Darkfalls complicated physics

[Magyar]

It seems like Darkfall is a game where a physics ruleset is applied and obeyed. See for instance - running into rocks, running into players, aiming arrows and taking wind into account ( ??? wtf )

My question is this: With features like this boasted, how is it even possible this game can run on a 6600 and not be bogged down? Is a separate PhysX card installed on these machines to compensate for CPU load? Or are many of these features really only existing in the imaginations of players? Even the latest card by ATI 4870 X2 only begins to touch on removing the physics processing from the CPU and putting it onto the more specialized GPU.

My point is not to diss Darkfall; I will be playing if the game is released. My point is simply to ask a legitimate question that applies towards some type of minimum system requirement.

Thanks,

Magyar Republic

[Slaine]

I hope that there will be no winds grabbing the arrows i will lose much on that :ohno:

[d_arcturus]

Physics is probably server side. Infact, its probably safer to have it serverside. If physics was handled client side it would be far to easy to make a "no gravity" or "no physics" hack that would make arrows fly perfeclty straight or ignore the physics of someone blocking you.

[Psyny]

Those physics aren't that complex....
Darkfall only does what other MMORPGs don't.

See older games like Carmageddon, the game can run into a 486 machine and still have physics.

And, theres no real reason to remove the physic processing from CPU. CPU does it very well.

[Slaine]

Physics is probably server side. Infact, its probably safer to have it serverside. If physics was handled client side it would be far to easy to make a "no gravity" or "no physics" hack that would make arrows fly perfeclty straight or ignore the physics of someone blocking you.



i hate hackers ROOOAAARRR!!!!! :bang: :ninja: :mad:

[Vanth]

Newtonian physics is not very complicated. You can even download java aplets which do Newtonian physics. The reason they are not implemented properly in most games is not because it is complicated (or hardware taxing) to code, but because they have no-one who is good enough at physics to code it.

[Deja vu]

They have said wind will effect arrows. I hope it works well.

[Slaine]

They have said wind will effect arrows. I hope it works well.

aww.... :(

[JoshuaHalfBreed]

you're question's been answered well a few times already, but also keep in mind that the graphics processing shouldn't be too difficult if you look at the screen shots the textures and poly's aren't that advanced... so in fact i'm assuming DFO will run pretty smoothly.

[Afayir]

It will, and so will how hard you're pulling back on the arrow, and breathing (I think).

[keeperofstars]

SERVERSIDE ever fing time the devs mention code its all about server side coding.

Not to mention the devs jobs have included working on military combat simulations, military server technology, and military combat AI.

Overall you have a bunch of pretty well off military simulation programmers taking what they have done in the past and making it a public MMORPG.

And physics is not a big deal anyways its just extra calculations. IE Arrow follows path Y,X but if wind exsists at Z ratio, then arrow travels y,x+z ratio.

Not really that complex.

[Darksoul_]

Newtonian physics is not very complicated. You can even download java aplets which do Newtonian physics. The reason they are not implemented properly in most games is not because it is complicated (or hardware taxing) to code, but because they have no-one who is good enough at physics to code it.

Am I the only one seeing contradictions in this post?

[Slaine]

Am I the only one seeing contradictions in this post?


probably

[Magyar]

Heh no. Contradictions are all over the place by apparent physics and computer experts here.

Physics is not that complicated
Nobody is good enough to do it
It just is extra calculations

etc...

The first two are just obvious. The last, well.. yes its extra calculations. But isnt a CPU just a piece of hardware that can run x calculations per second? So adding extra calculations would increase CPU load, yes? So we're back to the question.

That its server side I can go with, however there's still a good portion of processing that occurs on the local system, and its still got to know how to work with all of the information contained in the packets. So its still dependent on the host machine CPU and Graphics processor. If it werent we would all be playing Darkfall on our Commodore 64's. If coding MMO's were as simple as its been assumed to be on this thread Asheron's Call would have been a piece of eye candy, Asheron's Call 2 wouldnt have had such obscenely high system requirements, and Age of Conan would actually run on a PC built 6 months ago.

So instead of the fanboi's answering with veiled hostility, how about a real answer?

Again, Im not hating on the game. Just interjecting a small reality check and looking for an appropriate response.

