LODs for Hgn ships •••••(complete) Battlecry, Chimas

The source of lag in complex is the following : certain hiigaran models have no LOD settings, and are overly complicated. This contributes in no way to the looks, and makes rendering take up too much, causing the game to lag.

Right now I don't have a list of all affected ships, but the Ark and BS are priorities.

Proof : Vaygr vs Vaygr is largely devoid of lag.

Assign LODs to hgn ships that don't have them, and the lag will be gone. There is no lag in games where there are no hiigarans.

question, if the lag is just a graphical issue... does that mean that a pc with an extremely powerful GPU would not suffer this lag?

No, it doesn't. The engine can't get this right : there is no support for multi core CPUs, and the cpu even does rendering in HW2. If someone had the best single core CPU ever, the game would not lag.
Addition of LOD settings will not "dumb down" the models in any way. It will merely eliminate lag.

I sort of eliminated lag by overclocking a single core to 5900mhz on an I5 2500k....

That is absolutely not an option for most players.
Yes, it is a solution, and the lag WILL be gone on systems with extremely strong CPUs, or to be more exact, strong individual cores.
Adding the LODs would not influence the quality of the affected models, and the game would be way more playable for everyone.

I've got a 2 .4, GHz ivy bridge, and no lag.

Try a 4 player map with only hiigarans and tell me that at game year 30+

I think this is a job for Odie, he as already proved he is a good 3D/2D artist

Battlecry(from TFS) will supply us with a Battleship fix!

I have uploaded the modified hgn_battleship.HOD file to the ComplexEnhanced dropbox folder, which contains a reduced level of detail .obj file along with a lower-resolution texture to be used with it.

I am also in the process of fixing and optimizing the vgr_alkhalid model for use in TFS v2.9, including adding a LOD file, fixing the position of several antennas and other features that are too far off the main .obj file, and adding an engine thruster glow effect. When that is finished Complex Enhanced is more than welcome to make use of it.

The new hod feels a bit funny. Why does the color change so heavily when zooming out? 

Look : 

close up : 

https://i.servimg.com/u/f71/16/54/29/05/ss003911.jpg

medium distance : 

https://i.servimg.com/u/f71/16/54/29/05/ss003912.jpg

Far out : 

https://i.servimg.com/u/f71/16/54/29/05/ss003913.jpg

The medium distance LOD uses the same texture as the base model (close up LOD). The long-distance LOD uses a small 128x128 texture and will not look very pretty up close (the same is true of the default Homeworld2 models; if you zoom out from a Shipyard for example, you will see a noticeable decline in texture detail and change in coloration).

This can be compensated for by adjusting the "uplod" and "downlod" settings in the individual .ship files. The Battleship might require a greater "downlod" distanced for the long-distance LOD so the reduction in detail is not as noticeable to the player.

It looks like your alpha channel (transparent) on the LOD 2 texture is black and not transparent.

Thanks for the tip, I will take a look at the LOD2 texture and see if that is the issue.

Other than the black issue, it's perfect though. Good job.

Bad news, the new intruder will need LODs too, unless the "fading issue" can be fixed in the .ship file.

Nakamura,
Can you send the problematic HOD file, so I can try LODing it here.
send to my e-mail. Can you send it in a playable BIG file for the stock HW2?

Hi Chimas! Glad to see you here  

It would be much easier if you de-compiled our current release. Look for hgn_intruder in the ship folder. 
You can test changes using the -overridebigfile command and setting up the folder system within the data folder.

Updates for the Vaygr Scavenger, Hiigaran Ark and Intruder have been uploaded to dropbox.

That's brilliant! The scavenger and intruder are perfect, the ark however loses it's clamps when zooming out. 
Could we just get rid of those completely? They don't serve a purpose.

Yes, the clamps can be removed entirely from the ship model if you would prefer it that way.

Actually nevermind that for now. Can you adjust it so the clamps don't disappear?

Yes, I can do that.

So the final parts of this task are:

•Battleship LOD2 texture needs to be transparent 
•Ark needs to display clamps at all times

Is there any other ship that doesn't have LoDs?