BF2 Graphics engine

[Boogey_Down]

Hello everybody.

Hey just curious does anybody know what graphics engine was BF2 developed on?

[IVfluids]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

Refractor2

[-GRimm-]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

Actually it was made from scratch by dice.

[Boogey_Down]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

Does anybody know of any other games that uses the refractor2 graphics engine.

Reason I ask this is because. I am trying to compare the performance I get with my video card, and the performance that www.tomshardware.com uses on his VGA card benchmark tests. He only benchmarks game like:

Unreal Tournament 2004
Half-Life 2
Doom3
The Chronicles Of Riddick
Pacific Fighters
The Sims 2

And I was wondering which of these games is comparable, graphics wize with BF2.

Any cool info would be sweet

[-{BH}-Mezmerizer]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

refractor 2 engine was used only for bf2, a semi version of it was used to make nfsu2 for pc, but that's all i kno.

[C4Whore4Eva]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

Been lurking around the forums for a few weeks now. Saw this thread and finally decided to register.

While I'm not sure on the name of the engine itself (Refractor2 seems to be the engine that used for BF1942, and Modern Combat), I can say that it does NOT compete in any way with the games listed below.

Simply put the BF2 engine is utter garbage. It has half the graphics of D3 and HL2, yet requires twice the resources. My system is composed of the following components:

*AMD 3200+ Winchester core [overclocked from 2.0 Ghz to 2.5 Ghz]
*1 GB Patriot ram [Samsung TCCD chip ~ 2-2-2-5 @ 210 Mhz)
*7800GT [oced to 512/1200]
*Audigy 2 ZS
*Western Digital 80 GB (used exclusively for "Program Files" ~ I have an extra 500 gigs for storage)
*Gigabyte K8NS (this is my 4th NF4 motherboard)

With all that processing power, I can run Quake 4, HL2 (w/HDR enabled), Call of Duty 2, NFS2:MW, and FEAR, at FULL settings (resolution set to 1280x1024).

Yet with Battlefield 2 on all high settings, my system struggles like mad at times. Other times it decides that the TCCD memory is not good enough for its data, and decides to reference the page file (this gets really intresting when I'm doing somethin quasi-important such as transport my teammates in the heli)*. It seems that the way BF2 handles memory is unbelievably primative. Is there any reason that the Intro movies (making up some 200 MB) need to be safetly guarded in my RAM, while the game is having a blast on the page file? Or is there any reason that it can't get it self to actually QUIT when I hit that paticular button (as opposed to listening to the music play on for an extra minute)? If thats not enough, just take a look at the server browser. Seriously...I could create a better server browser using Basic on my Ti83+.

I sometimes wonder if the devs forgot to compress the textures before shipping. Are we all playing straight *.PSD files for textures?

*This has nothing to do with the amount of RAM I have. Maps with 64 players sometimes will run without a glitch for several rounds, then will suddenly become laggy (around the same time my hdd access light stays solid)...the fact that I can play the same maps for hours (if I'm exceptionally lucky that day), and then suddenly face a memory shortage is AWSOME!

Does anybody know of any other games that uses the refractor2 graphics engine.

Reason I ask this is because. I am trying to compare the performance I get with my video card, and the performance that www.tomshardware.com uses on his VGA card benchmark tests. He only benchmarks game like:

Unreal Tournament 2004
Half-Life 2
Doom3
The Chronicles Of Riddick
Pacific Fighters
The Sims 2

And I was wondering which of these games is comparable, graphics wize with BF2.

Any cool info would be sweet

[Hu.Z_of_PLA]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

Been lurking around the forums for a few weeks now. Saw this thread and finally decided to register.

While I'm not sure on the name of the engine itself (Refractor2 seems to be the engine that used for BF1942, and Modern Combat), I can say that it does NOT compete in any way with the games listed below.

Simply put the BF2 engine is utter garbage. It has half the graphics of D3 and HL2, yet requires twice the resources. My system is composed of the following components:

*AMD 3200+ Winchester core [overclocked from 2.0 Ghz to 2.5 Ghz]
*1 GB Patriot ram [Samsung TCCD chip ~ 2-2-2-5 @ 210 Mhz)
*7800GT [oced to 512/1200]
*Audigy 2 ZS
*Western Digital 80 GB (used exclusively for "Program Files" ~ I have an extra 500 gigs for storage)
*Gigabyte K8NS (this is my 4th NF4 motherboard)

With all that processing power, I can run Quake 4, HL2 (w/HDR enabled), Call of Duty 2, NFS2:MW, and FEAR, at FULL settings (resolution set to 1280x1024).

Yet with Battlefield 2 on all high settings, my system struggles like mad at times. Other times it decides that the TCCD memory is not good enough for its data, and decides to reference the page file (this gets really intresting when I'm doing somethin quasi-important such as transport my teammates in the heli)*. It seems that the way BF2 handles memory is unbelievably primative. Is there any reason that the Intro movies (making up some 200 MB) need to be safetly guarded in my RAM, while the game is having a blast on the page file? Or is there any reason that it can't get it self to actually QUIT when I hit that paticular button (as opposed to listening to the music play on for an extra minute)? If thats not enough, just take a look at the server browser. Seriously...I could create a better server browser using Basic on my Ti83+.

