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[ 2.10 ] New Frob Shader


duzenko

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@duzenko There are plenty of examples. Its not likely to "break" a mission, but its going to reveal things the author intended to hide. Its like having xray vision in some cases.

I was actually talking about an unreleased mission, but I checked volta 1 and found a couple examples: 

 

Spoiler

@ -1982 4246 -603
volta1_3_2021-09-08_01_08_19.thumb.jpg.e034818fda4c85984caf5be6489da898.jpg
@ -408 3941 -788

volta1_3_2021-09-08_01_10_04.thumb.jpg.f7fbfe9b415f7f3bdf5d1d354369e9b8.jpg

Keys like this are a pretty common example.volta1_3_2021-09-08_01_14_43.thumb.jpg.0d112ae3d6218937bd2908ad32cbc06d.jpg



For my own missions im not *that* concerned with this, but its an unintended consequence and in my mind can break immersion and in worse case mess up the author's intent.

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1 hour ago, kingsal said:

@duzenko There are plenty of examples. Its not likely to "break" a mission, but its going to reveal things the author intended to hide. Its like having xray vision in some cases.

I was actually talking about an unreleased mission, but I checked volta 1 and found a couple examples: 

 

  Hide contents

@ -1982 4246 -603

@ -408 3941 -788

 

Keys like this are a pretty common example.

 


For my own missions im not *that* concerned with this, but its an unintended consequence and in my mind can break immersion and in worse case mess up the author's intent.

Thanks

I tested the two coordinates provided, and the frob ignore depth cvar hides outline for both

Am I correct that if that cvar is in the 'right' state by default then the issue is fixed?

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2 hours ago, duzenko said:

Am I correct that if that cvar is in the 'right' state by default then the issue is fixed?

I'd say so, but speaking against this are:

  • cabalistic's concerns that this cvar setting causes a performance loss. Aluminumhaste says he hasn't seen such a loss so far.
  • some vague reports of graphical glitches with this cvar setting
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57 minutes ago, Dragofer said:

I'd say so, but speaking against this are:

  • cabalistic's concerns that this cvar setting causes a performance loss. Aluminumhaste says he hasn't seen such a loss so far.
  • some vague reports of graphical glitches with this cvar setting

On performance loss I need to ask one obvious question: How relevant is it when the highlight can only show for one item at a time (the one being highlighted) which itself only happens when standing up close to the item which usually faces against a wall thus you're derendering most other geometry from that position and angle (viewport culling + portal culling)?

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On 9/7/2021 at 2:27 AM, AluminumHaste said:

I've never seen that in hours and hours of testing the frob outline.....

It looks like there's a square patch there, maybe he should look at the model to see what's there.

I seen the frob outline show hidden objects one or two times during my plays, bellow is a example on "The outpost", I can frob the hammer before even opening the chest. forgot to save the view position unfortunately, but is the chest next to the kitchen, where the single guard patrols, when you enter the castle bellow through the water. 

But this doesn't seem like a problem of the frob outline technique itself but the technique, showing a bug that always existed in the game but we never saw it, because the old highlight was hidden by the geometry in front. So in a sense this is helping debug the game! 

outpost_2021.gif

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The cost scales with the complexity of the highlighted object. A simple gold coin isn't really a concern, but a guard or other complex geometry may be a different matter. So be sure you test the right thing.

Also, the hack means that while the outline is generally hidden by depth, it is not a perfect match. It will often slightly protrude into the depth-occluded region, which is not a critical concern, but it does look a little ugly to my eye.

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4 minutes ago, cabalistic said:

The cost scales with the complexity of the highlighted object. A simple gold coin isn't really a concern, but a guard or other complex geometry may be a different matter. So be sure you test the right thing.

Also, the hack means that while the outline is generally hidden by depth, it is not a perfect match. It will often slightly protrude into the depth-occluded region, which is not a critical concern, but it does look a little ugly to my eye.

It's not too bad though, is it?

I mean, no way it can suck as much as soft stencil shadows we used to have a while back? :)

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1 hour ago, cabalistic said:

The cost scales with the complexity of the highlighted object. A simple gold coin isn't really a concern, but a guard or other complex geometry may be a different matter. So be sure you test the right thing.

Also, the hack means that while the outline is generally hidden by depth, it is not a perfect match. It will often slightly protrude into the depth-occluded region, which is not a critical concern, but it does look a little ugly to my eye.

