A Respectful Request For Improved Cloth & Hair Physics

[Tysilio]

I also remember Yoshi-P clearly stating that improved physics won't be part of 7.0. I think it was when they first announced the graphics upgrade.

It's clearly doable (everything is), but it'll probably make some players' rigs incompatible, and probably make the PS4 version kick the bucket (but I'd be surprised that SE keeps the PS4 version after Dawntrail).

There's basically two ways of doing this :
- Softbody physics with colliders: it's less realistic, but pretty fast. The game probably already uses this to some extent. Having more realistic hair and cloth physics imply reworking all colliders and bones (and vertex weights) on each and every armour and haircut (and mulitply that for each available body type in the game).
- Per-vertex physics simulation: very realistic, but super slow. It can probably be GPU-accelerated, but it'll be very expensive anyway. I don't think implementing this in an MMO is a very good idea (yet).

I don't know of any other real-time physics systems that could be used for hair apart from these.

[hynaku]

They really need to fix them. Other day I noticed when character arm bends it clips thru sleeve of my armor.

[LioJen]

Downgrading the graphics and physics to work on a sub-par console that was already out of date by the time of release was a poor choice for long term viability. 1.0's performance was not the fault of the "polygons" (of which Yoshida lied about the numbers to exaggerate and make his decision look more reasonable) but rather the underlying coding and the way they set up communication between user and server. But I guess rewriting the foundational code was going to be harder than simply downgrading all the assets to force it to work as-is. Now that move is coming back to bite them in the ass, as they have to spend time and money to go backwards and try to "upgrade" those assets back into the 21st century. Even still, I doubt they will ever add more bones to any of the older assets aside from maybe hair, so those will be stuck looking like they do, but newer pieces made in 7.0+ will likely be made with more points of articulation from the start.

It will be like the PSO2 change to NGS, where you can still use the old PSO2 gear but the quality difference next to the new NGS gear is absolutely jarring.

[PEANUT]

Downgrading the graphics and physics to work on a sub-par console that was already out of date by the time of release was a poor choice for long term viability. 1.0's performance was not the fault of the "polygons" (of which Yoshida lied about the numbers to exaggerate and make his decision look more reasonable) but rather the underlying coding and the way they set up communication between user and server. But I guess rewriting the foundational code was going to be harder than simply downgrading all the assets to force it to work as-is. Now that move is coming back to bite them in the ass, as they have to spend time and money to go backwards and try to "upgrade" those assets back into the 21st century. Even still, I doubt they will ever add more bones to any of the older assets aside from maybe hair, so those will be stuck looking like they do, but newer pieces made in 7.0+ will likely be made with more points of articulation from the start.

It will be like the PSO2 change to NGS, where you can still use the old PSO2 gear but the quality difference next to the new NGS gear is absolutely jarring.

I don't know if I agree with you stating Yoshi straight up lied to back up his point, but I do agree that it's getting old supporting consoles like the PS4. I COMPLETELY understand why they are doing it for 7.0 because it would at this point alienate a lot of players which I would feel bad for and would not want them to do, HOWEVER come 8.0 they absolutely must stop support for PS4. At the time 8.0 comes out, we are looking at late 2026, that's 6 years since the PS5/XSX came out and there's no excuse at that point to continue supporting the PS4 and people have to work out making the switch. I am glad to see though with support for Xbox coming that the XOne is not on the list, meaning they must not be planning to support PS4 for very long if they aren't even doing it for XOne, so I think 8.0 we'll finally see the drop of PS4 and get better upgrades for launch of 8.0, which I'm SUPER excited to think about the possibilities!

Hopefully they will add an option for full ray-tracing, a dynamic sky box(no more 2-d cloud pictures), improvements in weather, overall improvements in animations and physics(foliage, clothe, etc.) and maybe some solutions to opening up zones due to the power in the SSD capabilities. Even if it's just smaller improvements in these aspects, I would absolutely LOVE to see them implement to keep this game fresh for the next 8-10 years (or 6-8 years come 8.0 lol)...

[DiaDeem]

You know what? Yes. I'm bumping this up. It's about time. Anyone remembers the OG Odin cape before PS3 killed it?

[Kacho_Nacho]

You know what? Yes. I'm bumping this up. It's about time. Anyone remembers the OG Odin cape before PS3 killed it?

Thank you for the bump! Like some of the other commenters, I feel continuing support for PS4 is a poor decision by Square Enix. It's ten years old! I can't imagine a large number of people are still using them, and to keep the MMO in stasis to accommodate that market, at the expense of the rest of the player base's desire for an improved game, is not good business.

[PEANUT]

You know what? Yes. I'm bumping this up. It's about time. Anyone remembers the OG Odin cape before PS3 killed it?

OMG YES! I remember!!!

[SigmaOZ]

TL;DR


Times change and the game needs to change accordingly, if we are going to have prettier faces we will also need better bodies with round elbows, thighs, knees and toes.


The hair clipping will look really shabby with better graphics so they should seriously take the need to work on a solution, hair weight would be ideal and it could also be used in clothing, everything is stiff in this game, skirts look like iron sheets when sitting.

[PEANUT]

TL;DR


Times change and the game needs to change accordingly, if we are going to have prettier faces we will also need better bodies with round elbows, thighs, knees and toes.


The hair clipping will look really shabby with better graphics so they should seriously take the need to work on a solution, hair weight would be ideal and it could also be used in clothing, everything is stiff in this game, skirts look like iron sheets when sitting.

I agree, an HD upgrade FOR NOW is fine, but they need to overhaul the hair and include physics down the line, I'm so tired of looking at 2-d plastic looking hair and Nintendo 64 hands and feet, it looks horrendous in cut scenes up close...

[Kacho_Nacho]

There are several unfortunate issues arising with the baked cloth sims in this game that have nothing to do with the lack of real time physics. Chief among them being cloaks and capes cutting into the floor during regular combat stances of several jobs, which is a result of cloth physics being simulated in a void rather than with a ground collider plane:



I have no idea why they thought that was a smart move, because characters mostly stand on the ground without a hole directly behind them.

I also want to raise the issue of capes generally looking pretty bad in this game due to shoddy cropping and bad alignments:



Add to that the general inability to combine most shields or greatswords with most actual armor due to insane clipping with shoulderplates (which with actual physics wouldn't be fixed, but instead break the WoL's back) - which along with Chakrams cutting into long (and therefore most) chest pieces in the game is an issue only Lalas, male Roes and male Hroths (who have a bunch of issues of their own) are close to immune to. Every other character model including male Midlander and catgirls are just not able to wear a significant amount of armor in this game without unnecessary amounts of clipping on jobs that should be made for wearing those types of armor. These and most clipping issues are not necessarily physics issues and often can't be satisfyingly fixed with better physics. They are the result of careless design.

Great post!

I agree, an HD upgrade FOR NOW is fine, but they need to overhaul the hair and include physics down the line, I'm so tired of looking at 2-d plastic looking hair and Nintendo 64 hands and feet, it looks horrendous in cut scenes up close...

Yeah. This issue really came to head for me when I started taking screenshots for a possible webcomic. No matter how I tried, some things would always look bad. It's held everything back because I don't want to put out a comic that'll look crappy to anyone who doesn't play FFXIV.