Katahdin wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

It's not an issue of performance, it's an issue of effort and whether Zenimax is smart enough to not do them in a dumb way. Capes don't even really need proper cloth physics -- of course proper cloth physics would look excellent, but they're not necessary.

Super simple capes, or really any form of loose cloth, can be animated by combining ragdoll physics (physics-driven animation) and IK rigging (anti-clipping). Use an IK approach to animating the cape, which would prevent clipping, and use physics to drive the IK animation.

This is very similar to how modern animation systems that use IK rigging for character animations work, rather than animators manually animating each individual bone and joint, they simply apply a general force, and the IK rig takes care of how the bones and joints react. Same thing can be applied to capes.

ESO already has a basic IK system in place for animating feet, it can be extended to animating other parts of our characters.

WeerW3ir wrote: »

Capes was a thing before. But as you can see no elder scroll game has any Capes. Anyway at one point they considered it, but the engine is not supporting cape mechanics. As it cannot support flying mounts, and water physics.( No waves at all) Just simply cant handle it.

1. Skyrim has numerous cape/cloak mods that piggyback off of the ragdoll physics available with Havok, and I'm pretty sure Oblivion also has a few.

2. Flying mounts and water physics have nothing to do with capes. They're irrelevant to this discussion.

3. Waves are doubly irrelevant, because you don't even need a proper physics engine to compute them. Look at the 2D fluid simulations in Unreal Engine 4, that are done completely through shaders and blueprints (for drawing to a render target).

GoldenLight wrote: »

It would be nice to see in the game but something I don't see them ever doing. May be possible if they made it an animation that was client side only and was not part of the server. Just having that option for pre-loaded cloaks that are in the client side.

The down side it that they would not be seen in the world and it would look strange with you playing the game and only seeing a cloak/cape on your character but no one else.

That's not how it works. Functionally, client-sided capes would work the exact same as costumes, outfits and styles. The server just keeps track of basic information to identify and define the costume/outfit/style you're wearing -- ie its ID, colour, etc -- and the client takes that information and actually uses it to display the costume/outfit/style on your screen.

Capes would work the exact same way, with the server just keeping track of what cape style you've got equipped, what colour it is, etc, and the client is responsible for drawing and animating it.

Katahdin wrote: »

The servers would probably have a melt down trying to render them all

Servers aren't responsible for rendering. Your client is. Servers also aren't responsible for minor aesthetic physics calculations, either, such as particle effects or how hair should move. Your client is. Capes are no different.

It doesnt matter how it is rendered.

ZoS has been asked this numerous times. Their response was capes, done right would cause too much of a performance hit to be viable in the game. Their comments are recorded in an ESO Live if you want to hunt it down.
You can argue with the people that built the game about it but until things change capes will not be a thing in ESO.

The best we could expect would be pretty much stiff as a board capes stapled to the character's rear end like the Breton costume, not the flowing capes that require cloth physics that people want.