Imagine having those graphics!

Mwal
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by Mwal »

Gormett wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 3:01 pm
The point is that every feature that has been listed be Stegei as "Only Giants engine has it" has been done in UE4.
The PS is a response to some comments claiming that UE5 is a good engine for a game with dynamic systems.

UE5 =/= UE4

Edit: Should've read the responses, sorry for the ping
He never said only Giants engine does it, he said only Giants engine currently does it all at once and if they were to start over with a different engine they would just end up with something very similar to what they have.
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this_is_gav
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by this_is_gav »

I'm not going to lie, I'd love to see what FS would hypothetically look like if the base was a more modern engine (not as a tech demo, as they usually look great, but as a fully functional game), or if GIANTS had started developing FS now, rather than for 2008. The realist in me knows that never likely to happen though, unless a well funded and organised competitor emerges.

Personally, things like pallet and bale physics (and bales in particular seem much more stable in FS22) and adding a bit more depth to things like animals are bigger concerns to me.

The game still scales well on ancient hardware, as I can attest with my second PC, and while it doesn't look especially modern on my main PC in comparison to most other games, that's never been what FS has been about - a quick look back to FS2011 and FS2013 for example will show just how far the engine has come - and yes, while it is 10 years further down the line, so you'd say that should be the case, it's only when you go to play those games that you realise just how much things have improved.
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Dezza69
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by Dezza69 »

Be UNREAL for all the engine experts on here to get together and release their own “unreally dynamic” game which is ultra-realistic and allows my tractor to get bogged absolutely anywhere on some massive map.

I’ve already started saving for the new super-duper-GPU and super-processing-computer - and to pay the power bill - I’ll need to play it.

Hang on, it’ll work on Stadia and have heaps more “slots” and scripts on console too, correct?

... cannot wait!!
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this_is_gav
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by this_is_gav »

foal wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:48 pm Stegei said "I'm purely referring to that our engine is better suited for Farming Simulator than others", then lists all the reasons, which sort of implies only Giants engine will do what he listed.

Strangely, all the items he listed were shown to be available in UR4, with videos to back them up.
I would like to see Giants reproduce all the stuff in those links, but using the Giants engine, and see whether "very similar to what they have" is true or not.
I wouldn't take Stegei's claims that other engines couldn't do what he listed entirely literally, but read them as out of the box they couldn't - GIANTS would have to modify them to add in features they've already added to their own engine.

GIANTS have spent over 15 years improving and incorporating features into their own engine - if they have to re-add those features to an existing engine how long would we be waiting for the next game? From a business point of view that likely makes no sense for GIANTS. Other farming games have tried it and all of them have failed. One will likely crack it eventually, but probably a company with more resources and a longer lead time than GIANTS can afford.

Remember tech demos, which most of the things in Gormett's list are, aren't games. They're demos designed to do one thing only, and usually do that thing very well, but are seldom, if ever, seen in actual games where the platform also has to do 101 other things.

I'd also point out that none of GIANTS' rival games (again, all of which have failed) picked out UE as an ideal engine on which to base their game, despite it being free to start up with.
Mwal
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by Mwal »

foal wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:48 pm
Stegei said "I'm purely referring to that our engine is better suited for Farming Simulator than others", then lists all the reasons, which sort of implies only Giants engine will do what he listed.

Strangely, all the items he listed were shown to be available in UR4, with videos to back them up.
I would like to see Giants reproduce all the stuff in those links, but using the Giants engine, and see whether "very similar to what they have" is true or not.
I’m going to add to what gav already touched on, the business aspect of this because it seems like no one cares and that’s absolutely ignored. Stegei said their own engine is the best suited for their needs, call him a liar or whatever you want to make it seem like that’s somehow not a good enough answer and it’s somehow a conspiracy they won’t switch. But purely from the business side of things it would be stupid. The game is growing exponentially with each release, they’re able to spoon feed enough new features to keep the bulk of their base happy and coming back, the games mostly stable and has a pretty large average amount of hours per play time, and you’re getting more and more mainstream recognition. So what in any of anything that’s happened with this game would make anyone in their right mind decide to make major changes to any part of it?
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blue_painted
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by blue_painted »

foal wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 9:40 am
Mwal wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 12:31 am
foal wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:48 pm
Stegei said "I'm purely referring to that our engine is better suited for Farming Simulator than others", then lists all the reasons, which sort of implies only Giants engine will do what he listed.

