Report this content

Hello Everyone, yes that includes you Media Molecule! ;)

A Render Distance Gadget would do wonders for the thermo capacity! (At least in theory) Here is what all I have in mind for a render distance tool:

Lets start of with a description of what all this entails. The Render Distance gadget is a gadget that can be stamped in your scene. Having this gadget in your scene naturally increases an individual's thermo space as you can change the settings so that only objects within a certain distance of the character (or camera position) are rendered in. Anything that is outside of this zone is not rendered in, therefore the system doesn't have to process that item's existence unless the character/camera is close enough.

Now let's discuss some of the features this gadget possesses:
There are 2 tabs available in this gadget (Zone tab, laser scope tab)

Zone Tab: The zone tab would look much like a trigger zone gadget in that you can specify the shape and size of the zone in which items render in and disappear. There can even be a zone falloff slider so that if you plug this into a keyframe, you can set it up so that lower resolution versions of a sculpt are rendered in and as you get closer to the object it gets closer and closer to reaching full resolution. There can be options for omitted objects that you want to always be rendered in. For example your scene may have a backdrop that you want rendered in at all times. You can choose to omit this item from the render distance tool so that the backdrop is always present in your scene. 

Laser Scope Tab: This one is very similar to zones but instead it uses laser scopes to render in objects. For example there would be a line of sight ability to where if you are within line of sight of an object, then the object renders in. But the moment you break line of sight, that object is then no longer rendered in. An example I can think of is let's say you are walking down a city street. You are walking next to a building. Obviously when you are on the side of the building you naturally can't see what is behind that building. Therefore, you don't need to waste processing power to render in an object that you cannot see. The moment you reach the corner of the building and line of sight is established, it would then render in what is behind the building. (I think with the power of the PS5 SSD, the rendering would be almost instant so you the player may not notice things popping in to view. This is a theory of mine and may not be that accurate but I think that is a possibility). There might could even be an anticipation slider perhaps where Dreams can anticipate a player about to enter line of sight and maybe this slider sets the sensitivity of it. (I am not sure how this would be possible but perhaps paired with a trigger zone, the Dreams creator could put a trigger zone up against the building in the example above and as the player gets closer to the point of line of sight, the render tool anticipates the line of sight and renders in the object.

I know something like this isn't something that can be implemented over night, but I definitely think this has the potential of "increasing" thermo, without increasing thermo.