Elder Scrolls Online Character Physics

sarttsarttsarttub17_ESO

Seem a little... stiff Hair doesn't move armor doesn't move, why?

Gidorick

Devs say it's too taxing on the engine... Yea... some of us gave this look too:

ESO uses Havok, which has a pretty impressive cloth simulation that can be used for hair and clothes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTOzOgAdYWk

Cloth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL0elSpObok

At one point they mentioned trying this but it created issues in Cyrodiil. hopefully some day.

sarttsarttsarttub17_ESO

Gidorick wrote: »

Devs say it's too taxing on the engine... Yea... some of us gave this look too:

ESO uses Havok, which has a pretty impressive cloth simulation that can be used for hair and clothes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTOzOgAdYWk

Cloth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL0elSpObok

At one point they mentioned trying this but it created issues in Cyrodiil. hopefully some day.

Hmm should just give players the option to turn it on or off, but if it causes problems oh well. maybe they will figure it out later.

Egonieser

Gidorick wrote: »

Devs say it's too taxing on the engine... Yea... some of us gave this look too:

Taxing.. Pff, not all of us play on a 5 year old laptops or hamster powered Celerons with intel HD 0.500 Beta chipsets..

Sarrt said it right, we should have an option, perhaps for enchanced physics like oh so many games have. If people can't handle it, turn it off.

Merlin13KAGL

Kicker is, much of that could be offloaded to the on-card Graphics engine. (PhysX, anyone?)

Nvidia's had impressive handling capabilities in this department for some time. If ZoS wants to handle their own physics in regard to the game's processing of it, that's one thing, but for things like clothing, armor, and hair that's a skin from the 90's, there's no need to reinvent the already perfected wheel.

Here's tech from 2004: Geforce 6000 series GPU's:
http://youtu.be/vS5tfq_Ctis

Here's tech from 2010: GTX 400 series GPU's:
http://youtu.be/cECnvJeXXE8

This is decade old and half-decade old tech.

Regarding load on the GPU, this could be rendered client side and does not have to have exacting views. Currently the weather, sky, even the orientation of group members is all determined locally.

View distance for this level of render could be limited (or set in settings), or even limited to certain instances (last interaction with the Groundskeeper in CH comes to mind.)

EDIT:Because I'd be remiss if I didn't include cloth:
http://youtu.be/mrtwESnTOwY

sarttsarttsarttub17_ESO

Or maybe they just didnt have time to put it in the game, we all know this game wasn't ready to launch.

Gidorick

sarttsarttsarttub17_ESO wrote: »

Or maybe they just didnt have time to put it in the game, we all know this game wasn't ready to launch.

Weren't they working on ESO for like seven years before launch?... I actually have told people similar things to what @Merlin13KAGL said, ESOs engine is just old technology. They took a look at what was standard back in 2008 and made THAT.

arqe

%90 of the players cries about their low FPS. But here we are , discussing if they should enable advanced physics option so we can have better visuals and animations ...

Isdel

Look, all armor is painted on and has floppy floating parts. It's not exactly a game that focuses on character looks.

Gidorick

arqe wrote: »

%90 of the players cries about their low FPS. But here we are , discussing if they should enable advanced physics option so we can have better visuals and animations ...

We are the 10%.

Panda244

I want. Black Desert. Graphics. Now.

Bewb physics would be a nice touch, no over the top nonsense.. But still.

Sacadon

Yep, it just doesn't make sense to me why they'd invest so much in famous actors for voice overs, soundtracks that are very nice and some decent artwork, then skimp on this. Cyrodiil doesn't perform well anyway. So I wonder what they're telling themselves now.

Hopefully the game does at least decent with console and is able to stay alive long enough to address these and all the other annoying things. it's a big list though.

Lokryn

If it's such an issue, they should just hide cloaks/capes in Cyrodill. Honestly, sometimes ESO feels like an old game. I think ZoS is way too conservative on their tech.

Merlin13KAGL

Gidorick wrote: »

arqe wrote: »

%90 of the players cries about their low FPS. But here we are , discussing if they should enable advanced physics option so we can have better visuals and animations ...

We are the 10%.

@arge , option is the key. The PhysX engine was acquired by Nvidia in 2008, and few games took advantage of its capabilities at the time, so the timeline does play a part.