Strangely, all the items he listed were shown to be available in UR4, with videos to back them up.
I would like to see Giants reproduce all the stuff in those links, but using the Giants engine, and see whether "very similar to what they have" is true or not.
I’m going to add to what gav already touched on, the business aspect of this because it seems like no one cares and that’s absolutely ignored. Stegei said their own engine is the best suited for their needs, call him a liar or whatever you want to make it seem like that’s somehow not a good enough answer and it’s somehow a conspiracy they won’t switch. But purely from the business side of things it would be stupid. The game is growing exponentially with each release, they’re able to spoon feed enough new features to keep the bulk of their base happy and coming back, the games mostly stable and has a pretty large average amount of hours per play time, and you’re getting more and more mainstream recognition. So what in any of anything that’s happened with this game would make anyone in their right mind decide to make major changes to any part of it?
The new features they "spoon feed" you are half hearted and incomplete. Seven months to get the game "mostly stable" isn't overly impressive.
You folks can go ahead and enjoy your game. I'll be back for the next iteration, to see if anything has changed.
See you in two or three years then.
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this_is_gav
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by this_is_gav »

I was going to reply to foal's message quoted by blue_painted above agreeing that some of the features are "half hearted and incomplete", before they deleted it. See horses, dogs, deer, indeed all of the animals, root crops and so on.

I panned FS19 as I thought it was a horribly rushed and incomplete mess, and did with some of the pre-release FS22 footage too (and it turns out that was incomplete and rushed too), but I've had the opinion since release that FS22 is what GIANTS wanted FS19 to be, with a better environment, slightly better sky, overhauled sounds and gearboxes, all of which were planned for FS19 but either fell short or was canned as not ready.

I think we can all agree that FS could and should be better, but having zero competition doesn't help. That said, I'm sure GIANTS were stung by some of the comments leading up to pre-release surrounding things like the environment - they must have hurt them, as many of those issues were addressed - and if they eventually manage to fill the jobs still listed (and have been for around a year now) as COVID restrictions are relaxed, then I think there's cause to be hopeful. The core of the issue (half-heartedness or inability) is the main thing though, not moving to a new engine. FS22, particularly the sounds and gearboxes and willingness to take on player feedback was a huge step in the right direction. GIANTS needs to build on that attitude and add more interaction going forward.

Edit: I'm reminded that one of the jobs still advertised is for a "Senior Unity Programmer" for what looks like a from-scratch version of the mobile game, so I guess GIANTS aren't adverse to using an existing engine when they deem it necessary.
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by Stegei »

@Gormett: Actually I do think UE5 would be better suited for FS than UE4, mostly because of the new lumen lighting system that does not rely as much on baking as the lighting in UE4. Nanite probably would be less useful for FS due to the missing foliage and dynamic geometry support, but that feature is just fully optional, so the traditional geometry pipeline as in UE4 still exists.

Here are some thoughts on the links (viewtopic.php?f=963&t=191447&start=45#p1508493) you posted:
Dynamic and persistent foliage system: With this approach you don't want have millions of foliage instances like we need in FS. That's fine for a few hundred, but after that working with individual UE Actors and Blueprints per Foliage Instance will completely kill the performance. And MP sync and saving also won't be much fun any more.

Dynamic and persistent placing of material on the ground: Does that work on a larger scale too? MP Sync? Persistency?

Switching from anywhere to anywhere on the map with next to no delay: Switching places with no load times is of course possible in UE and Unity too, but it will require you to disable a lot of the streaming features, so you won't have the option anymore to have that densely populated worlds anymore as you would see in other games (that part is actually not really a feature, but more of a reason why some things are not possible in FS while they are in other titles)

Advanced vehicle physics:
Video 1: Not sure what was exactly implemented here. If this something completely custom (and not using the PhysX vehicle code), it would mean that we had to most likely the same code as well. Also I don't see how well this interacts with other objects (like stacking objects and other vehicles on top of the vehicle), there doesn't seem to be a CVT simulation, wheels penetrare through the body (that could probably easily be changed when tuning the suspension limits, but that might give a very unstable simulation result),... For example the PhysX vehicle simulation works well for a racing game, but since it is not fully integrated into the solver, it does have issues when interacting with other objects, which is very important for bales, logs etc. to work in FS.
Video 2 with the truck: That doesn't look especially good. There is no proper differential setup, the front wheel are being dragged sideways when doing a turn, the trailer wheels seem to be spinning very fast when not on the ground,...
Video 3: There is no change on the suspension at all when lifting up the pallet. The wheels are spinning a lot when they should not. Is the wheel loader shaking and drifting when at a standstill?
Generally you can get to like 80% of FS quite easily with any decent physics engine, but to get the additional 20% might be very tricky. And of course, FS is still quite far from being perfect.

