Hey Thomy!
I am not sure if you saw the ehem "leaked" documentation for CE3 from E3 2012. But, ehem, if you happen to see this documentation it may or may not confirm things that you and specifically discussed in this thread. To say the least, I am impressed.

What has been the most challenging mechanic to implement?
<[PGI]Omid> I'd say it's been getting the movement right, and mostly because of the approach we are adopting. At the outset we took a hard line against cheating - we figure an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure to that end we've adopted a server-authoritative model (as opposed to the client-authoritative model CryEngine uses), which has involved many changes to the net code. What all this means is that regardless of what cheating tools a hacker employs, we can ensure they'll never be able to turn their torso faster than the proper rate, or move/accelerate faster than a legitimate player can. This is pretty huge for a free to play game, and has definitely been one of the more challenging aspects since it didn't come engine-supported. Sorry if that answer as a bit technical.

Crytek tech to purge texture popping


(Crytek's Dan Evans)

Hovering around the lesser populated and more technical sessions of the Develop conference in Brighton yesterday, I caught a fascinating demonstration of in-house technology that Crytek is using to combat the problem of popping in its games.

Called the LODBaker, it’s a nifty little plugin for the Cryengine SDK which aims to take the hassle out of creating low resolution assets for rendering in the distance, while at the same time reducing polygon counts to a tenth of their original value and speeding up framerates.

Apparently, console ports of Crysis 1 and 2 suffered badly from the popping effect that you often see when high resolution models and textures are swapped for low resolution versions as objects move away from the camera. This technique of switching assets depending on the Level Of Detail (LOD) required is common, and is intended to speed up graphics processing where high quality artwork isn’t needed.

The problem is that even small differences in the appearance of the LOD assets and the high detail object they’re being switched for can create a noticeable visual effect. Plus, any rendering errors as they’re switched will cause glitching that’s very distracting.

The way this manifests in a game is when you’re moving away from an object – say a building or a car – and it seems to jump or shift in shape or blink out of existence as you pass a point. When badly implemented, it’s especially noticeable on trees and vegetation as you can see the number of leaves or branches change when assets are switched.

Getting LODs right is tough. According to Crytek’s Technical Art Director Dan Evans, most have to be created by hand, taking original art assets and reworking them multiple times into low res versions for different draw distances.

“It’s a boring, thankless and time consuming task,” he explains, “And it’s very expensive, because it means using your most skilled and creative people to do a very menial task.”

The latest version of Cryengine, however, has a neat little plug-in called ‘LODBaker’, which generates low resolution textures and low polygon meshes from the original high detail versions in just a couple of mouse clicks. Essentially, LODBaker works with the in-game rendering engine to work out what each model will look like at distance and then strip out all the unnecessary detail.

‘Baking’ assets like this isn’t a new technique, but is traditionally done in the third party tools like Maya which are used to create the original models. Not only does it take longer, explains Crytek’s Charlie Cole, it also makes it make low quality objects look the same as high quaility ones when rendered in the game engine – hence the popping effect that’s visible when they’re swapped in. By creating the LODs within the game engine itself, that problem is easily overcome.

Plus, says Baker, it’s proved to be extraordinarily efficient.

“You can brutally slash the poly count,” he says, “We were aiming for a 50% reduction at each LOD level, but what we’ve achieved is getting them down to just 10% on average… And in most cases we only need one [!] LOD where before we needed two or three.”

LODBaker is already being used for Crysis 3, and will be available for third party developers using Cryengine soon.

By the way, it is confirmed that MechWarrior Online, as the first CryEngine game uses a LeagueofLegends/ WorldofTanks - like server authorative online connection model unlike the client-oriented model which is default for CryEngine.
This basically means that your Mouse/Keyboard input is sent to the server and the resulting movement is calculated there to be send back to you as a result instead of you sending your projected movement to the server.

Very very important move against cheating.
I wish this was implemented in more games (Crysis!)

Hey Thomy, thanks for "Indirectly Illuminating" me with the idea for this here hacky-GI effect:



(Emphasized for easier visibility)

I call this proprietary Global Illumination Technique;
Many Manually Placed/Bounced Low Intensity Low Resolution Shadow Casting Diffuse Point Lights,

or

MMPBLILRSCDPLEs ™ for short.



Runs like crap at any res higher than the .GIF's, but hey.... It beats LPV for portfolio renders... I guess....

These new light shafts are the proper replacement probably. I wrote a little on this page about them viewtopic.php?p=1001811#p1001811

DirectX 11 Features
http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?p=938711#p938711

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Point Light Shafts

Light shafts have been present for the sun in CryEngine for a long time, however now the same light shaft effects for the sun are available to apply to any light in the game.
The effect can be tested by using one of the light flare materials provided and the new shader associated with them. The controls for the effect lie within the entity properties of the light itself.

The technique was originally developed to be included in Crysis 2 but wasn’t used in the retail product, Crytek are however making the technology available within the CryEngine SDK and FreeSDK for anyone who wishes to make use of the effects.

I can't really answer properly i am not on my PC for some time now, all mobile
:-(

PLS works better in DX11, better detail.