Perceived Distance Problem

#1 I don't know if this is the same effect, but there is an interesting article from Aki Maatta about object scaling in 'Max Payne' here.

Quote:Maatta recommended that for objects in the room, the closer to the character an item might be, the closer to real-life scale it should be rendered; the further away, the higher scale you should use. So furniture, etc, might be near real-life scale, while objects in the distance that the player won't get close to should be rendered larger than normal size.

#2 It's not really cheesy, in fact, the entire perspective relationships are what is driving the illusion in the first place. Games of all sorts tend to actually have very "wonky" perspectives because while distance in the real world matters so much, it's more of a burden to games and playing games from both the player's immersion level as well as accuracy requirements such as this. I think that you probably have two options:

--Provide a "ranging sense" to the players by automatically displaying a semi-accurate range (either 100% accurate if you like to "train" the players, or semi-accurate based on skill level if you want it to be a game functionality). In this way, they will be able to relate more closely to the in-game perspectives and size relationships, and therefore override the only ranging sense they have now, which is trained for "real world".

--tweak the scaling values of all of your scene objects (including camera functionality most likely) to more closely simulate "real world" distance judgements. I would suggest that this method is going to make your game appear really "empty" however, especially in outdoor scenes.

EDIT: (In response to Dirk's post)--this is almost a perfect example of what I mean by being a burden to games (accurate distance relationships)--in his quote, they don't explain the reasons for the recommendations, but it's a psychological thing--even though the player really shouldn't see "larger than life" objects in the distance, game designers tend to make it so because otherwise their world seems really empty, and it can be difficult for players to explore without some form of visual clues as to where to go next (the larger scaled objects, for example, "point" the player in the right direction(s)".

As is obvious, changing the scalar relationships in the opposite direction of what is "real world" is going to completely destroy a player's sense of spatial relationships that they have required from real world experience---in fact, if an object is farther away, it should be rendered smaller, not larger.

#3 Thanks for the responses so far.

I had a questions about this:

"--tweak the scaling values of all of your scene objects (including camera functionality most likely) to more closely simulate "real world" distance judgements. I would suggest that this method is going to make your game appear really "empty" however, especially in outdoor scenes."

If I were to tweak and enlarge the scale of all my scene models (trees, characters, buildings, etc). Shouldn't that make the scene seem a bet more "full" because they would be taking up more world space? I suspect I misunderstand "why" this would be the case....

thanks

MEL

#4 Hmm, I have to be honest, I did misread your initial post in that I thought objects were looking farther away, not closer than they actually are. In our project we had (or at least I had) the opposite illusion, and I naturally assumed you had the same illusion--which was wrong of me!

Your follow up questions/statements would be correct--to adjust the illusion you are perceiving via scaling changes, your world would be more "full" since objects in general were bigger--since you need to make them bigger to appear closer.

#5 Well, just to be sure we are all on the same page.

The target is 150 game units away, but the target "appears" so small that it looks like the target is 500 meters away.

If there are no other suggestions, I will experiment with just resizing all the game objects (probably double), but keep my calculations for ballistics on 1 game unit = 1 meter.....

MEL

#6 First I would suggest that you look at the scale of your objects versus the length of the in-game torque unit to ensure that one game unit equals the distance you believe it does.

Another thing to ponder is, are you accurately imagining what the size versus the distance should be? If your scale does indeed turn out to be 1 game unit = 1 meter, then consider that 150 meters is close to 1/10th of a mile, or over 1 and 1/2 football field lengths. A human would not look very big at that distance.

Another thing to note, is that real-life has such higher rendering resolution, that even something that appears small will hold much more detail then most any screen resolution, thus an object appearing on screen at the exact same angular scale as you wouls see it in real life might not contain anywhere near the same amount of shape detail.

#7 Excellent suggestions Martin.

#8 Martin,

Thanks for those tips. Yes, the scale is indeed 1 unit = 1 meter. I have checked multiple times (it was the first thing I suspected). The amount of detail (or lack thereof) is a very fine point and most likely what is happening. I will most likely have to fiddle with scale size to get the playability I need....

thaks for the thoughts!

MEL