Turbine Games Q&A/Graphics/Q-11

Original Link (now dead) - http://www.turbinegames.com/qa/view_questions.html?id=298

Can we see a longer distance of objects been displayed?

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Asked:	2000.10.31
Name:	Jabberwocky
Question Title:	Can we see a longer distance of objects been displayed?
Category:	Graphics
Question:	There is a console command now that allows us to increase how far of the landscape we can see (up to 5 miles max.) However can we have a way of increasing how far the objects on the land will be drawn? In otherwords if I were to stand on a hill near Glendenwood, I will see a forest area cut off abrutly about a quarter of a mile. Or if I stand on the Tumerok hill near Dryreach, if you look towards the fortress' direction, you will see an empty blotch of dirt... as you run closer to the blotch, eventually the walled up town will magically pop into vision were patch of dirt is at.

Answered:	2000.10.31
Name:	Jason Booth
Answer:	There are a number of factors that make changing this not an option: - Monsters and such are all drawn to the same distance on every clients machine - this way no one has an advantage over anyone else do to thier machines configuration. - The server only sends the clients information about objects within a certain radius. This keeps the net bandwidth down to a point thats playable on people with 28.8k modems. Increasing this radius can increase the amount of bandwidth needed at an amazing rate. - Non-gameplay landscape objects (tree's, bushes, etc) have a variable draw distance, but can only be drawn out to a distance of about 500 meters. This is due to both server bandwidth concerns (because the landscape is streamed to the user), but more importantly client memory and cpu concerns. Right now the client keeps track of 576 landcells, each containing anywhere from 1-10 objects that have to be transformed and in most cases drawn - and that's just for decorations. After about 500 meters, the landscape drops to 1/4 the number of polygons every 192 meters and the objects drop out. The memory and calulations needed for placing objects on those landcells would grow at an exponential rate for every radius added. This doesn't even factor in the time it takes to draw all these objects. To put it plainly, increasing this radius would quickly cripple even the fastest machines.