With that in mind, Oblivion (pre-ESO development, pre-Skyrim, for that matter) had impressive physics capabilities for the time. Individual blades of grass were dynamic, so it's not as if the capability for a middle ground was not available.

Plus, there is a lot of room in between a flat skin and full motion. We're not asking for physics based responses to individual strands, but I feel they could do more than what they did with it.

There is amazing hardware available today, seems a shame not to use it.

I do not know they exact way they did things on the backend. I only know how I would do it, increasing the immersion while keeping processing reasonable.

There can be a middle ground.

Dreamo84

PvP issues always ruins it for the rest of us! This is why we can't have nice things

Gidorick

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

arqe wrote: »

%90 of the players cries about their low FPS. But here we are , discussing if they should enable advanced physics option so we can have better visuals and animations ...

We are the 10%.

@arge , option is the key. The PhysX engine was acquired by Nvidia in 2008, and few games took advantage of its capabilities at the time, so the timeline does play a part.

With that in mind, Oblivion (pre-ESO development, pre-Skyrim, for that matter) had impressive physics capabilities for the time. Individual blades of grass were dynamic, so it's not as if the capability for a middle ground was not available.

Plus, there is a lot of room in between a flat skin and full motion. We're not asking for physics based responses to individual strands, but I feel they could do more than what they did with it.

There is amazing hardware available today, seems a shame not to use it.

I do not know they exact way they did things on the backend. I only know how I would do it, increasing the immersion while keeping processing reasonable.

There can be a middle ground.

I completely agree but when things like.... sittable chairs or climbable ladders are too much trouble to be worth the effort I don't know if 'flowy hair' will EVER be on the list of things to add.

If those are the features we care about we just need to go find an mmo with those features. I to would love ESO characters to be as detailed as Black Desert, @Panda244 , but if that's what we want, we should just go play black desert.

Me, I'm here for Tamriel and the lore, I suspect you guys are too.

scy22b14_ESO

They didn't even use motion capture for character animations. I think cloth / hair physics are the least of their worries. A triple A title these days, without motion captured animations... really?

Panda244

scy22b14_ESO wrote: »

They didn't even use motion capture for character animations. I think cloth / hair physics are the least of their worries. A triple A title these days, without motion captured animations... really?

That's because they blew their budget on voice actors that you don't ever hear once you pass level 50. Or people like me, that just skip through every bit of dialogue to grind the quest faster.

nerevarine1138

scy22b14_ESO wrote: »

They didn't even use motion capture for character animations. I think cloth / hair physics are the least of their worries. A triple A title these days, without motion captured animations... really?

I'm not aware of any MMOs of this scope that used mo-cap for their actors.

It should also be noted that mo-cap is only one of a few different methods that are used by AAA studios to produce high-end animation. It's an excellent tool, but it's not the only tool.

And as mentioned earlier in this thread: most people are having problems with framerate. What you're all suggesting would actually make things worse.

Gidorick

Panda244 wrote: »

scy22b14_ESO wrote: »

They didn't even use motion capture for character animations. I think cloth / hair physics are the least of their worries. A triple A title these days, without motion captured animations... really?

That's because they blew their budget on voice actors that you don't ever hear once you pass level 50. Or people like me, that just skip through every bit of dialogue to grind the quest faster.

I wonder if there was anyone anywhere that was uninterested in ESO who then became a subscriber after they heard John Cleese or Kate Beckinsale was in it....

superquadockyb14_ESO

Gidorick wrote: »

Panda244 wrote: »

scy22b14_ESO wrote: »

They didn't even use motion capture for character animations. I think cloth / hair physics are the least of their worries. A triple A title these days, without motion captured animations... really?

That's because they blew their budget on voice actors that you don't ever hear once you pass level 50. Or people like me, that just skip through every bit of dialogue to grind the quest faster.

I wonder if there was anyone anywhere that was uninterested in ESO who then became a subscriber after they heard John Cleese or Kate Beckinsale was in it....

I think it was a matter of Bethesda having ties to Hollywood and by force of inertia that this game has hoity toity voice actors. I don't think they actually spent that much on voice acting though, considering it tends to be the very last thing added to the game.