CAG Hotshot wrote:
What would be very very helpful is to be able to change the medium distance shape into a duplicate of the close shape so that more detail could be seen at distance, hut I never got around to experimenting with that… I thought it might crash the game with its demand on additional memory when a large number of objects are present, because of the limitations of the old game’s DOS roots…. but if it could be solved it would improve immersion by having objects appear at farther visual distances and not be so under detailed. I always found the way objects appeared in the game to be very unrealistic even at -100 magnification…
Yes, my ultimate goal was to improve the main shape, including the addition of new polygons, along with the subsequent improvement of the medium and long distance shapes.
I'm not a programmer and I have no idea what this would do to memory requirements and how the game would accept it.
Anyway, I think we are able to implement it at this point. That is, if the issue with nested offsets is thoroughly investigated (video with XMOOSEA.SH)
FA has a big problem with visualization of objects in general. All the objects are just too big. Hence the perpetual problem with the feeling of speed relative to the terrain. All of this was due to the low power of the graphics (which was computed only by the main CPU) and the resolution of the monitors at the time. The game inherited this problem from 'Chuck Yeager's Air Combat'. It's all due to the large pitch of the base grid - 1 integer, no decimal places). We can't shrink models anymore, instead the entire environment of the FA world has to be enlarged.