Look carefully at CryEngine 3, well ahead in the graphics race right now, and even there you will find cheats, tricks, and short-cuts instead of universal 3D models and effects. I suspect the most obvious place to look is the trees. From certain angles, they still look like they are made of intersecting pieces of paper.

All great points. My point is simply that GPG could have done a much better job in picking graphics effects that were NOT glitchy from ANY viewing perspective or distance.

With my SC-FA Graphics Fix mod, I'm going through ALL the glitch graphics effects and painstakingly removing each one and replacing it with EXISTING SC-FA graphics effects that are NOT glitchy. I am NOT creating any graphics effects from scratch.

I think GPG should have done this from the start. Instead, GPG chose to use "fancy" graphics which look great from the standard viewing perspective angle, but look glitched and horrible from other viewing perspectives and distances.

That would have been ok IF GPG restricted the game to just the one standard viewing angle. But GPG instead allows the gamer to view the action from almost unrestricted perspective angles and distances. So GPG should have done what I am now doing.

The graphic effect you are talking about here in this thread is not a "glitch". As already said, it's a technical simplification, like aeoncleanse talked about.




That would have been silly...




The only thing GPG "should have done" is fixing the DDS file to not have the (mipmapping?) problem.


To be honest, you are being more and more pretentious.