Thanks,

Magyar Republic

[Fudgy_Neeples]

Where have you seen that a Geforce 6600 can run this game? There are no publically known system requirements and the ones on wikipedia are just random speculations from like 3 years ago.

I hope that Darkfall would have a physics system like the Euphoria Engine where there are realistic physics and not just a ragdoll feature. Even though GTA4 wasn't that great, their physics system really made playing the game decent.

[JoshuaHalfBreed]

Am I the only one seeing contradictions in this post?

Heh no. Contradictions are all over the place by apparent physics and computer experts here.

Physics is not that complicated
Nobody is good enough to do it
It just is extra calculations

etc...


He did contradict himself but only because he didn't take the time to make his meaning clearer. What he really meant was:

Physics programmings isn't much more complicated than any other programming in engine. The reason why it isn't implemented as often and as well is because there aren't as many people specializing in it. Yes, it's programming so yes it's difficult and yes it takes CPU load but not to the extent that people tend to think.


I hope that Darkfall would have a physics system like the Euphoria Engine where there are realistic physics and not just a ragdoll feature. Even though GTA4 wasn't that great, their physics system really made playing the game decent.

I agree but definitely Darkfall or any MMO will not have Euphoria or anything like it for a long time. :(

[Vanth]

Am I the only one seeing contradictions in this post?

There is no contradiction. It can be complicated for a programmer to understand, but simple and efficient for a programmer to code.

I am actually a physicist by training, and I write rather complex physics simulations in my work. Despite their complexity (from a physics point of view) they are rather simple and quick from a programming point of view. The sort of calculations that you do for simple Newtonian physics are nothing compared to the overheads you get from drawing nice graphics.

[ZtyX]

Aaah, carmageddon.. That game had some great and fun physics.. I used to watch older people play that a lot. Hehehe

[sorros]

the physics arent as great as many claim it to be, methinks...players cant shove all rocks down hills, you dont stagger backward depending on where you get it (like oblivion ragdoll), etc. So even with physics, the lag wont be that bad...plus most of it is server side, i suppose.

[Zanza]

i just talked to my father about this hes a physicist and he has a Doctorate. He says the issue is that its quite involved for the act of shooting an arrow to be as exact as shooting an arrow in real life under the same conditions requires would have alot of variables and each variable would be effecting the outcome in a different way.

examples: spin, feathers on the arrow, air current, arrow moving through and object and exiting (arrow goes through muscle tissue and is still flying. you'd have to determine how much it changed the arrow's speed)

i havent even scratched the surface of the variables.

its not so much that people dont know what some of the variables are. the issue is just adding it. there are so many variables involved that programmers someone leave certain things out because they consider them minor or irrelevant.

On top of it have you ever thought of how to code for a grenade explosion? Including which direction the shrapnel would fly, how it would fragment, and the different speeds that they would fly at. (trust me theres more than that. if you think about these in your mind they are not easy things to solve.) most programmers try to stay away from this level of realism and create a generic of explosion with few variables.

[Corwen]

Newtonian physics is not very complicated. You can even download java aplets which do Newtonian physics. The reason they are not implemented properly in most games is not because it is complicated (or hardware taxing) to code, but because they have no-one who is good enough at physics to code it.

Well aren't you just a baby genius

[JoshuaHalfBreed]

i just talked to my father about this hes a physicist and he has a Doctorate. He says the issue is that its quite involved for the act of shooting an arrow to be as exact as shooting an arrow in real life under the same conditions requires would have alot of variables and each variable would be effecting the outcome in a different way.

examples: spin, feathers on the arrow, air current, arrow moving through and object and exiting (arrow goes through muscle tissue and is still flying. you'd have to determine how much it changed the arrow's speed)

i havent even scratched the surface of the variables.

its not so much that people dont know what some of the variables are. the issue is just adding it. there are so many variables involved that programmers someone leave certain things out because they consider them minor or irrelevant.

On top of it have you ever thought of how to code for a grenade explosion? Including which direction the shrapnel would fly, how it would fragment, and the different speeds that they would fly at. (trust me theres more than that. if you think about these in your mind they are not easy things to solve.) most programmers try to stay away from this level of realism and create a generic of explosion with few variables.

It's not that complicated. Darkfall is a game, not a simulation. There is no such thing as gravity or even momentum probably in their physics engine. The only calculations really are the initial projected trajectory (how far, what angle, how fast) and the alteration by wind.