Dynamic and persistent wood cutting: I don't see where the part "dynamic tree cutting" comes in to play here. This is simply spawning dynamic physics actors where static trees were placed before, no cutting happening.

Dynamic and persistent placing of buildings that properly interacts with vehicle navigation, audio reverb, etc.: This again is more of a reason why some things can not be done or just much more compromises have to be made, especially when it comes to staying in the memory and performance budgets.

Advanced vehicle navigation with support for trailers, limited steering angles, various steering geometry, dynamically changing worlds, etc.: A nav mesh based approach is probably too slow and memory intensive for our use case. The video you linked does use the "nav mesh around actor only" feature, which is useless when you want to plan a path from one side of the map to the other. Also the trickiest parts of vehicle navigation that have a limited turning radius and trailers is not solved at all with the nav mesh feature in UE4.

Modding support: The amount that can be changed by mods is still very limited since many of the core functions of the gameplay can not be adjusted. Also it looks like UE has been improving things a bit recently. E.g when Bus Simulator was released, it was not allowed to release a custom editor with the custom changes made to the engine, very much limiting what can be done. At least this seem to be better now according to the video you posted. With Unity it would still be a huge issue with not being able to release our editing tools.

So to summarize: Those videos show that some of the features could be done in UE4 but most not to the same level of quality or with the same gameplay constraints we have. Also almost none of the shown videos actually show an improvement over the features in Farming Simulator.
On top, my main concern remains of how good an UE based game would look like if all the features are removed that contradict with our gameplay constraints, like world streaming, baking of lighting, visibility, etc., and the data still needs to be synced in multiplayer and kept around persistently.
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Dreiviertel
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by Dreiviertel »

Truck world Australia graphics would do it for me:

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DEERE317
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by DEERE317 »

I’m just going to say thanks for Stegei even bothering to respond and continuing to do so after being badgered by someone who seems to have the knowledge to code a game that is 10x FS but hasn’t…
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Dezza69
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by Dezza69 »

^^^^^^^

Exactly what is written above.

I’m also appreciating the insight.

(Edit: now the post is in place for its “^^^^” 😂)

Thank you.

And - GREAT GAME BTW.
Rasping rabbit
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by Rasping rabbit »

Stegei wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 4:13 pm
Thanks for coming and explaining things so clearly, and keep doing what you guys are doing, most of us appreciate it 👍🏼
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ajFarmer
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by ajFarmer »

@Stegei
I want to to thank you for providing outstanding feedback on the topic. With my limited knowledge of game engines it was explained really well and I can understand all of your talking points.

I also want to thank the Giants team for all of the mod support. I do not know of another game platform that test each and every mod so rigorously. This insures when we download a mod from ModHub we get a working mod that's not filled full of errors that can break saves or make the game slow as a snail.

The mod support alone, I believe is the result of using your own engine(correct me if I'm wrong).
The fact we have full access to the free Giants editor and access to all files necessary for modding and a outstanding community to provide feedback is top notch .
I think most of us can agree that mods are what have continued to drive the platform. I look forward to playing Giants FS versions for at least another 40 years. :biggrin2:

The graphics for me is not why I play or mod and I am sure over time they will improve but I can honestly say I like the small improvements, It keeps the game fresh.

My suggestion:
If possible add sliders or presets to Display Setting's to change lighting or shaders to players liking.
Some times I think the colors are to vibrate for my taste. I know we can change it in mapxml's but it would be easier with click of a button in game so all maps share saved setting. Red Dead Redemption 2 has features like this for reference but it may be more of a platform or PC video card support issue.

Thanks, Again
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robbyb2203
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Re: Imagine having those graphics!

Post by robbyb2203 »

The graphics are good,for a farming simulator that can be played by many without powerfull PC's . I love the ammount of things you can interact with in this game.The only things i would love to add would be more physics to the environment ,like water to be able to flow if you create a canal,be able to dig the ground,better snow physics.The game doesn't need much to be perfect,there are already so many cool mechanics that no other game has :D
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