New Terrain Models in PMC/patch 1.56

[bushlurker 46]

Has anyone checked out the new "Proving Ground" terrain for interesting new models yet?

I'm stuck with Steam OA here which has decided it's going to take 3.5 hours to update... anyone else had a look yet?

New models always = new terrain ideas

B

[Geordie 0]

Not as of yet.

looks interesting tho

[Gnome_AS 10]

Horizontal scaling tight?

Not sure I've seen such tight geometry in ArmA. Of course my memory fails quite frequently ... but it was the first thing I noticed. (perhaps an illusion lol) Outside of the redundant placement of a new tree, a couple ground textures (which have very nice bumpage going on), a new bush or 2 and a few other misc. minor things ... not much to report. Only spent about 30mins on it though. Maybe I missed some uber stuff.

Edited December 1, 2010 by Gnome_AS

[ZeroG 23]

There are small hills for the first time! Looks like they were using 1 or 5m DEM for it. Damn, I would love to see real trenches for personal cover!

[Gnome_AS 10]

Thinking it's 5m, but there's a couple places that damn well look like 1m. Might be the uber bumpage on the ground textures though. Interesting none the less, gonna play around with it today and see whats what. ;)

[bushlurker 46]

I've finally managed to get Steam to update OA (took ages)... Haven't bought the DLC from Steam yet - afaik everyone who's tried that so far has been able to pay - and download - but not to install.... I'll wait until someone says its actually working!...

Had a look at the new Proving Ground... The Steam Patch seems to be different in some ways... the PMC campaign doesn't seem to be included - unlike the disc version of the patch - but, far more importantly... the clutter and bushes and ground textures on Proving Ground seem to be "Lite" textures too... Haven't heard anyone else mention that...

Thats disappointing... small it might be, but I was purely thinking in terms of - a few more models - that everyone automatically has = a little more "stock" choice for islandmakers... But if non-PMC owners would see blurry versions then theres not much point... Assuming we could access the models anyway...

A pity - I see a thistle in flower in the clutter - I spent ages making one of them - would've been nice to be able to just include a stock BIS one that everyone has now... then again... my thistles better than BIS's thistle... :p

Then again -again... you know what BIS are like - come next patch, they'll probably upgrade everyones Proving Ground version textures or something - like they do...

I also noticed a bit of an inexplicable FPS hit while blundering about the terrain... took me a while to figure it out... the ground resolution of course...

Smoothing ain't that well done here and there... take a walk along the dry riverbed - particularly under the bridges...

Not sure what to make of the new terrain overall... it's small to counterbalance the hi-detail ground res, of course - not entirely sure if thats a good thing... I get better FPS on my 20x20 terrain and tbh it doesn't look that much worse, and - since Proving Ground is actually mostly flat, its a curious choice of terrain to "showcase" a hi detail heightmap...

I'll reserve judgement on the whole terrain until I've got the fully textured version and spent a bit of time charging around on it...

I kinda like the concept of the small, focussed "arena"-type terrain though... Old Bear was working along these lines already with his "Brik" terrain... not much use for Domination-style missions, but thats not the point of them...

I'll shut up for now and go see if anyone else has successfully installed the Steam DLC yet... :D

B

[Gnome_AS 10]

I would not say I'm overly impressed with the map as a whole. The terain res was the highlight for me. Seemed they were trying to showcase that, but in a not so direct BIS kind of way. Was my thought anyway.

I'm personally very much in tune with the small map concept. I've played with things out to 102km, but yeah ... I like the battleground/smaller map sizes. Seems a lot more practical for many reasons. None the less being dev time. I'm planning to commit to a 2.5km map here over the holiday season. Might just do a "trench'ish" type map.

Maybe call it, "the other half of the proving grounds". Hoping to get some time here in a couple hours to check the performance stuff. I don't personally lag on the PG map, but know others are hurting. My thought is it might be all the trees along with the terrain.

Hoping thats the case anyway :rolleyes:

*edit*

Was dinking around earlier ... 2.5m trenches.

Have we always been able to do 2.5m res?? Can't say that I ever tried until now. Nifty either way. :)

Edited December 2, 2010 by Gnome_AS

[stormridersp 11]

Can we do it too now??????

[mugaben 10]

It depends on cell size as far as im aware of? 10m cell size and it becomes very very edgy, saw-blade-like and butt-ugly..

[bushlurker 46]

Yup... cell size is the parameter...

eg: I know someone who's been working on another area of Scotland... since they have painstakingly assembled actual realworld 5m resolution DEM data for the area (major accomplishment!), their plan was to do a 20x20km area...

so - 4096x4096 heightmap with cell size 5m = 20x20km area...