I sometimes wonder if the devs forgot to compress the textures before shipping. Are we all playing straight *.PSD files for textures?

*This has nothing to do with the amount of RAM I have. Maps with 64 players sometimes will run without a glitch for several rounds, then will suddenly become laggy (around the same time my hdd access light stays solid)...the fact that I can play the same maps for hours (if I'm exceptionally lucky that day), and then suddenly face a memory shortage is AWSOME!

proof?

[Boogey_Down]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

If you go into your EA GAMES/Battlefield 2/mods/bf2/Movies folder. And rename, the Dice.bik, EA.bik, Intro.bik Legal.bik and welcome.bik files to *.bik_bak, it will stop all of those intro movies from loading up. I got that tip from TweakGuides. com. And it does help free up some memory. And the game starts allot quicker.

Yeah, the graphics are a short coming in this game. I have an older video card, Radeon 9800 Pro. I get decent frame rate running Medium settings at 800x600. Anything higher the frame rate gets too unstable and the game becomes unplayable.

My system is a Pentium4 2.8 Ghz, 266 Mhz Bus and 1Gb PC2100 DDR Ram. I've already mentioned my video card.

[Tox|k]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

In response to post #6.

I agree the BF2 engine is a beast that gobbles up resources but I think there are some other points.

First, I certainly agree the BF2 engine could be written better (much much better), but I don't think it would run quite like Q4, HL2, etc. Mostly because of the massive map sizes that BF2 use. Maps of this size will likely use a considerable amount of resources so your probably stuck no matter what.

On the other hand. The BF2 engine certainly could be written much better, memory management in particular. One thing that was mentioned in some Q&A with a developer is that they prolly won't be adding any more unlocks to the base BF2 game because of the amount of memory something like this would require. Granted that this game uses a ton of memory as it is, but would an extra few simple gun models require that much extra memory? If it is that way, they've written one messed up engine.

One other thing that they could have easily done is add in some more graphics options. The existings options in the video tab aren't very discriptive, and to turn off or down one thing usually means a whole bunch of other features go with it.

lastly is about the swap/page file. This is NOT as BF2 thing, this is a windows thing.
Microsoft - in all their wisdom - decided that no matter what, users should always have to use swap space. You can turn off your page file, but you cannot disable the windows swap space. Needless to say, windows memory management isn't all that great either (quite the opposite in fact). So even if you have 4 gigs of ram and your page file turned off, Windows will happily bumble around and put things in swap space anyway.

[IVfluids]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

Actually it was made from scratch by dice.

And that would be the Refractor2 engine. The same engine that was used on BF42/BFV but this version is upgraded quite a bit. Some of those upgrades would be the inclusion of the Havoc Physics Engine and the Python Interpreter, water that isn't just relegated to one level (old versions didnt have multi tiered water) and probably a few other things that I can't think of off hand. It's still the same old Refractor engine with the same old bugs though (getting into walls etc).

[Raiblast]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

all multiplayer engines suck. the bigger the playing field, the more it consumes. battlefield 2 consumes more resources than Quake 4 and HL2 because the maps are bigger. (well, not sure about Q4. haven't played more than the demo.) and if you think you're comparing playing HL2 SINGLEPLAYER vs BF2 MULTIPLAYER, keep in mind that HL2 has something called load zones, as with all single player games with missions. it's what allows them to make the quality so high. you load a small map area every so often instead of an entire map like BF2's. and HL2 multiplayer maps are just tiny, like the load zones.

[C4Whore4Eva]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

Thanks for the info, though I've already done that. My point was that theres no reason that the movies should continue to reside in the memory after they've played.

In response to post #6.

I agree the BF2 engine is a beast that gobbles up resources but I think there are some other points.

First, I certainly agree the BF2 engine could be written better (much much better), but I don't think it would run quite like Q4, HL2, etc. Mostly because of the massive map sizes that BF2 use. Maps of this size will likely use a considerable amount of resources so your probably stuck no matter what.

I agree with you that the BF2 engine will never run as efficiently as the more main-stream "licensed" engines like D3 and Source. Though I believe this is due to the fact that the BF2 engine didn't have quite as much invested in it as the previous engines. The D3 and Source engines not only had damn near unlimited time (remeber how Source was delayed for a year), but seemingly unlimited funding as well due to the fact that they were going to be repeatedly used for a lot of other games. They were both investments for the companies involved, where as the BF2 engine was a means to an end (that is to have a large multiplayer FPS ).

Simply put, some engines are just built a lot better than others (with good reason too, look at the Unreal engine, how many other games used it).

On the other hand. The BF2 engine certainly could be written much better, memory management in particular. One thing that was mentioned in some Q&A with a developer is that they prolly won't be adding any more unlocks to the base BF2 game because of the amount of memory something like this would require. Granted that this game uses a ton of memory as it is, but would an extra few simple gun models require that much extra memory? If it is that way, they've written one messed up engine.

