A potential T3D buyer's speculations
by Loubert McGeurkinberger · in Torque 3D Beginner · 10/01/2009 (9:36 am) · 4 replies
Hello, I own TGEA 1.8.1 and have been anxiously lurking on the T3D development posts and forums for a while. Since it has been released me and my team have been formulating some questions:
0)Will there be a TGEA 1.8.1 bugfix release (decal manager, vehicle collision, water bugs, etc), and/or will they be addressed in T3D 1.1 ?
1)What is the current terrain size limitation of T3D? It's previously been estimated to be about 1.5 times TGEA's current MegaTerrain size, is this still accurate?
2)Does T3D support emissive/glow/specular/bump/normal/gloss TEXTURE maps? Not just boolean flags in material datablocks or diffuse texutres that use alpha channels or similar "cheating"
3)Has the new GFX layer incorporated any new shaders or deprecated old ones? What shader version does the majority of T3D require?
4)What is the current estimated price/status/release date of the Forest Pack (beside T3D 1.1)? Are every tree's position/scale stored in memory or are these only stored once they have been individualy moved?
5)What are the major differences of the PostFX layer from fullscreen shaders? What PostFX examples come standard with T3D out-of-the-box? Will Gerhard's PostFX stuff be included into the 1.1 build by default, or will these just be in seperate demos that can be excluded from the main engine source?
6)Will the PostFX .hlsl shaders be (possibly) able to be reverse-ported to TGEA ?
7)I have encountered quite a few important bugs (player/weapon models not appearing, extreme lag from projectiles, lack of parallax on demo terrains) on the 1.0 demo on a fairly standard machine. Have any of these issues been discussed on the private forum ?
8)I'm aware this is a very loaded question, but will T3D have any more paid upgrades in the near future (8-20 months)?
0)Will there be a TGEA 1.8.1 bugfix release (decal manager, vehicle collision, water bugs, etc), and/or will they be addressed in T3D 1.1 ?
1)What is the current terrain size limitation of T3D? It's previously been estimated to be about 1.5 times TGEA's current MegaTerrain size, is this still accurate?
2)Does T3D support emissive/glow/specular/bump/normal/gloss TEXTURE maps? Not just boolean flags in material datablocks or diffuse texutres that use alpha channels or similar "cheating"
3)Has the new GFX layer incorporated any new shaders or deprecated old ones? What shader version does the majority of T3D require?
4)What is the current estimated price/status/release date of the Forest Pack (beside T3D 1.1)? Are every tree's position/scale stored in memory or are these only stored once they have been individualy moved?
5)What are the major differences of the PostFX layer from fullscreen shaders? What PostFX examples come standard with T3D out-of-the-box? Will Gerhard's PostFX stuff be included into the 1.1 build by default, or will these just be in seperate demos that can be excluded from the main engine source?
6)Will the PostFX .hlsl shaders be (possibly) able to be reverse-ported to TGEA ?
7)I have encountered quite a few important bugs (player/weapon models not appearing, extreme lag from projectiles, lack of parallax on demo terrains) on the 1.0 demo on a fairly standard machine. Have any of these issues been discussed on the private forum ?
8)I'm aware this is a very loaded question, but will T3D have any more paid upgrades in the near future (8-20 months)?
About the author
#2
10/01/2009 (1:02 pm)
I can tell you that the decal manager saw a major overhaul since it is used by the Road/Path Tool in addition to a Decal Editor in the tools that allows you to tweak decals and place them on terrain. 
#3
10/01/2009 (1:26 pm)
Terrain size is prety much what you can make it vs blockiness of terrain features. I made a 4.1 mile x 4.1 mile terrain, imported a 2048 heightmap and set pixel scale to 4 meters per pixel, with an altitude of about 3500. looks gorgeous with a detailed heightmap. Takes 20 mins to go from one corner to another. I wouldn't go higher than 2048 heightmap for performance reasons. Parallax on the terrains are handled by an alpha channel in your TGA file, kind of hidden feature, but it works well. 
#4
At this point we are still hoping to do a TGEA 1.8.2 update. It won't address everything on your list though.
stadi was pretty much on track. You are limited in how big of a heightmap you can use but you can then scale that heightmap as large or small as you like (make it as detailed or less detailed).
