[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Factor of 16

[Aurel Mihai]

On 9/17/07, Mike Rozak <Mike at mxac.com.au> wrote:
>
> Here's a subject that has been mentioned a lot recently, such as in the
> WoW talk in AGDC, but I don't think the issue has been fully explored. I
> thought I'd post about it to spur some discussion...
>
> A few months ago, I read that Windows Vista had a penetration rate of
> around 6% after 6 months. Assuming that all new Windows PCs come with Vista
> (which isn't quite true) and that only people with new PCs would actually
> use Vista (which isn't quite true), I guestimated that the turnover rate for
> PCs was around 14% per year (since Windows is 6% per half year x 2 half
> years / 90% Win penetration = 14%), or that the average PC lives around 7
> years. A few years ago I heard that the average lifespan was 5 years. Either
> PCs' life spans have lengthened to 7 years, or I got my guestimates wrong.
> Either way...
>
> 7 years, in terms of Moore's law, is 4.6 generations. 5 years is 3.33. To
> round off numbers, I'll claim that computers live for 4 generations, which
> means:
>
> - A new computer is around 16 times faster than a computer ready for
> retirement.
>
> - It has around 16 times the memory.
>
> - Around 16 times the hard drive.
>
> - Around 16 times the pixels (4x width, 4x height, sometimes helped along
> by two monitors).
>
> - And around 16 times the network bandwidth. (Probably more.)
>
>
> This "16x" difference is exacerbated by the "PC's" form factors: From a
> standard desktop (fastest), to a 17" notebook (1 Moore's law generation
> behing the desktop), to a 12" sub-notebook (2 generations behind), 7"
> ultra-mobile PC (3 generations), 3" PDA phones and handheld games (4
> generations), 2" cell phones (5 generations), and 1" digital watches (6
> generations). PDA phones, mobile phones, and digital watches run special
> mobile OS's, so I've decided to ignore them. SOE and Raph Koster don't seem
> to be doing this though.
>
> Ideally, I want my game to run well on all operating PCs (from 4x4 to
> UMPCs) to maximize my market size.
>
>
> The obvious solution is to do what Runescape did and create a game that
> relies on 7-year old technology.
>
> Or WoW, which produced a game that ran on 3-year old technology, half way
> in-between.
>
> As opposed to EQII and Vanguard, which required bleeding edge technology.
>
> While Runescape's and WoW's choice of technology seems to have served them
> well, I don't think their solutions were particularly elegant: To use WoW as
> an example, players with retirement-age systems couldn't play WoW at all,
> and people with bleeding-edge systems didn't get any extra eye candy. 2/3 of
> the player base was unhappy, either because they couldn't play the game, or
> because they had just bought a Ferrari and were forced to drive it at 40
> kmph.
>
> As a player, I want the game to tailor its graphics (and other eye candy)
> to use my system to the fullest of its ability. If I have a 4x4 (8 cores)
> with dual 1680x1080 screens, then I want to see spectacular visuals. But if
> I then run the game on my 1 gHz UMPC with a 800x480 screen and no keyboard,
> I want it to work there too.
>
> How can we do this? (One solution is procedural graphics, making higher
> polygon counts and texture resolutions easy to create. Toggles for swaying
> trees and footprints in the sand also help. Are there other ways?)
>
> Is this design goal worth aspiring too? (Personally, I expect the average
> lifespan of "PCs" to creep up over the years, as well as less-powerful form
> factors, like UMPCs, to become more common.)

You might not like my answer, but I see computers eventually becoming
something like cars. You go out and buy one and they all pretty much
work the same way. Some are fancier, some are smoother, some use more
gas, but they all get you from point A to point B and that's pretty much
what they're meant to do (bragging rights aside). Translating that into
computers, there will come some plateau where computers will keep
evolving, but the graphics technology will already be so lifelike that
it won't matter if you have a brand new computer or one several
generations old because the picture will look exactly the same. The
human brain can't evolve as fast as computer technology. How long will
that take? Will there be a next step beyond that? Holographics? VR? I
don't know the answer to any of these, but I'd guess it'll be at least
10 years before that technology is there and that there will indeed be
some step after that.

So how does that help designers right now? Well, technology is
plateauing. It's not quite at the point where bleeding edge technology
matches the visual output of 2-3 generation old technology, but it's
almost there. Vista is actually helping this trend along by creating an
artificial minimal hardware requirement. I'd say if you're developing a
game right now, focus on DX10 native graphics and forget about the rest.
By the time it's released Vista will probably be mainstream, the kinks
will be worked out of it, and the technology plateau will have gotten to
the point where graphical differences will be very minimal.