One other thing that they could have easily done is add in some more graphics options. The existings options in the video tab aren't very discriptive, and to turn off or down one thing usually means a whole bunch of other features go with it.

Holy cow, is that right (regarding the extra unlocks)? Haha I was kidding about the uncompressed .PDS files being used inplace of textures, but now it seems a little close to reality for comfort.

lastly is about the swap/page file. This is NOT as BF2 thing, this is a windows thing.
Microsoft - in all their wisdom - decided that no matter what, users should always have to use swap space. You can turn off your page file, but you cannot disable the windows swap space. Needless to say, windows memory management isn't all that great either (quite the opposite in fact). So even if you have 4 gigs of ram and your page file turned off, Windows will happily bumble around and put things in swap space anyway.

I understand what you are saying about the swap space, and it doesn't suprise me in anyway. XP is truly a hilarious OS. Like the dial up screen that still pops up everytime you run IE on a freshly built machine. Its 2006, why of course I have dial up! /sarcasm

all multiplayer engines suck. the bigger the playing field, the more it consumes. battlefield 2 consumes more resources than Quake 4 and HL2 because the maps are bigger. (well, not sure about Q4. haven't played more than the demo.) and if you think you're comparing playing HL2 SINGLEPLAYER vs BF2 MULTIPLAYER, keep in mind that HL2 has something called load zones, as with all single player games with missions. it's what allows them to make the quality so high. you load a small map area every so often instead of an entire map like BF2's. and HL2 multiplayer maps are just tiny, like the load zones.

Remeber Tribes? Maps were on scale with Dragon Valley, and generally even bigger. Also look at the new Quake Wars that is due out in a few months. Iirc (I might be dead wrong on this) it is supposed to be a lot like BF2, with squad & class based action being fought out across large maps.

[PermenentMarker]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

Thanks for the info, though I've already done that. My point was that theres no reason that the movies should continue to reside in the memory after they've played.



I agree with you that the BF2 engine will never run as efficiently as the more main-stream "licensed" engines like D3 and Source. Though I believe this is due to the fact that the BF2 engine didn't have quite as much invested in it as the previous engines. The D3 and Source engines not only had damn near unlimited time (remeber how Source was delayed for a year), but seemingly unlimited funding as well due to the fact that they were going to be repeatedly used for a lot of other games. They were both investments for the companies involved, where as the BF2 engine was a means to an end (that is to have a large multiplayer FPS ).

Simply put, some engines are just built a lot better than others (with good reason too, look at the Unreal engine, how many other games used it).



Holy cow, is that right (regarding the extra unlocks)? Haha I was kidding about the uncompressed .PDS files being used inplace of textures, but now it seems a little close to reality for comfort.



I understand what you are saying about the swap space, and it doesn't suprise me in anyway. XP is truly a hilarious OS. Like the dial up screen that still pops up everytime you run IE on a freshly built machine. Its 2006, why of course I have dial up! /sarcasm



Remeber Tribes? Maps were on scale with Dragon Valley, and generally even bigger. Also look at the new Quake Wars that is due out in a few months. Iirc (I might be dead wrong on this) it is supposed to be a lot like BF2, with squad & class based action being fought out across large maps.

I said it before, Ill say it again...
BF2 has been rushed like a 12 year old will do his 2 hour homework in 15 minutes.

Why, Because EA does not like to say, sorry we wil delay the game...
Their administration probably pointed gunz behind the programmers head saying... IT BETTER BE READY !!!

People who argue, but its got large maps, you cant compare to HL2 and blablabla...
Ya... you do have a little point, but still, the engin sucks ass.

Why is it that If I have to change my graphics details, I then have to exit the game, go to documents and settings\username\bf2\mod\cache and deleate al the files inside...

Runs great for 3 days, then I think I have to deleate the cache once again because it seems to lag more every single time I lunch the damn game.

Why is it that yesterday, I am playing without ANY LAG, map changes, my HDD keeps on spinning with no end and it lags like hell ??
Simple, because the dude I quoted has a point about bf2 using my pagefile for I dont know what reason...

I have never owned a game with that many problems.

Yet, I will admit that even if I hate the engin... and the massive amount of bugs to fix... I Still Enjoy the game

PS:
About the 200mb intro movie staying in memory... you can simply deleate the EAGAMES and then the DICE and the intro movie off your hdd... once that is done, as soon as you click on bf2.exe, it gets to the login screen.

I am looking for the filename of the ingame VideoBackground so I can remove it as well

[Tox|k]

Re: BF2 Graphics engine

Remeber Tribes? Maps were on scale with Dragon Valley, and generally even bigger. Also look at the new Quake Wars that is due out in a few months. Iirc (I might be dead wrong on this) it is supposed to be a lot like BF2, with squad & class based action being fought out across large maps.

Hell yeah I remember Tribes, such an awesome game. I must have over 1000 hours each of both Tribes 1 & 2 played.
But keep in mind that although the Tribes maps were quite large, they were still pretty low on complexity. They were mostly just a terrain height map, a few cookie cutter structures placed here and there, and some very sparse folliage.
Where as the BF2 maps have complex terrain, structures everywhere as well as quite a fair bit of folliage.