[Ersk]

i just talked to my father about this hes a physicist and he has a Doctorate. He says the issue is that its quite involved for the act of shooting an arrow to be as exact as shooting an arrow in real life under the same conditions requires would have alot of variables and each variable would be effecting the outcome in a different way.

examples: spin, feathers on the arrow, air current, arrow moving through and object and exiting (arrow goes through muscle tissue and is still flying. you'd have to determine how much it changed the arrow's speed)

i havent even scratched the surface of the variables.

its not so much that people dont know what some of the variables are. the issue is just adding it. there are so many variables involved that programmers someone leave certain things out because they consider them minor or irrelevant.

On top of it have you ever thought of how to code for a grenade explosion? Including which direction the shrapnel would fly, how it would fragment, and the different speeds that they would fly at. (trust me theres more than that. if you think about these in your mind they are not easy things to solve.) most programmers try to stay away from this level of realism and create a generic of explosion with few variables.

i understand what ur sayin, all makes sense ;) but what was ur point?

[Rashgar]

Also remember folks this is a proprietary Engine.

And with the free form nature of this MMO, Alot of Processes are removed and dont bog down your system. Like Friendly Fire, and restrictive hardcode.

Its like government. More is Bad. MMO's and History do not lie.

[BoyScouT]

good thread, we see here peoples who usually don't post anything but they should.

I'd like to hear more about programming, interresting.

So the devs of aventurine are better than the others for coding things like that, happy to hear it. ^^

[BoyScouT]

SERVERSIDE ever fing time the devs mention code its all about server side coding.

Not to mention the devs jobs have included working on military combat simulations, military server technology, and military combat AI.

Overall you have a bunch of pretty well off military simulation programmers taking what they have done in the past and making it a public MMORPG.

I did'nt know that, that's good ^^. So the AI will be better than what we've seen before. ^^

[escarondito]

well the only true physics issues that i've seen when thinking about his game are

with ranged weapons- angle, windspeed, possibly strength of pullback, and any knockback dealt

with melee- i think there will only be collision detection and weight of the characters to deal with, gravity will be a constant and unchangeable.

now another question is how much pushback can we come to expect form explosion spells like the devs have been stating. i was thinking that they have to straddle a fine line between light shove and 20 feet and off the cliff you go..but i guess beta will help sort that out

[claudiofm]

solution, new drivers nvidia + PhysX drivers

+ 8800 up ( 8800/9800/280 )

http://www.nvidia.com/content/forcewithin/us/download.asp

[Xzi]

Where have you seen that a Geforce 6600 can run this game? There are no publically known system requirements and the ones on wikipedia are just random speculations from like 3 years ago.

I hope that Darkfall would have a physics system like the Euphoria Engine where there are realistic physics and not just a ragdoll feature. Even though GTA4 wasn't that great, their physics system really made playing the game decent.
This. I doubt Darkfall will have anything like Euphoria, but the system requirements are not yet known.

[ranvier]

For the purposes of dealing with internet latency, any sort of movement calculation, including any physics simulation, will be processed both client AND server side. Whenever there is a discrepancy over the location of an object, the server will supercede and send the correct information to the client, at which point it is up to the client to adjust. Usually the player doesn't notice.

If latency is very high, the player WILL notice, encountering pauses in the game, rubberbanding, etc. In order to combat this, both client and server continuously attempt to predict where players and objects are going to be in the future, smoothing things out tremendously. Obviously, these calculations add to the CPU load.

[Gem]

Asherons Call had physics similar to darkfall's. /thread

[Vanth]

examples: spin, feathers on the arrow, air current, arrow moving through and object and exiting (arrow goes through muscle tissue and is still flying. you'd have to determine how much it changed the arrow's speed)


You don't need all that though since they are all subleading effects that you will never notice in game. All that they need for a realistic looking arrow would be a constant acceleration downwards (gravity) a retarding acceleration (that is a deceleration along the direction of travel, for air resistance) and possibly a constant component added to velocity in the direction of the wind.

If you then want to put in some kind of inaccuracy from say non-regular fletching, then you just add some sort of gaussian smearing to your path.

[keeperofstars]

You all keep saying it adds to cpu load.

