Currently whenever we use the Chronocam, we can't do anything. So we have to hope nothing happens or we don't need to perform any actions while using the Chronocam. So for the high APM players, the usefulness of the Chronocam is outweighed by the APM lost by viewing the Chronocam. Could we get it so PiP can use the Chronocam? That way we can keep on playing and watch the Chronocam at the same time! I think that would drastically increase the usefulness of both of those two devices.
This has been discussed before. A dev even answered to it and pointed to a part of the api that in theory should allow this via a mod right now, even though that API is untested so far. Might be broken. I have not looked into it so far.
Right now it seems the chronocam sends all of the data for a game regardless of camera position, so doubling that to show everything at two or more times is probably a bad idea. I just read that work is being done on network optimization that will send data based just on where the cameras are, which is the last big step needed for multiple chronocams. I think we might be getting this feature "soon".
Just to specify, @brianpurkiss was mainly asking for a large playing window uninterrupted, and a small chronocam window to use to see something without interrupting a large window they still use for playing. It is like in a shooter, to bring up the score screen (in S&D it is only way to tell players remaining), you "stand there afk, away from controls", and then someone runs around the corner and you MASHALLTHEBUTTONS and the scorescreen still gets you killed before you do any more than twitch in the air as shot dead. In PA, your scout flies over some enemy base while you weren't tracking it. You want to know if it uncovered a commander location. You chronocam. When you fastforward it to realtime, you base is gone. Why is it gone? Oh, a vanguard-pelican came from the Fog of War and dropped on your commander, gg. He is asking for the chronocam to take up the PiP and the big screen to show you that vanguard that will cost you the game before it does.
Yep, this is what I thought he meant and it is something that should become possible once those network optimizations are done. The problem is that right now even just a small pip with the chronocam set to a different time will require twice the bandwidth. Once it gets optimized, the server wouldn't need to send as much data for this. Everyone wants independent chronocam control in each pip and the modding potential is pretty much limitless, but bandwidth is the primary limitation here.
So since the client has all data anyway it may do the splitting into 2 views in the client as well. In that case opening more views would cost more ram at most, but not necessarily more bandwidth.
My understanding of how Chronocam works was that the data is being sent for everything you have a right to see at the current time that you are looking for. Currently, the data can be sent once and split into two views for main view and pip. Doesn't it seem like a new set of data would need to be sent if the pip is looking at a different time?
Based on how the review of a game has no network lag at all I am assuming PA caches the data. It hopefully caches not per view but per client. So multiple views can all use the same cache.
At this point I'm just assuming, but as far as I remember, didn't Uber say that they want the game to have resizable multi-window and multi-monitor support? In that case, couldn't we have a separate window for chronocam while you pay the game in the main window?
Picture in picture renders the world twice. Unsurprisingly this makes the game run about half as fast! That's basically what you should expect when you draw something twice instead of once. However it's also rendering the same world from two different perspectives. There is only one copy of most things in memory. For example there is a single commander playing a single animation while updating a single particle system while constructing a single factory. The PiP renders those singular things two times from two different cameras. For PiP to support ChronoCam you have to support two separate worlds. And not just two worlds. Two *complete* worlds. You have to have a copy of *everything*. There are two commanders playing two different animations while updating two different particle system as one version of the commander builds a bot factory and one version builds an energy plant because that's what you happened to be doing 45 seconds ago. It also means you have to two complete copies of planet geometry data because inevitably one view will be post-planet smash and one view will be pre-planet smash and pre-crater! What does that all mean? For the current PiP the GPU is doing twice as much work but there's not too much extra stress on the CPU or RAM. A little more, but not a ton. For a PiP to support an independent ChronoCam not only would your GPU have to do twice as much work but the game would require twice as much RAM and twice as much CPU. And it could also require twice as much bandwidth if the history data wasn't sent the first time through. It's almost the same thing as just running the game twice. Ok, so what does that mean? Well it means that ChronoCam is cool as hell and ChronoCam in a PiP would be, uh, more cooler than hell. But also that so few players have machines fast enough to make use of such a feature that it's much, much lower priority than other things. I hope to see this feature some day, but it won't be for awhile.
Your client so far uses exactly 1 cpu core doesn't it?. Completely different worlds sound like something that can be put on different cores pretty easily. Work for you to implement, but sounds reasonable to do For the ram... well people just need to buy more.
Generating the planet costs big ram, but does the game itself bottleneck on 4g ram even? I don't think it takes too too much... Either way, it sounds like a shame the chronocam can't play 2 points from the same timeline at once (the game plays from the "front" of the chronocam already when you literally play the game). If that was ever possible it would be a great feature, and a worthy use of time too, none of that "waste time on multiple unit passes" nonsense that players could do anyway.
Thanks for clearing that up! Since my computer can handle it, I can't wait until it's implemented! :-D Another thing that would help is reduce the gitteryness of switching between ChronoCam and real time. There's always a delay in the switching. :-/
That delay seems to be because the server needs to send all the data for the new time before it can switch over. I'm surprised it happens as fast as it does, but it makes me worry about how the game will perform if they optimize it to only send data for one planet at a time.
I'm sure this question will be quite dumb, but would it be possible to reduce the load on the pc by having separate visual quality settings for the main window and the pip to reduce the resolution, quality of effects and whatnot? Or this wouldn't make a difference at all?
That idea has already been mentioned and I think confirmed to be on the list of things that may get implemented.
Thanks mate, I'm a tiny bit (A LOT) behind on my forum reading and stream watching, so... yeah. Darn that job of mine.
