Please leave constructive comments and ideas. I know it's something that is on everyones mind when they think High end graphics game.

I think a little clerification is in order.

Age of Conan uses a process called Billboarding in which the poly face always faces the camera. This is an old technique dating back to the old 2D3D days of Castle Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem. There is an application called SpeedTree which has become popular these days to generate a dense foliage of tree's with a dense flora canopy. SpeedTree achieves this by generating a tree with a preset number of flora clusters which are billboarded to the camera. So fewer polygons are needed to fill the tree's canopy, verses trying to create a 3d mesh dense enough to feel lush and not expose the cards which make up the tree.

As an environment artist myself I have used both methods, generating low-poly volumes with trim cards, as well as cross-cards to create dense flora canopies. This often works but there's always some angles at which the tree's construction is exposed when you're looking at the cards from the side. The speedtree method also allows the trees' to diminish the number of flora clusters, drop animation on those cards, and even transition into a LOD card for distance trees. (Obviously when a tree is miles away you don't need it to be a 3d model, it can be a 2d sprite which looks very simmilar to the 3d model. The goal is just to create a lush distant horizon.)

There is no way to stop the cards from billboarding to the camera without remaking all tree's as 3d models, and you'd loose the lushness that the AoC environments currently create utilizing speed tree. It is the best method right now for MMO's to create immursive high-end flora and not require high end cards to render them.

I hope this offers some enlightenment.

  i voted yes, i know thi is one of the features of speed tree, for games and real time animation, but it would be better if they were 3d in implementation.

  However they are much more heavy in resource consumption, specially with the amounts of folliage FC places in the game, you se things really packed with grass and bushes, probably it could be too much.

  if i had to pick between performance (with the current amount of foliage and visual aspect of it) and just more resource load (with 3d sprites  or similar) i pick the first option, tho.

  It's something i notice, from the get go, but (and this likely out of knowing the technical background on the implementation, as Solareous put in another thread) don't bother me.  Somethign that i would love to see improved, but won't affect me if not.

I usually only look at the foliage when I am standing still (and not panning the camera around), so I really do not notice them following me around It's way prettier than "set" decals imo.

But I do hate that some trees look awfully green

Edit: Great post Arioc

 yes they should,

now? no, AoC doesnt need any more stuff that hurts the FPS

AoC  needs many other things that are of much higher priority like more gear and content. the game looks very good as it is, actually it looks too good for an mmo and soo good that its hurting itself !

if they do that next year when the average computer could run the game on high, then that wouldnt hurt and that would be an addition, but now its just gonna be a burdon.

  thing is, for reasons posted by Arioc in  very well manner, it may very well be that we would have to wait much longer than a year to be ablt to have a more 3d looking foliage in a game world as luch as that of AoC that runs efficiently on a system, if they can do it without hurting performance, i vote yes, but if and only if it doesn't affect performance abroad. 

This is unlikely to be the case for AoC or any other game that plans on having as rich a vegetation over it's world, but that's far from my expertise.

Ahhhh ok now I know what you mean by billboarding. Much like the way particle effects work in Second Life. The textures always face the player. Thanks for the education.

Im not sure if youve ever played a smallish budget game, I believe the name was Crysis Warhead?? They use the same effect, so yes even though it is a high end graphics game small steps like this that dont detract from immersion but help a butload with playability are fine with me. After around 5 months of playing the game there were only around 5 times were I actually noticed this effect in play. AOC doesnt need to do anything with there graphics they need to focus on expanding the game itself with more content and things to do. The game has problems, graphics certainly are not one of them.

It looks like total ass in anything but screenshots, it needs to be redone.

Maybe and engine that doesn't suck while they're at it.