Grass

[Shougun]

Exactly, or even have a firey explosion singe the grass for a time. I know NeverWinter Nights the grass bent when you walked through it and thats quite an old game now. The thing is, how much extra computing power would they need and how much more information would need to be packaged and sent via internet, how much would this slow things down, is creating better grass going to reduce the quality of other, more improtant areas of the game/gameplay. Those screenshots had lots of grass.

I am not against adding in a patch later that increases some visual aspects of the game (IIRC Direct X11 support and SLI support is coming?) at least they arent as focused on the grass as some people are. They need to get the core systems to a playable state before worrying about the fluff.

I think what they would do is package the data into the spell.

So you cast fire at X,Y,Z. The game sends that to the player and in the players computer the game decides how the grass will bend (if the player has environment physics on of course). They wont use any extra data over the internet for grass physics. Of course the computer itself will be working harder, but not the network - all the information needed is already being used (the game already asks "where did bob cast that??" and the server says "there", and then the players computer does the rest lilke playing the casting animation, the spell animation, and the grass physics).

Yeah DX11 (and 10 I believe) are coming in a patch planned a few months or so after release (I think it was like 4-6 months it was mentioned in the first roadmap).

And I agree they shouldn't be delaying the game for grass. But when they get a second to improve graphical features (more then just grass, I hope they visit grass as well).