Horde3D

objects may be too far so it feels like they don't change by view angle, then you dont need to draw them each frame, render them once to a texture and use a plane until they get near enough. billboards but dynamic... can be hard to implement

A few of new AAA games are going to use destructable buildings (I'm not sure but I think it was COD4:Modern warfare series) and ... I think prerendered (baked) textures hasn't any meaning in their games and they are using realtime shadow and lighting.

I'm not agree with their GPU killing games very much (Crysis ~ 30fps on a Geforce8800GT with high quality shaders and ... it's not a good gaming experience) but GPU makers are going to build Dual GPU cards (Geforce9800GX2) and Quad GPU systems (Using PCI Express 2.0) to solve these problems and providing good gaming performance.

Hmmmm, 8800GTX at 1366x768 on a 32" HD Widescreen with a Pentium D 3.5ghz for Crysis at > 43fps. > 55fps for UT3. Which is nearly identical to my 1024x768 or 1280x1024 resolution speeds.

Nothing is killing the GPU. It's the CPU that is taking the beating.

Destruction is another beast, and it's typically static, not dynamic, so there's no reason that lightmapping isn't appropriate (it's important when Forward Shading). IIRC ATI has some old stuff on Delaunay triangulation and voxelized lightmaps for destruction.

These results are under :
-Intel Core2Duo E6850 3GHz
-2GB Crucial DDR3
-Geforce8800 GT - Geforce9600GT - RadeonHD3870
-WinXP Pro
-Crysis : High Quality

-Crysis : 1680x1050
Geforce8800GT~33fps
RadeonHD3870~29fps
Geforce9600GT~26fps

-Crysis : 1680x1050 + AA4x + AF8x
Geforce8800GT~22fps
RadeonHD3870~19fps
Geforce9600GT~18fps

These results are under :
-Intel Core2Duo E8500 3.16GHz - OverClocked Intel Core2Duo E8500 4.29GHZ - Intel Core2Extreme QX9650 3GHz
-2GB Crucial DDR3
-Geforce8800GTX
-WinVista Ultimate
-Crysis SP Demo : Lowest Quality

E8500~104fps
QX9650~129fps
OverClocked E8500~137fps

IMHO the best gameplay is @ PIII750 + 256MB Memory + Radeon7000 :
-640x480 @ Lowest possible quality
WarCraftIII FrozenThrone ~ 30fps
WarCraftIII FrozenThrone : DOTA AI map ~ 15fps



Can you describe this technique

You shouldn't have framerates like that with those specs, I've not been been impressed by the supposed superior Core2 but still they should be better. I'm curious what your mem timings and board specs are.

More specifically on your pre-rendered textures issue, it's stuff that hasn't changed for years, so you have to dig and dig to find good info on it.

Brief explanation:

Delaunay triangulation: a subdivision technique that produces results similar to cellular texturing, normally its applied to the surface, but it can be applied to a volume. Google it.

Destruction is usually static in that it was created by an artist and controlled by code (such as Ghoul in SOF and SOFII, breaking walls in FEAR: Extraction Point) or is computed in a tool.

Take a cylinder that is made of three height segments. If you want to break it at the middle segment then you duplicate the mesh and then one version contains the first segment and the other with the third segment. Then extrude the sections towards where they would have been and displace the vertices linearly using a noise function. Hide the switch with some dust particles and voila.

That's where delaunay triangulation comes in handy, it computes the breakage. If you look at some of the Unreal Engine 3 tech demos you'll notice that the chunks of debris look exactly like delaunay results.

Effective destruction takes one object, and when needed spits out multiple different objects. Unreal Engine 3 and RedFaction's GeoMod are the only cases where it is certain that the destruction is precomputed in someway. Crysis may use artist generated content or it may not, they never say explicitly.

I really don't want to explain voxels. Google it and read read read. Basically you use a voxel lightmap for the parts of the object that survive destruction.

The first benchmark mainboard is : ASUS P5E3 Delux (IntelX38)
and about memory : 2x1GB Crucial DDR3 1333MHz 9-9-9 (FSB:RAM~1:1)

The second benchmark mainboard is : Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 (X48 Express)
and about memory : 2x1GB Crucial DDR3 1333MHz 9-9-9 (FSB:RAM~1:1)

Thanks a lot about discussion dear AcidFaucet

The results are various and depends on programmers

Games such as UT are heavy multithreaded and give better results by using multicore and faster CPUs;
Games like Crysis give better results by using powerful GPUs;
Games like HALF-LIFE 2 : Episode 2 give better results by using a good balance between multicore and powerful CPUs and GPUs;