Changes between beta and release?

[fussel]

Not quite the best picture since it look like I'm stuck underground, but what I mean is, the moment you reach an area that is out of sight, the world "end". They didn't bother designing anything you couldn't see (for obvious reason). An airship view over most area would be impossible because of this. If they do it, it will be like they did in ffxiv.

Spoiler: show

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4968/kaylia4flying.png

Blah. If you fell through the geometry, there's another reason that half of the world seems to be missing. Polygons in 3D graphics have a direction and don't look the same from both sides. So if you take a simple sphere with a texture on the outside, you can see the sphere from all sides, but you can't see anything when you're inside. If you're below the ground, you can't see the "grass roots". This is exactly, what happened in your screenshot and has nothing to do with a "too short clipping plane".

[miokomioko]

Textures are usually only applied to one side of a polygon. The other side will be transparent.

[Kaylia]

Blah. If you fell through the geometry, there's another reason that half of the world seems to be missing. Polygons in 3D graphics have a direction and don't look the same from both sides. So if you take a simple sphere with a texture on the outside, you can see the sphere from all sides, but you can't see anything when you're inside. If you're below the ground, you can't see the "grass roots". This is exactly, what happened in your screenshot and has nothing to do with a "too short clipping plane".

Like I said, I didn't fell, I was walking in the air over stuff for the most part (until I got myself stuck and dropped my z axis to the level you see in the picture). This picture make it look like I'm inside, but I was looking at the coast from the ocean. Once you reach the end of the map, there is nothing. You dont have to believe me if you want, but after running half a lap around Las Nosca, I'm pretty sure there is part you're not supposed to go that are normally " out of sight". It's the same deal in FFXI, WoW (no flight area), or any game you can think off...you don't design shit the customer won't see.

Spoiler: show

http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/7...lia2flying.png

In the previous picture, look at the distant part on the left side. I'm not inside that part, it's simply not there.

[miokomioko]

Yeah, it's apparent these environments were not built to be viewed from anywhere but ground level and only where you're allowed to walk. No real flight-paths over the same zones will be had.

Even XI had some spots that they thought you couldn't see from the ground and you could see gaps in the mountainous terrain of Tahrongi and such when you were zoomed all the way out.

[nekura]

Ehh... that's not quite what I meant. The game is limited by the constraints of a PS3 because SE has shown that they are unwilling to have differences between the two versions. Its the same reason why AOC rescinded on their push to get the MMO onto the 360: the system would never be able to handle DX10, and many PC players raised a stink that future content would be watered down so as to keep the two versions identical.

If the game was designed strictly for PC, I doubt we'd be stuck on DX9, and I personally believe that quite a few of these "hitches" would be resolved. Admittedly, I have a bit of a bias for the PC platform (and its quasi-ulimited potential) and against consoles, which begin to depreciate the second their designs are finalized.

Could you link to a reference for your claim in the first paragraph? Age of Conan has a DX9 version, I doubt what you cited is the reason there hasn't been an Xbox 360 port as of yet, and doing some Googling I was unable to turn up anything that supported what you said.

Also, there would probably always be a DirectX 9 version of FFXIV anyway because SE would very much like money from Windows XP users.