Not sure how thats gonna perform in-game, but the data itself was an impressive feat...

Beton did a small terrain a while back which had 2m heightfield res... one of his winter ones... can't immediately find the link... I'll edit it in later, but its on the forums here somewhere...

B

[Gnome_AS 10]

Tis 2m for sure. Played around with it quite a bit the last couple of days. Wish I would have tried this sooner always thought 5m was a cell size limit for some reason in visitor. :rolleyes:

Performance seems fine for my purposes, had pretty good luck balancing things in testing so far with 1024² HF @ 2m (2km²). Small no doubt, but acceptable I think for a smaller coop scenarios/pvp gameplay. Especially in a mountain type layout.

Now I just need a clever way of telling the AI not to walk certain places.. :rolleyes:

Really awesome terrain is made not so awesome when the AI seem to be on suicide patrol. Aimlessly throwing themselves off cliffs and whatnot.. :eek:

Anyway back on topic a bit.. I can't sort out getting the BAF/PMC .pbos unpacked to check out the new textures/models/configs etc..

Thought I had it working at one point :confused: maybe not? Any thoughts welcome.

[beton 2]

Well... i made a 1m cellsize island some time ago. It had a horrible performance and when viewdistance was increased too much the game crashed. My standard is 5m terraingrid because i have some special objects i like to use.

[Gnome_AS 10]

Really 1m? I haven't been able to get that work. Don't really know that I'd want to go below 2/2.5, for reasons you mentioned. But yeah, couldn't sort that out. I could get it into visitor, could pack it up and run it, but it seemed vertices were still at 2m.

Ie.. I can import file.xyz and everything be exactly as created @ 2m, but not the case at 1m. (it is the holiday season though, might be an alcohol related conclusion..)

You have a link for that map Benton? Or perhaps the settings, would like to compare to mine and see what I might have done wrong.

What was you mask/sat sizes?

I also noticed the texture layer settings change quite a bit with that level of detail. What did you end up using there? I've had very mixed results kicking down/up from the seemingly safe 40x40m. Which isn't an option at these levels of detail.

[[aps]gnat 28]

FYI if not stated already. This terrain came with the patch, not PMC.

You can run the terrain without actually having PMC.

[Geordie 0]

2.5m resulted in terrible performance and lag on Khark10km island for me.

Detail was nice though.

5m resolution is possible to make aircraft revetments in L3DT!!!

[Nephris1 10]

What are your expieriences in FPS and AI moveing when using different cell sizes like <10m?

What i read is below 2.5 m causes FPS drops to unplayability, not mentioning the AI moving.

I guess the terrain size itself is also a point to watch at?

Means 10240x10240 terrain @ 5m will have similar fps to 5120x5120 terrain @ 2.5m .... or isnt it that easy?

Can u also use (e.g.) 2.8m;2.9m;3.1m etc ,just to get close to the playability border?

Is there a dependancy to the cell size or proper cell sizes, or is the mapper free to test it?

[icebreakr 3159]

I rather have my island on 10m grid than suffer even worse FPS. New island is really small, desert with dry wood and it performs worse than lush jungle areas ;)

[malkekoen 17]

Does anybody know if we will be able to procure and use the new models (trees) and textures from the PMC pack. I have Steam version and all the .pbos are encrypted.

[Gnome_AS 10]

Honestly I think the trees are half the issue with the map in the first place. Regarding usage though ... I'm really not sure. I asked Mikero about those files a week or so ago ... I assume there is no intent sort it out after his reply. It may be that BIS does not want it sorted, dunno.

[prowler.wolf 0]

I would like to contribute a couple of points to this discussion. In my own opinion the PMC tree/foliage models are a slight problem for the community. I am more then happy to purchase the expansions to support BI and have free access to the use of their models in island editing.

One thing that bothers me is the unfair advantage that might be present for the players that do not have the expansions higher detailed textures. I hope I don't sound ungrateful for the new content, I just want everyone to share the same experience when they are playing on a custom island. Does anyone else feel this way? I would be more then happy to hear if PMC will eventually be incorporated into the full game in the future.

Another point I would like to add is that if new Visitor developers who are not familiar with the island making process focus on smaller island sizes (anything under 512km squared), then we could see a higher number of islands being released. I see a few good qualities to this idea like a smaller file size that might increase the number of downloads and usage on multiplayer servers. Because lets face it, everyone here ultimately wants people to actually play their islands. If you don't want people to play your islands online then there must be something wrong with you. :P

I don't mean to stop making large islands(large islands are ****ing awesome). I just hate to see island makers give up because the project they chose to work on was going to take too many hundreds of hours of work to complete. The size of an island should be a conscious decision in everyones island making process. If the engine allows us to create higher detailed terrains with virtual ditches and trenches and tiny hills, then whats stopping people from making these for smaller battle spaced maps? What say you all?

