There's been some discussion on the subject before, but I just wanna know for sure - for what reason do we see only two or three vehicles in a game at a time, even in the PC version? I ask this because I had a suggestion for a sort of "conquest sandbox" (fight enemy vehicles, bomb bases, capture airfields, etc) a while back, but it dawned on me that it's not exactly doable. So is it a fundamental issue tied to the game's engine, or just the way things are designed? Or is it meant as courtesy for mobile players and lower-end machines?
I assume it's because the game is running physics calculations for every individual part of which the vehicles are made, and having a whole bunch of em doing their thing at once would melt one's computer, let alone a phone. And while I think the PC version ought to take advantage of its platform, the community has made it clear that they're not keen on dissonance between the two versions of the game.
@NovaTopaz I wouldn't say a plane falling to pieces like it was held together with school glue is realistic either, but this isn't War Thunder - The game's realism seems focused on the flight model, not damage physics, and a plane disappearing in a big explosion after taking several hits seems like something that would make sense in the game's context.
But, issues of realism aside, you said that unifying the physics of the parts into a single model would in fact be detrimental to game performance, so scratch that idea.
Maybe, on any gamemode that would demand large numbers of aircraft (ie, more than four), a limit on parts per-vehicle is put into effect? Maybe players who are more confident in their platform's performance can raise this number in the game settings?
@Sofa Technically, if it was a single hit box, they would simply vanish if they hit anything hard enough... And that's even at low speeds. Like I said, hardly realistic.
@NovaTopaz They already shatter into pieces from a single bullet to the fuselage, though. Maybe part hitpoints is something they ought to implement.
@Sofa Technically, mesh is soft-body deformation, but the mesh doesn't need to be soft. And as for making it a single hitbox... That's not easy, and in all fairness, would reduce the realisticness of the game. Do you want enemy aircraft vaporizing instantly from even a tiny collision? Thought so.
@NovaTopaz Would that be for the purpose of soft-body deformation, though? Or would it act like a single "hitbox" for the whole vehicle? Cos I was thinking more the latter, unless that's what you mean. (I'm not fluent on this stuff, you have to speak to me about it as you would a small child)
@Sofa Well, the only way to potentially make it unified would be to have mesh physics merge all the parts together... And that's a long shot at best(and actually, in all consideration, it would REDUCE performance, not improve it.). I'm pretty sure the devs said ages ago(over a year ago?) that mesh modeling(well, mesh physics, mesh modelling, the point is, the physics engine would have them crunch, stretch, etc depending on force and what not) would not be a likely thing to come in the future(actually forget if the question was mesh design in general for the game or just a mesh model for wings and such.)
@NovaTopaz So yeah, like I thought - performance issues thanks to physics calculations. Which begs the question - are all those individual physics calculations necessary? Is there a way to unify the physics of all the parts into the vehicle as a whole? Might that be something the devs can do to help the game's performance? That's what I ultimately want to know.
Well, TBH, not all PC's can run the physics calculations required for multiple aircraft, and low end PC's and most certainly all mobile devices with a few exceptions fall into that category. They simply don't have the processing power to handle large, complex designs, much less multiple at once.
Also, there would be another reason. Space. Well, actually, it wouldn't add that much data, but in all consideration, having more than that would be a bunch of extra code that could limit the game's performance significantly, and the processing will really cause problems with lower end machines(Though it would have to be very low end. My Macbook air could easily run an aircraft that once had in excess of 1000 parts and had multiple wings on top of that, and it could still run at around 10 FPS roughly(back then, there was no FPS tracker or anything to display it, IIRC). And that's one of the lower end macbooks with almost no upgrades to it's abilities(school macbook, what do you expect?).)
@bjac0 Well yeah, as I said in the op, I figure it's tied to performance. I just wanted to know what, exactly.
Its cause it can be intensive on the game.