YOU ARE ALL CORRECT. HOWEVER how often do you even touch your cpu's max limits even when gaming?

I mean hell with a low end 8800 GT, 2 gig ram, and a single core 2.4 fx athlon chip, I can run AoC and only hit about 50% cpu, my ram is typically maxed, but that is cause of the crappy coding and well its DDR1 ram with no buffer.

Oh and client and server don't have to do calculations. You can build your game to run with little to no client processing. The best example is a server with remote desktop. You see and do everything you want, you provide your input, run programs, watch videos, play games, everything, you want / can do on your desktop. However the server is the one doing all the work, your computer aka client is just rendering the screen and supplying user input.

No reason the devs can't make DF the same way.
Which means end user requires drop way the hell off into low end land, network connection issues only affect the person with the bad network, and really limits your ability to hack / cheat / exploit the information being sent to your machine.

Now is this exactly how DF is built no one knows, just pointing out that its possible to have a very low end system require, client side, even with highly complex physics. While I agree it does add cpu load, its typically so small in today's technology when related to gaming.

Also servers have come so far down in cost to performance ratios, that a beast of a server is only a few $k now.

I mean we built a quad quad core server with 32 gig ram, and a 2 gig network connection (runs to our sans) and it was only about 20k.
Not exactly chump change, but when you realize its cheaper then your average car.

[Magyar]

Even servers with remote desktop workstations have their limits in terms of scalability. The better technology is a server that allows applications to spin onto the local processor, the server only functioning as a coordinator between all the machines.

I assume this type of development is the type used for MMO's, albeit with more than just distribution handled by the server processors, however I cant claim certainty. With encrypted packets that have identifiers on them in instances of tampering this is definitely possible, and allows for a much more versatile platform.

Good answers though, everyone. While the question itself wasnt answered, there seems to be a general consensus that the physics ingame are actually being implemented. So they've figured out something. We'll just have to wait!

[Ragnar Dragonfyre]

Where have you seen that a Geforce 6600 can run this game? There are no publically known system requirements and the ones on wikipedia are just random speculations from like 3 years ago.

I hope that Darkfall would have a physics system like the Euphoria Engine where there are realistic physics and not just a ragdoll feature. Even though GTA4 wasn't that great, their physics system really made playing the game decent.

Yeah, but the Euphoria engine isn't available to "the public" yet. In fact, it was a shocker that GTAIV had the Euphoria engine at all. LucasArts said many times that they wanted to maintain exclusive use of Euphoria until Force Unleashed and Indiana Jones came out. Either Rockstar paid LucasArts ALOT of money, or LucasArts likes GTA games so much that they decided to sell their engine to them regardless.

I would not expect to see Euphoria in Darkfall.

[Dazarthas]

My 6600 runs Half-Life 2 fine... I don't think Darkfall would be a problem, to be honest.

[claudiofm]

1 game offline no = or 1 mmo

mmo mor powerpc

[keeperofstars]

Even servers with remote desktop workstations have their limits in terms of scalability. The better technology is a server that allows applications to spin onto the local processor, the server only functioning as a coordinator between all the machines.

I assume this type of development is the type used for MMO's, albeit with more than just distribution handled by the server processors, however I cant claim certainty. With encrypted packets that have identifiers on them in instances of tampering this is definitely possible, and allows for a much more versatile platform.

Good answers though, everyone. While the question itself wasnt answered, there seems to be a general consensus that the physics ingame are actually being implemented. So they've figured out something. We'll just have to wait!

They do have their limits, and you are 100% correct that most games off load the work on the client, with the server playing mediator. However DF is said to be coded the other way around, where it runs on the server side. Its the better MMO model, the problem though is more hardware costs on the dev side, which means less overall profit. With server cluster technology being where it is today, and the ability to virtulalize within the server, there is no reason not to, beyond the hardware costs which does start to get expensive, but its no where as bad of a cost as most make it out to be.

[Girth]

4850 is running around 150$ now and does a teraflop has 800 shaders and large oc headroom for them large scale battles by the time df comes out next yr you could pickup 2 for 200$

stop stressing out hardware out right now will chew up df spit it out and ask for more imho. I don't think df could even attempt to bog down a q6600/phenom9950 cpu paired with 2-4gigs of ddr2 and a current gen gfx card (hell even the last gen will eat df alive more than likely) even from the low end enthusiast segment.