Maybe I just want to see less full sized reality-based terrains and more fictional/themed islands. Anybody can just rip terrain out of google earth and slap a satellite image together and call it art.

Heres some questions I wanted to ask.

Does anyone have any experience with these small sized islands? I have being toying with a few ideas for smaller fighting arenas and it has been difficult to plan out small terrains similar to the Proving Grounds. I am assuming that the terrain grid in that island is 5 meters? What settings in Visitor would I have to use in my project preferences for my island to use the same grid square/texture size/etc.?

[Gnome_AS 10]

Hey Prowler,

I would say my thoughts align in many ways with yours. I'll be safe and mention I really like the large terrains also. But in reality, I'm fully aware it's not a task I could reasonably attempt. The time investment piece aside, my thoughts are pretty much the same as yours regarding smaller maps. While not for everyone, I believe there is gap to be filled. More specifically with the TvT/PvP players. Although I think many of the smaller coop groups would/could also make good use of them.

Regarding the Proving Grounds map, I'm still not 100% ... but best I can tell it is a 2m cell size. Can't say off the top of my head how large it is, just under/over 1x1km I think. I have no clue what size the textures are set to, although I'd sure like to know.

I'd be interested in talking more with anyone wanting to pursue a small battleground type map. ;) I think BIS had good intentions with the Proving Grounds map, although I don't think it really showcased what is reasonably possible all that well.

I'm currently working with max/o2 trying to sort out a clean process for cutting larger models up. As things seem to break if larger than something around 40-50m. () Current work inspired by the thought of an above ground, under ground bunker system. If that makes sense. If anyone knows of a previous work in this area please let me know.

Gnome

[beton 2]

Ok... i´ve been digging in one of my older projects. It has an 2048 x 2m gridsize ( not 1m as i stated before). It used to have a horrible performance and crashed when viewdistance was set too high. I tested the island again now and the performance was better (but still not good) now. This may of course be from my poor hardware. The map is playble for me as long as viewdistance is under 500 meters. At least the engine now seems to cope better with small grids than it did before.

I can say that i make my islands with 5m Grid because that is a good mixture of performance and the possibility to model the terrain to my needs.

The bunkers i have created so far are not really underground but kind of dug in the ground and it takes a lot of work to make them fit into the terrain at least a little bit.

[Baron von Beer 0]

Rather than start a thread, seems applicable here: I'm gathering data to take a stab at a map. Cell size is something I'm wondering about, would 5m be "too much" for a 10kmx10km map? Likewise, how big a performance hit would there be between 5m & 10m on that size? I have a hunch a few things I want to do would require 5m, but will at least try 10m and see. Hopefully 10m will be fine.

On a similar note, Takistan for example is ~13x13, did they just use an odd numbered cell size, like 1024x12.5m or 2048x6.25 or 6.5m?

[Gnome_AS 10]

5m might be a little taxing, 10m is generally safe across the board from my experience. Really depends on what the object density is going to be, what types of objects, how much clutter, and what is the average viewDistance is expected to be. If you keep those things in mind when designing, I don't see that 5m cell would be to much of an issue.

Additionally if it's a mountain/hills type terrain ... that can help balance things out as the mountain/hills if in the right places will help reduce rendering costs. This may not be feasable of course if you're working on a real world terrain.

Regarding Takistan, I've never really looked all that close at the verts, not sure what the cell size is, I've done tests as of recent with 2.5m though, and all seems to work out. So your conclusion may well be the case.

Hope it helps. Pretty sure Benton likes working at 5m because of some custom objects he uses. He might have some good info on larger terrains at that resolution. ;)

[beton 2]

All i can say that my maps "Hürtgenwald" and "Omahabeach" have a gridsize of 5m and a 2048 terraingrid. As i nearly never play on my maps (maybe the problem of all mapmakers) except from running around and thinking what i would have to change i have not stumbled over any performanceproblems coming from terraingrid.

Once again... if you want to place "special models" which require some more work in the ground than standard bis models you should go for 5m.

If you dig a ditch in a 10m grid you have at least 20m from one side to the other. I have not been able to create models for such a huge hole that are also accepted by the Ai. But you never know how bis will develope their engine and what they are going to change with the next patch... at least they where able to make their rocks not walkable anymore.