Fair enough. Most movables are usually not that high-poly but if you hold them up at the right angle the impact could become noticeable I take it. Also if anyone needs a way to test this scenario, consider using the little script I made which allows frobbing friendly AI to make them salute you or express if they were alerted: I made it before the highlight was a thing and didn't get to see how it looks on AI, the results might be interesting including visually :)

 

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7 hours ago, duzenko said:

Thanks

I tested the two coordinates provided, and the frob ignore depth cvar hides outline for both

Am I correct that if that cvar is in the 'right' state by default then the issue is fixed?

Good to hear, i didnt know about this spawnarg but if it hides those items then thats a start. Although as Cabal said i think it looks weird and broken when it occludes half the object.

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1 hour ago, kingsal said:

Good to hear, i didnt know about this spawnarg but if it hides those items then thats a start. Although as Cabal said i think it looks weird and broken when it occludes half the object.

That's two evils we're choosing from here

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1 hour ago, duzenko said:

That's two evils we're choosing from here

Well yeah, but to answer your question again. The cvar does not solve the problem, but creates another.

EDIT: but to be clear, the cvar is the lesser of two evils imo.

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Well I tested out with a patch sphere that's 32x32 subdivisions and only noticed a few FPS drop.

ApvNqlA.png

 

9YeQZtk.png

 

So about 5 FPS difference. That's a lot of polys. When I increased it to 64x64 subdivisions, the FPS drop was pretty dramatic, about 36 FPS loss. But that's about 4096 triangles. I don't even think the guards are that high.

I tried using a guard to occlude the frob outline, but it didn't make much difference.

BKowqUS.png

rVvn0xt.png

 

 

I also tested a guard and the drop wasn't so bad.

CvGZ3Aj.png

JocmkX9.png

The drop was about 6 FPS.

This is on an NVidia 980ti with i7 4770k

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I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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6 hours ago, AluminumHaste said:

I guess if I was on REALLY old/crappy hardware and was only getting 20 fps, a 5-6 FPS drop would be very noticeable. But in those cases, players can disable the frob outline completely.

Great testing! So in summary I would say that the frob outline should be set to r_frobIgnoreDepth = "0" as default with the option to turn it completely off if players don't like the effect or the slowdown is too much for their system.

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On the menu setting I kinda retain my previous opinion: I'd make it a slider with multiple options above the frob helper checkbox, especially now for the time being. Different players may want to set it to either "off", "on", "on with occlusion". Apart from performance considerations, different players seem to like the appearance of those three modes selectively, which makes me think it should be easily accessible for everyone to decide.

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5 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:

On the menu setting I kinda retain my previous opinion: I'd make it a slider with multiple options above the frob helper checkbox, especially now for the time being. Different players may want to set it to either "off", "on", "on with occlusion". Apart from performance considerations, different players seem to like the appearance of those three modes selectively, which makes me think it should be easily accessible for everyone to decide.

It is via console commands. The issue is that if the option to pick multiple choices is available then developers need to make sure all options are not broken whenever the renderer is worked on.  It's more testing,  more finessing code to not break other things.  If we just pick one option,  then that simplifies the developers job, and gives them more time to experiment and implement their design goals.

You might counter that's its just a few options, but don't forget all the other things they have to keep track of.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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4 hours ago, cabalistic said:

As long as the feature is broken, it will not become an option or officially supported in any way, hence why it is disabled now. The only reason it's even still in the code is the vague hope it might be fixed at some point in the future.

I don't understand what is wrong with the frob outline (so long as r_frobIgnoreDepth isn't enabled), and the updated frob highlight is much uglier without it.  Why not put it back the way it was and to avoid argument simply hard-wire normal clipping?

Edited by Araneidae
typo
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23 minutes ago, Araneidae said:

Why not put it back the way it was and to avoid argument simply hard-wire normal clipping?

We discussed this in the other thread. There are other issues besides the look and feel which some player don't like as well! So either we leave it out or give the option to turn it off, always keeping it on, ugly and half broken, is not a good solution.

Edited by wesp5
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Not sure if this is the right place, but with the new frob highlight being dropped in the latest dev build (RIP - I quite liked it) it seems like the shader based replacement is not quite working as I would expect. Transparent materials which work with the material based frob highlight don’t seem to work with this new shader based one. Is there something as a mapper I need to do to make an object with a transparent material react to highlight?

 

old frob:

3A397205-16C7-4C8C-99B5-AC4833146655.thumb.jpeg.fbf7101f00c4e34ed1f25bd45bc5227d.jpeg

New frob:

BB8A5C35-28F1-4EB2-9572-508F5073997E.thumb.jpeg.7bb83b02b731bfde7c07f1841bf83b0e.jpeg

 

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

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Hard to fix this one.

If you universally highlight all alpha, it causes artifacts on door hinges or other transparent decal areas.

Maybe a new material flag "frobAlpha" ?

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