I was talking to a guy on Reddit about Floating Point Accuracy. We all know in video games that the further out you go from the origin, the more jittery things get. Well, I was talking to this guy, and he explained using a method that involves using double precision on the CPU, and converting to single on the GPU. He's done it many times before for his stuff, and it drastically increases the precision. Quoted from him: I asked him about if that'd take more computing power, and he responded with: In other words, you can travel much, much further out in distance before things get jittery. Is this doable? Would it require an engine rewrite or something? This could allow for bigger maps and will keep the jitteriness from getting as bad as it does. --- Post updated --- The current system we have in place makes sense; most video games don't have maps big enough for it to even be noticeable to begin with. However, with the ever-expanding community maps, and maps like American Roads, Los Injuris, or even the empty Grid or Endless Highway, a system like this is a must.
See this is what I call amazing, however it would probably slow down a lot upcoming things. It would also need the engine (Torque3D) to completely be rewritten which would set back a lot of things that would put this game back to stage 1. The points you brought up were community maps, which aren't made by the developers themselves so it would be useless. But this idea, well it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
The current system we have in place makes sense; most video games don't have maps big enough Would placing a feature like this in really require an engine rewrite?
Yes. Mainly because the code for this idea would probably make the game take up a lot of time till it becomes a full access game instead of early access. Also again you brought community maps, which aren't made by the developers themselves so it would be useless. Besides, floating point accuracy is used more by games that have a single map, take for example GTA 5, The Crew 1 & 2, NFS Heat, Forza Horizon and so on.
Our vehicle physics are always calculated in a local to each vehicle space, so there is no difference if the vehicle is at origin or 10km from origin. If we didn't do this then when you went far from origin, vehicles would be blowing up due to the accuracy problems. The same does not apply for the GFX subsystem which is affected by floating point accuracy problems that creates the jittery movements. We have done some research on how to solve this problem but it'll require quite some more work to fully resolve it.
This was one of my old threads, and I wanted to bump it. I'm still interested in possibilities for this. From what I heard, it probably doesn't need a rewrite of Torque, as apparently just about any engine should be able to support it. But this is just from a bit of easedropping from other developers doing similar things with engines such as Unreal. I also saw that Assetto Corsa's "Custom Shaders Patch" mod is experimenting with this stuff as well for Assetto. They added in Double Floating Point accuracy in the latest untested version, but they also have a feature called "Origin Shifting". Larger maps like the Shuto Expressway feel much better. Obviously, Assetto is an entirely different game with a different game engine. But it at least puts the idea out there.
Partly. But it'd help in general too. You can notice it a lot in Italy (4096x4096), but even the smaller maps it's noticeable. Regardless, it'd help endorse larger maps though. Especially good for endless maps (Endless Highway and Grid, Small, Pure).