[VirtualPenguin]

You all keep saying it adds to cpu load.

YOU ARE ALL CORRECT. HOWEVER how often do you even touch your cpu's max limits even when gaming?

I mean hell with a low end 8800 GT, 2 gig ram, and a single core 2.4 fx athlon chip, I can run AoC and only hit about 50% cpu, my ram is typically maxed, but that is cause of the crappy coding and well its DDR1 ram with no buffer.

Oh and client and server don't have to do calculations. You can build your game to run with little to no client processing. The best example is a server with remote desktop. You see and do everything you want, you provide your input, run programs, watch videos, play games, everything, you want / can do on your desktop. However the server is the one doing all the work, your computer aka client is just rendering the screen and supplying user input.

No reason the devs can't make DF the same way.
Which means end user requires drop way the hell off into low end land, network connection issues only affect the person with the bad network, and really limits your ability to hack / cheat / exploit the information being sent to your machine.

Now is this exactly how DF is built no one knows, just pointing out that its possible to have a very low end system require, client side, even with highly complex physics. While I agree it does add cpu load, its typically so small in today's technology when related to gaming.

Also servers have come so far down in cost to performance ratios, that a beast of a server is only a few $k now.

I mean we built a quad quad core server with 32 gig ram, and a 2 gig network connection (runs to our sans) and it was only about 20k.
Not exactly chump change, but when you realize its cheaper then your average car.


There actually is a reason the devs can't do that, they would have to have a mountain of high end servers to render 10,000 players screens simoultaniously!

[RichieV]

I remember reading that they were working on bringing the FPS during a siege up to 60 for medium rated computers so it cant be that difficult.

[keeperofstars]

There actually is a reason the devs can't do that, they would have to have a mountain of high end servers to render 10,000 players screens simoultaniously!

Its not expensive / hard to make said mountain.

I mean for 20k we built a 2 u (rack height) server with 4 quad core 4.0ghz processors, and 32 gig worth of ram, and 2 1-terabyte 15000rpm drives. The thing is a beast we can't bog the thing down at all with 600 users running financial / accounting / billing / banking software on it all concurrent. It also manages our websites back end databases, and the databases for all the apps.

We have a 48U rack, so we could put 24 of them in 1 rack aka 10ft tall 6x6 floor foot print.
24X20k = 485k in hardware to fill the rack, but you are then talking about.

24 quad core processors so - 96 4 ghz processors
768Gig of ram (I mean we are talking about 3/4 a terabyte of ram)
48 Terabytes of storage



Now $485k is quite a chunk of change

but if you take 60k users at $50.00 per game box you get: $3,000,000 - 500k in hardware = 2.5mil profit - 1 mil for shiping / printing / advertising. Still in the plus by 1.5mil then your monthly subscription covers maintenance / costs and income / salary for staff / devs.
Cause your looking at 600k a month if they charge 10 bucks.
And well its not that expensive to run / maintain servers.

So hardware is never an issue / cost wise, if you are looking for performance.
However, you have to know what your doing, and code the game to run / work on a server cluster which is the real tricky part. It's difficult to have a program adjust to a cluster environment.

Also why blow 500k of profit when you can make a game like WoW run on a single server, that costs about 2k and will support up to 1000 players with little lag.

Unless you really want your game to zing.

[End Dream]

hl2 has amazing physics and you dont need a special physics chip.. nd i guarantee the physics will not be as intense as hl2

[auutumn]

I'm guessing that since nVidia's Tuesday release of updated motherboard/graphics drivers that boost Physics 8.08.01, that people who own a 6600 and above can now experience physics. How they will look and/or perform on a lower-end card I can't say but I would imagine that game would scale appropriately.

I imagine that we'd mostly be seeing eye candy so scaling is OK. If it comes to physical interactions having a real impact, then that could be an issue.

[Zanza]

i understand what ur sayin, all makes sense ;) but what was ur point?

its not easy :(


and teh physics is hard.... :(

[skatenike]

i have intel core2 quad cpu at 2.40Ghz with a nvidia 8400 gs so i should be fine with this game

[Arathraen]

I hope that there will be no winds grabbing the arrows i will lose much on that :ohno:

LOL