[posila] [2.0.23] Issue with drone rendering at 1920x1200 resolution

[husky777]

At a monitor resolution of 1920x1200, on some camera zoom levels, drones do not fly off the screen, but instead appear in its center

[posila]

Thanks for the report.
Can you post your log, and also save at a moment the issue is happening, please? 3638

[husky777]

Thanks for the report.
Can you post your log, and also save at a moment the issue is happening, please? 3638

Yes, of course. This can be observed in any save, but I loaded one where it's clearly visible. Load the game without Space Age, just with the base mod. Zoom the camera in as much as possible (not in map view) and then zoom out about 9-10 "clicks" of the mouse scroll wheel. Drones flying from top to bottom will appear further off the edge of the screen, approximately 10-20%. The resolution is 1920x1200.

Did I manage to help?

[posila]

Did I manage to help?

Yes, thank you, using your save and instructions I was able to reproduce the issue.

[posila]

Thanks for the report.
In the next release, it's gonna be improved, but I am not gonna claim it's fixed.

Due to bot optimization in 2.0, which reduces their update rate when moving to once per 20 ticks, their real position is somewhere outside of screen but their rendering position should be on screen. Entity renderer doesn't find the robots, since they are outside of screen, so it doesn't render them. We improved this by extending how far outside of screen's area entity renderer searches for entities to 6 tiles on all sides (it used to be 6 on left side, due to shadows, 4 on bottom side due to tall entities like electric poles and trees, and 3 on top and right), which slightly increases cost of rendering, but hopefully that will be fine.

But if the drones are fast enough ... faster than 6 tiles per 20 ticks, the issue will appear again. We have a second radius around the screen box that is searched for entities that draw far outside of their bounding box (like lamps or agricultural tower), but so far it was intended for entities that are not that frequent on map and I am concerned about enabling this for bots, as there could be thousands or even tens of thousands of them on screen. So that would need to be experimented with and benchmarked, if current improvement won't be good enough.

[luc]

Thanks! I had this issue as well but didn't know how to reproduce exactly. Happy to see this being improved, it felt a bit unpolished although if it doesn't even matter for gameplay

But if the drones are fast enough ... faster than 6 tiles per 20 ticks, the issue will appear again.

I'm sure this has been considered, so just out of curiosity: why not make it dynamic, e.g.: `search_radius = ceil(robot_speed × 20 ticks)`? Then it's as fast as it was before, so long as the robots are slower (regarding "slightly increases cost of rendering, but hopefully that will be fine"); only when the robots are fast then there is simply no other solution