What is Streaming Technology then?

[colt]

I know we had large areas in OFP and there was that Nevada test range map that was the largest (I think) to date. But with ArmA delivering "...over 200 sq. kilometre" size maps, how is it possible? Can anyone answer in layman's terms.

I hope they keep the natural barrier of the water / sea. I'd hate to come up against some bizzare impassable rockface or an invisble wall :shudder:

[Antichrist]

IMO it will be something like Dungeon Siege. Things will only appear as you get close to them. Close by OFP terms, might be like 2-3 km distance or something. The rest of the island would be completely blank. That was one of the advertised features of Game2. I guess they're doing the same for ArmA, just on a smaller scale.

[Yarrow]

By looking at the new screanshots, I must say I am a bit worried. Though the game is not finished yet, it looks kinda wierd. The textures are a bit "blury" on some objects. The ground textures are sharp, although we can see WAAAAY TO MANY patterns on the ground textures.

And when it goes for the water, well.. The one picture that shows it, displays waves coming from one end of the lake to the other, and that aint realisic, the last time I checked .

so..

1) I hope the creators can radomise their ground textures, so that we cant see tht patterns. (it look so "amature-ish" in todays state) Perhaps improve weapon textures as well.

2) Fix the water wave drift to a more realistic look, and make it reliant on wind or something... someting realisic..

Then the game will look grate!

[Jtec]

Im guessing its gonna be the same as any streaming technology (video, music etc) its just gonna constantly stream the map out instead of loading it all up at once and keeping it in memory. Im also guessing that this will improve multiplaying no ends as streaming technology reduces bandwidth usage hence why i think bis are now saying 60 players. Looking forward to seeing a demo of it, fingers crossed they may release one before the release date.

[Llauma]

As far as I know Elite has streaming technology so they can actually make full sized islands for a computer(xbox) with only 64mb RAM. With this technology you can make the islands infinite.

[Commando84]

could that also mean they would use a.i spawning and creation when player gets "nearby"? 1-3 sqkm or so
anyways good idea by bis to make islands streaming it will be very nice to to play fresh graphics and so with maybe even better frame rates , damn im starting to drool about armed assualts features. Nice that they will be work out missions more , the original game had some really solid missions and its good to know the same skilled crew is working on the game and its different parts wich will make it even better than the old ofp
Keep up the work Bis, praying for a publisher to get onto the project as soon as possible and also anyone know what H1 stands for?

[Daniel]

H1 stands for the First Half of the Year. Between January and July I guess.

[Snake Man]

If its same system as Falcon 4.0 used, then the terrain file(s) can be huge, lets say 1100 x 1100 kilometers, but the game engine only loads for example 1.5 x 1.5km at time.

How about this "island" with realistic distances for OFP?



If it works like the F4 terrain system, then I'm baffled how the AI would handle themselves with waypoints beyond this loaded range. I mean if you setup a patrol around a city or through it... how they walk around the buildings when player is out of the range AND what happens when he appears in range, how can OFP tell if the AI units are inside a building or other object. I have no clue.

Anyways the terrain would not be empty/flat beyond the loaded range... it would just not exist. Imagine 1.5 x 1.5km OFP island, it would be really small compared to the standard 12 x 12km BIS islands and 25 x 25km & 51 x 51km possible user made islands, meaning very light on CPU and memory load.

Streaming terrain is very interesting in ArmA, I cannot wait to get it.

[Heatseeker]

I think the only issue that might come up is decorating/filling a 200 km island . It will take alot of work while achieving good visual quality, thats what made the cwc islands so special, the details and placement of vilages, farms, forests, rocks and bushes, they were mostly very nice to look at and interact with, i think they will come up with a way to decorate the islands faster , but it wouldnt feel so nice if it was to look empty or with some sort of generic patterns..

[DrBobcat]

I believe the game does the streaming so essentially it is the same amount of work per-km as it was in CWC/Res. If you wanna make a huge land-mass, you will need more time, durh. I say this is an EXCELLENT thing because now we could make dynamic parts of countries instead of just islands.... Great stuff!