Object Rendering in Black Map (and their reveal by LOS)

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Would it be difficult to add a flag to the renderer where certain actors are pre-rendered in the black map area of the map? It can be a flag in the actor itself, similar to the castshadow flag. What this would do is stop cliff objects (among other things) from "popping" into existence as the player gains line of sight/vision of the object. This kind of flag would be good for some select objects, like cliffs, large structures like Wonders, bridge sections, etc. Currently, you only gain vision of an object once the root origin of the model or actor is visible. This creates visual glitches in the way you see objects. 

I think everyone has seen this happen consciously or subconsciously. Would it be worth it to fix this? I think it would. It's one of those polish things that make the engine feel complete. 

Edited September 21, 2019 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

@wraitii @vladislavbelov

[smiley]

Quote

Currently, you only gain vision of an object once the root origin of the model or actor is visible. This creates visual glitches in the way you see objects. 

Isn't this the actual problem. So, why add more flags?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 hours ago, smiley said:

Isn't this the actual problem. So, why add more flags?

Because for most things it doesn't look so bad, but for things like cliff actors or large structures it does look bad. But if there was a way to eliminate the phenomenon completely and comprehensively, then of course I would prefer that.  

[wraitii]

Two ways to fix this:

- fix the purely graphical issue. This is probably easy enough to do.

- make entities visible as soon as some of it is out of FOW. That's likely trickier, but I'd have to check the implementation.

Either way, I don't think a flag makes too much sense, though thanks for pinging about the issue, I'd forgotten about it.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

15 minutes ago, wraitii said:

Either way, I don't think a flag makes too much sense, though thanks for pinging about the issue, I'd forgotten about it.

Right, whichever way is best.  My only experience is dicking around with XML and JS files which is why my original "solution" came to mind. lol

Edited September 22, 2019 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[vladislavbelov]

13 hours ago, wraitii said:

- make entities visible as soon as some of it is out of FOW. That's likely trickier, but I'd have to check the implementation.

I think it's easy to upgrade m_LosState to answer visibility queries on a rect. But it's harder for a circle, but easier with a distance check. So we might need to store that state for a circular entity, that it was visible for some player inside the component.

13 hours ago, wraitii said:

Either way, I don't think a flag makes too much sense, though thanks for pinging about the issue, I'd forgotten about it.

I agree.

[Stan`]

18 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

I think it's easy to upgrade m_LosState to answer visibility queries on a rect. But it's harder for a circle, but easier with a distance check. So we might need to store that state for a circular entity, that it was visible for some player inside the component.

I agree.

I created a ticket https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/5606#ticket