Visit the ERC Age

[Jojon]

Ah, goodie. :)

It may be worth keeping in mind that even once a styleguide has been agreed upon, one may still not be able to begin blocking out the exterior of the building, until some (more important actually) practical requirements have also been decided. I.e: what types and sizes of galleries and biospheres are to be housed within.

...or, possibly, I'm overthinking stuff.. :P

[ametist]

Two drawings of the Pavillion (in the box.net account) to attract an architect :







- these two are a bit different, and I have to admit I havent read thorugh the whole ERC thread to know which one was decided to have a 'go'. First one looks more fitting the style IMO.
About rooms - we could always build new rooms down under the building, like they did in Stockholm with the Royal Library where there now are 2x5 floors beneath the building on the ground.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

Jennifer had started on the pavilion, and she uploaded the Blend file to the ".blend files" folder on the ERC box.net site. Here's the link to the blend file:

http://www.box.net/shared/76i6zt7g4z

And here's a rendered image of the pavilion:

Show Spoiler

This is the upper portion of the pavilion. It would be great if someone could finish the lower portion.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

UPDATE:

Version 6 is now available! Ametist just added the following items to the age:

- Flowerbeds for the Medusa and Turnweed plants
- Trigger region for Medusa plants
- Sign for the giant tree
- A wonderful toolshed based on Chacal's Beijing pictures

Inside the toolshed Show Spoiler

ERCAge_Toolshed.jpg (139.75 KiB) Viewed 26325 times

The download link is in the original post. Enjoy!

[KBQ]

Is there some trick to moving around in the Age? I've got it through Drizzle and I've tried many times to just explore - but it takes me over two minutes to walk from the link-in spot to the wooden platforms. Is there something I can do to improve this? I've turned off shadow display and it had no effect. Any help?

[Chacal]

Escape.

[ddb174]

Is there some trick to moving around in the Age? I've got it through Drizzle and I've tried many times to just explore - but it takes me over two minutes to walk from the link-in spot to the wooden platforms. Is there something I can do to improve this? I've turned off shadow display and it had no effect. :cry: Any help?

Some people have this problem, and it is probably graphics-card related. (I have this problem too.) We don't know what the cause is here; it's a bit of a mystery.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

We've looked at a number of possible causes for the lag within the age, but have ruled them out:

- Video RAM: I have the same amount (512 MB) as people who are having these problems, and it runs fine
- PRP size: I used libPlasma to decompile and recompile the PRP, and although it speeds up loading time, people are still experiencing the issues
- Reduced waveset refresh rate: I changed this from 3 seconds to one minute, but others are still having problems

It could be that it is CPU bound, although other people's processors are better than mine and are still experiencing problems. We've talked about adding trigger regions for all the animated objects, to see if that might help. So far, we only have one animated object set up that way (the medusa plants).

Any other suggestions?

[matthornb]

What's the polygon count of the ERC age? Is it efficiently modeled?

I don't know, personally, why the ERC age runs so slowly, but it runs slower than it should given the visual quality of the scene.

It needs work. I understand that - my project is running into the same sort of problem, running too slowly.

There are a lot of possible reasons for that - some of the GoW suggestions I've been given may apply here.

1) Make the geometry more efficient, reduce the polygon count.
2) Make the collision mesh simpler to make physics processing faster
3) Reduce texture filesizes
4) Minimize dynamic shadows - don't simulate shadows except where needed.
5) Use fog to obscure distant areas, or dynamic loading/unloading
6) Don't concentrate too much geometry in one view, spread it out in different areas and directions
7) Use textures to suggest more detail than actually exists in the model, with transparency maps, bump/normal maps, etc. Model only what must be modeled.
8) Level-of-detail replacement of meshes and textures. If it's far away, make it less detailed.

A lot of this is about squeezing as much as possible out of every polygon, every texture, etc.

But it looks like there's probably something more complex going on than just straightforward efficiency problems. I think the key will be figuring out what technical attribute the ERC age has that others don't.

If you can identify the difference, then maybe you can fix the problem (whatever it is that's wrong with the ERC age.)

[Jojon]

Time, perhaps, to provide those who experience this, with partial exports of the age and see whether any of those works better, to try to isolate the culprit.
Maybe one of our unfortunates feels like downloading the .blend and try some variations himself, beginning, as a suggestion, with removal of the wavesets.(?)