Transparent windows

rhymer · August 2014

I always wonder if it is possible to make windows the houses transparent. The new lighting system improved the immersion drammaticly, but the windows are still opaque. I always liked the effect of the "Immersive interiors" mods for Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind. They made a building you are in not a simply isolated locations, but parts of the bigger world.
Now the world stops its existance after you enter the building. But with such kind of a mod you can feel that the world didn't disappear after you've closed the door behind. Here are the examples of what I'm talking about from the other games of TES series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_7QjkXD_Qo

Tapio75 · August 2014

I agree, windows should be transparent, i believe technology allready exists but developers are afraid to add too much FPS eaters to games which is an error from their part. Graphics options should be plenty and some people just better upgrade their ancient dwemer computers

jrgray93 · August 2014

You can already hear noises outside buildings. Would be cool to see through windows.

Circuitous · August 2014

Building interiors are actually underground. That's why you still get audio.

You can pretty easily confirm this by getting a quest with a marker pointing to an interior object. It'll always say "(Below)" even if you're right at the door.

jrgray93 · August 2014

Circuitous wrote: »

Building interiors are actually underground. That's why you still get audio.

You can pretty easily confirm this by getting a quest with a marker pointing to an interior object. It'll always say "(Below)" even if you're right at the door.

That explains a lot. That also makes the idea of transparent windows difficult.

ers101284b14_ESO · August 2014

jrgray93 wrote: »

Circuitous wrote: »

Building interiors are actually underground. That's why you still get audio.

You can pretty easily confirm this by getting a quest with a marker pointing to an interior object. It'll always say "(Below)" even if you're right at the door.

That explains a lot. That also makes the idea of transparent windows difficult.

The windows wouldn't have to actually be transparent. They could just apply a new material that would make it look like the outside. But then they would have to make several materials that would change depending on the time of day. The problem with that is then you would never actually see anyone walking around outside because they would be static materials. could work though even though its not perfect.

Circuitous · August 2014

...it'd probably be easier to just put the interiors on the same level as their exteriors.

ers101284b14_ESO · August 2014

Circuitous wrote: »

...it'd probably be easier to just put the interiors on the same level as their exteriors.

Not always. When you cross the door you enter a whole new instance. so when your outside what your seeing is a static mesh that is there for looks, when you press enter it transports you to a new instance that is located elsewhere so might not be that easy.

Pallmor · August 2014

jrgray93 wrote: »

Circuitous wrote: »

Building interiors are actually underground. That's why you still get audio.

You can pretty easily confirm this by getting a quest with a marker pointing to an interior object. It'll always say "(Below)" even if you're right at the door.

That explains a lot. That also makes the idea of transparent windows difficult.

Not if you prefer a lovely view of dirt. ;-)

rhymer · August 2014

Actually, interiors are not underground. I've worked on such a plugin for Morrowind (the video in the first post is mine), so I know how the things work. Interiors are separate instances which are synchronised with the rest of the ccordinate system of the world (I do not know how it was made in TESO, but in the previous games it was made with a single marker indicating the entrance of the interior and the direction of the north). The matter is that some interiors can have a property "behave like exterior" which means it can track time of the day and color of the sky.

The trick with the windows in Morrowind (and Oblivion as well) was to make the material of the windows transparent and to add some models of buildings and landskape matching the real exterior behind the windows.

Thus it is absolutely not a proplem technically (it is already applied to the game released in 2002 - Morrowind). The only problem is that it is rather time-consuming. So, Do you think ZOS will ever come to an idea of making it (because it gives A LOT OF immersion) or they are likely to discard that idea?

Jaxom · August 2014

rhymer wrote: »

Actually, interiors are not underground. I've worked on such a plugin for Morrowind (the video in the first post is mine), so I know how the things work. Interiors are separate instances which are synchronised with the rest of the ccordinate system of the world (I do not know how it was made in TESO, but in the previous games it was made with a single marker indicating the entrance of the interior and the direction of the north). The matter is that some interiors can have a property "behave like exterior" which means it can track time of the day and color of the sky.

The trick with the windows in Morrowind (and Oblivion as well) was to make the material of the windows transparent and to add some models of buildings and landskape matching the real exterior behind the windows.

Thus it is absolutely not a proplem technically (it is already applied to the game released in 2002 - Morrowind). The only problem is that it is rather time-consuming. So, Do you think ZOS will ever come to an idea of making it (because it gives A LOT OF immersion) or they are likely to discard that idea?