Torque 3D supports Diffuse Maps, Normal Maps, Specular Maps, Detail Maps, Overlay Maps, Light Maps, and Tone Maps.
There are some new shaders and ShaderGen features (I don't know that I can list them all off the top of my head). Most require SM2.0.
I know the trees can be individually moved after the procedural placement and I think it only stores the ones that have been moved but I haven't looked over that specific code yet.
We aren't quite ready to start talking about the details of the Forest Kits release.
PostFx is just a fancy name for a system that makes it easy to add multiple fullscreen shader effects (in the past this was always hard and hacky). Out of the box we include SSAO, HDR, Lightrays, Edge Antialiasing, Glow, Depth of Field, Lens Flare, and Refraction.
Gerhard's fullscreen shaders were built before the PostFx system existed and aren't directly compatible. We have ported and/or reimplemented his SSAO and Depth of Field effects (Wetness isn't a fullscreen shader).
It would be tricky since they rely on having certain render target results passed into them (depth, light info, etc).
Some of these have been reported but feel free to post more detailed reports of what you are experiencing here on the public forum.
We are still in the planning stages on what the next 8-20 months will bring but at this point we know that Torque 3D 1.1 will be a free update.
10/01/2009 (10:29 pm)
Quote:
0)Will there be a TGEA 1.8.1 bugfix release (decal manager, vehicle collision, water bugs, etc), and/or will they be addressed in T3D 1.1 ?
At this point we are still hoping to do a TGEA 1.8.2 update. It won't address everything on your list though.
Quote:
1)What is the current terrain size limitation of T3D? It's previously been estimated to be about 1.5 times TGEA's current MegaTerrain size, is this still accurate?
stadi was pretty much on track. You are limited in how big of a heightmap you can use but you can then scale that heightmap as large or small as you like (make it as detailed or less detailed).
Quote:
2)Does T3D support emissive/glow/specular/bump/normal/gloss TEXTURE maps? Not just boolean flags in material datablocks or diffuse texutres that use alpha channels or similar "cheating"
Torque 3D supports Diffuse Maps, Normal Maps, Specular Maps, Detail Maps, Overlay Maps, Light Maps, and Tone Maps.
Quote:
3)Has the new GFX layer incorporated any new shaders or deprecated old ones? What shader version does the majority of T3D require?
There are some new shaders and ShaderGen features (I don't know that I can list them all off the top of my head). Most require SM2.0.
Quote:
4)What is the current estimated price/status/release date of the Forest Pack (beside T3D 1.1)? Are every tree's position/scale stored in memory or are these only stored once they have been individualy moved?
I know the trees can be individually moved after the procedural placement and I think it only stores the ones that have been moved but I haven't looked over that specific code yet.
We aren't quite ready to start talking about the details of the Forest Kits release.
Quote:
5)What are the major differences of the PostFX layer from fullscreen shaders? What PostFX examples come standard with T3D out-of-the-box? Will Gerhard's PostFX stuff be included into the 1.1 build by default, or will these just be in seperate demos that can be excluded from the main engine source?
PostFx is just a fancy name for a system that makes it easy to add multiple fullscreen shader effects (in the past this was always hard and hacky). Out of the box we include SSAO, HDR, Lightrays, Edge Antialiasing, Glow, Depth of Field, Lens Flare, and Refraction.
Gerhard's fullscreen shaders were built before the PostFx system existed and aren't directly compatible. We have ported and/or reimplemented his SSAO and Depth of Field effects (Wetness isn't a fullscreen shader).
Quote:
6)Will the PostFX .hlsl shaders be (possibly) able to be reverse-ported to TGEA ?
It would be tricky since they rely on having certain render target results passed into them (depth, light info, etc).
Quote:
7)I have encountered quite a few important bugs (player/weapon models not appearing, extreme lag from projectiles, lack of parallax on demo terrains) on the 1.0 demo on a fairly standard machine. Have any of these issues been discussed on the private forum ?
Some of these have been reported but feel free to post more detailed reports of what you are experiencing here on the public forum.
Quote:
8)I'm aware this is a very loaded question, but will T3D have any more paid upgrades in the near future (8-20 months)?
We are still in the planning stages on what the next 8-20 months will bring but at this point we know that Torque 3D 1.1 will be a free update.
Torque Owner Javier Canon