| ArchangelMadzz said: We've had beautiful open world games this gen, Far Cry 4, GTA V, Infamous: SS, SO etc. I don't see why this game can't look amazing if all the physics that make it so demanding is done on servers far away? |
It can't look as amazing because rendering resources are still limited. The physics calculations only off-load the CPU, all the extra persistent rubble and falling pieces still need to be rendered with their own lighting, texturing and shadowing. More pieces, more memory demands, more geometry to handle, more smoke effects, fire effects.
Targeting 2-4 mbps sounds low, it's not though when you share your internet connection with your household. Plus how far will it spike during big collapses. A lot of new geometry gets created that needs to be send to the clients. (unless things breaking up is scripted and only the falling and collision physics are computed in the cloud) It takes a lot more bandwidth to send geometry than a simple lossless compressed video stream.
For example in their early build they had over 40,000 chunks being tracked by the server. Just updating the position and orientation of those chunks at 30fps is close to 220 mbps. In the new build it looks like there are far less pieces and after stuff hits the ground it stops moving. Yet buildings collapsing into eachother, creating new geometry and everything flying through the air colliding into eachother will make a big spike.
Those bandwidth requirements are why we still don't see any of the various lighting and other rendering enhancements that can be done in the cloud. It simply takes too much bandwidth to do anything that looks substantially better. Physics is the least expensive in bandwidth yet I'm curious how far they can push it and how much will still have to be done by the client. (For example tracking the pieces locally according to simple gravity rules while the server only updates collisions and provides new speed vectors next to introducing new pieces)