You may have worked with plug ins in Morrowind, but he is correct. The interiors are underground in TESO. I can confirm 100%. There was a bug when the game launched that when you went into certain banks, all of the walls were transparent. You could look up, and see people walking around above your head oblivious. Auridon for example. The bank is actually under the fountain near the stables.

rhymer · August 2014

Then it makes the things much more complicated... If the interiors are at the same worldspace as exteriors that means that we could just have no room for adding anything behind the windows. Strange solution, however...

SirAndy · August 2014

Also, ever noticed how many interior areas are actually larger than the exterior building?

Like stated above, you never actually go "inside" a building at all. The interior of buildings are spaces that exists somewhere off the actual map.
Which is also the reason why you have the load screen when going inside a building.

All the (closed) building models you see in the world are completely empty on the inside.
;-)

rhymer · August 2014

SirAndy wrote: »

Also, ever noticed how many interior areas are actually larger than the exterior building?

Like stated above, you never actually go "inside" a building at all. The interior of buildings are spaces that exists somewhere off the actual map.
Which is also the reason why you have the load screen when going inside a building.

All the (closed) building models you see in the world are completely empty on the inside.
;-)

Oh, it wouldn't have been a problem if it was realy so, and the interiors were realy off the actual map as it was in the previous games of TES. I've already described the method of making immersive interiors and even gave some examples (see above). The problem is that they ARE in the very same worldspace as the exteriors (I can't understand why ZOS have made them in such a way) and thus it is impossible to add something behind the windows...

Spottswoode · August 2014

Being able to see inside the interior of a building might not be a terrible drag on peformance issues, provided it just shows the interior and not the npc's/players. Really the main deterrent for this type of cosmetic feature is performance issues. HOWEVER, you can make windows that just point outwards scenery, so you can have a legitimate excuse for windows that won't drain the heck out of video cards.

Tapio75 wrote: »

I agree, windows should be transparent, i believe technology allready exists but developers are afraid to add too much FPS eaters to games which is an error from their part. Graphics options should be plenty and some people just better upgrade their ancient dwemer computers

In consistency with lore, Dwemer computers would outperform newer ones. The Dwemer were a very advanced race technologically speaking. Ancient Ayleid computer would be more applicable.

SFBryan18 · August 2014

Many of the interiors are bigger than the buildings they are connected to. This is why they are underground. The whole reason these interiors exist instead of having every door open already is because the interiors each have a lot of detail which would take a lot of resources to load. If windows were transparent, they might as well just open the doors because the game would have to load everything up on the inside and outside to show through the windows. I'm sure we would all like the most realistic game possible, but computers still have limits.

rhymer · August 2014

SFBryan18 wrote: »

Many of the interiors are bigger than the buildings they are connected to. This is why they are underground.

That's not a problem at all - they need not to be underground. In the previous games all the interiors were IN THE SEPARATE WORLDSPACE - not underground. And that gave a possibility to make windows transperant without almost any FPS issues! Just look at the mods I attached in the first post. There are absolutely NO TECHNICAL LIMITS to make it - even Morrowind perfectly worked with such a mod. The only problem is that it is a bit time consuming - and the second obstacle is the strange idea of making the interiors underground (if they are realy there and it wasn't merely a glitch) which can result in the lack of free space beyond the windows (only in the case of all the interiors situated in the same worldspace underground).

Here is the link to the TES IV mod - if you want to see how it technically works: nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/34199/?

SFBryan18 · August 2014

rhymer wrote: »

SFBryan18 wrote: »

Many of the interiors are bigger than the buildings they are connected to. This is why they are underground.

That's not a problem at all - they need not to be underground. In the previous games all the interiors were IN THE SEPARATE WORLDSPACE - not underground. And that gave a possibility to make windows transperant without almost any FPS issues! Just look at the mods I attached in the first post. There are absolutely NO TECHNICAL LIMITS to make it - even Morrowind perfectly worked with such a mod. The only problem is that it is a bit time consuming - and the second obstacle is the strange idea of making the interiors underground (if they are realy there and it wasn't merely a glitch) which can result in the lack of free space beyond the windows (only in the case of all the interiors situated in the same worldspace underground).

Here is the link to the TES IV mod - if you want to see how it technically works: nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/34199/?

You're comparing single player to a game running on a mega server. Single player games are much more customizable because they do not have to be synced to hundreds of other players.

Spottswoode · August 2014

If you don't draw players or NPC's on the other side of windows, you can actually client side the transparent windows. You would only need to sync the enviroments if you had to draw the outside/interior dynamically. If you are just showing a static 3d enviroment, there is no need to update it over the server.

ers101284b14_ESO · August 2014

Spottswoode wrote: »

If you don't draw players or NPC's on the other side of windows, you can actually client side the transparent windows. You would only need to sync the enviroments if you had to draw the outside/interior dynamically. If you are just showing a static 3d enviroment, there is no need to update it over the server.

Exactly.