Terrain Detail

[BiggerBoat 10]

I gave the preorder beta a try this morning. I hate to focus on the graphics, but for a sim that is focused on low-level flight, I am pretty disappointed.

Simply put, the terrain is a mess. Ground detail is very low resolution, even with all settings cranked to their max. Roads have absolutely no detail. Buildings pop in the distance rather than using some sort of alpha fade. You get bubbles of blurry terrain that sharpen very obviously as you fly (but only sharpen a bit, unfortunately).

The colors seem all wrong for the area (I live here, and know what it looks like from the air). It sort of looks like black-and-white satellite imagery that has been recolored (like what I remember from Flight Unlimited 3 from 1999). The scale of the houses and trees seems off.

Frame rates with everything cranked up (i7 2600k overclocked to 4.5 with two GTX570 in SLI) are OK but not great .. around 20 in demanding situations. 30 or so for most flying.

Downtown Seattle buildings look great. The sky is beautiful. Water is great. Lighting is nice. The detail and animations of the helicopters themselves are great. But the muddy, blurry, oddly colored terrain just ruins it all.

I can only compare to FSX, which came out more than 5 years ago and wasn't exactly cutting edge at the time. The terrain textures have much more detail. With addons such as Orbx/FTX, the gap is widened even further.

I love the ARMA games, and I didn't expect the same level of detail at ground level, but I sure didn't expect anything this bad. I really want a solid flight sim with a fun, underlying game. But, I just can't find any immersion in the actual flight when looking at this scenery.

I'll leave open the possibility that this is a Beta issue or something specific to my machine. I'll certainly revisit things with the full release, but at this point I'm deeply regretting the purchase and disappointed that this may not be the sim for me.

[Shadows 10]

I have to agree, although I find the simulation great and really enjoyable the graphics just don't cut it, the models seem nice, but the textures are terrible, and even if the reflexion on the skyscrapers kind of look nice, the filling texture between the windows and on other buildings seem equally as blurry.

I have the same processor and the exact same video card so it might be driver related to the GTX570 series.

Knowing that other people might not have the same issues would reassure me that it's driver related (I'm on the beta 285.38 nvidia drivers) I tend towards that explanation because the ingame graphics (cranked to max) don't mesure up to the videos or screenshots on the website and I trust Bohemia didn't alter them (not their style from what I've seen from them on all their other excellent games)

[_YoYo_ 10]

Remember this is a photextures - so never it looks like modeled 3d objects. In FTX scenery (for FSX) in most of them - 3D models + sometimes phototextures. But if You take for example Real Germany of Aerosoft, VFR France ect here is better with bigger resolutions. Try to put HIGH level or VERY HIGH of textures + Default memory.

I wrote about all settings here (after many hours of testing of settings) and influance for FPS : http://92.60.132.84/~apacz/smf/index.php/topic,13924.msg260878.html#new (but its in Polish so try to use Internet translator). Im very happy with FPS. 40 or more in missions from virtual cocpit. On external 60+.

Edited October 4, 2011 by _YoYo_

[BiggerBoat 10]

Remember this is a photextures - so never it looks like modeled 3d objects.

Yeah, it would appear to be a big photo texture laid on top of the terrain, and then overlaid with 3d buildings and a few other 3d elements.

However, I've seen high resolution photo textures work just fine in FSX and other sims. There are plenty of scenery products for FSX which cover huge areas with very high resolution photo textures (take a look at the Horizon stuff for England/Scotland/Ireland for example). They take up lots of hard drive space, of course, but performance and quality is great.

If high resolution satellite scenery wasn't an option, then I'd argue that TOH shouldn't be using them .. perhaps something more like repeated textures (as in FSX default), with some photo scenery for specific areas (i.e. downtown, key mission areas).

I'm generally hoping I'm having some system-specific issues here, and I don't want to completely discourage people until all of the facts are in. I understand that everyone may have different levels of tolerance for this as well. For me, a low-level helicopter sim focused on a specific geographic area absolutely must have crisp, immersive scenery. I'll post a couple of screenshots later today.

Edited October 4, 2011 by BiggerBoat

[lusht 10]

I hope FTX will get their hands on it and crank this stuff to a decent level.

[_YoYo_ 10]

@BiggerBoat

Sure but this HD max superb ect resolutions textures always looks... to same blurry from human eyes level and many of this addons looks like a desert and only good looking from 100Flight level + no autogen. The helicopter actually lower altitude than aircraft so here it looks more blurry but... (still again "but") You have very complex something like autogen + objects and buildings (never see this level of downtown city like here in simulator). Perhaps phototextures + objects is an compromise here. You wrote about 20fps, so try to imagine this level of quality of scenery + more 3d objects? FPS Killer for sure. I prefer more detailed textures for sure too but maybe this is an compromise?

I spend many hours to fly in FS9/FSX from many years so Im accustomed for this quality of photextures or worse.

@lusht

If BiS gives consent to why not :) ! I hope so.

[zoog 18]

Just a tip in general: make sure you set 3D resolution to 100% (same as screen resolution). For me it was set at 75% by default.

[_YoYo_ 10]

Here my examples of textures from TKOH from low flying. Id like to have to same quality sametimes in FSX.

[BiggerBoat 10]

The rurual textures don't look quite as bad, because there's less detail involved. It's the urban textures that just look terrible to me.

Case in point:

Take a look specifically at the last two images. Seattle-Tacoma airport is the center of Puget Sound aviation, but it's just a blob here.

The last image shows the I-5 corridor through the center of downtown Seattle, which is just a gray blob.

Note: these images are all a bit dark. I guess that's a factor of the cloudy skies, though I think it's a bit overdone.

Are you guys seeing better quality than this? Sea-Tac would be easy to compare, since the runways and markings can be used as a reference. I've played with the detail settings quite a bit, but can't find anything that looks reasonable.

The downtown buildings look wonderful, and most of the other buildings look good (though I'd argue the house colors and roof colors are wrong for the area) but the detail of the 3d objects is in stark contrast to the lack of detail in the underlying terrain.

[txalin 2]

agree o this topic. terrain texture look very very poor

[liquidpinky 11]

Looks like they need to work on the sat map a bit, looks like an addon makers early beta map like that at the moment.

[BiggerBoat 10]

YoYo - Your pictures show a bunch of rural areas, which don't look too bad because of the relative lack of detail. Fields and rivers tend to look nice at low resolution and reveal some of the advantages of satellite terrain.

However, the urban areas just don't hold up. THere's too much of a contrast between the detail of the buildings and the muddiness of the terrain. It was actually a couple of your videos which made me first go "uh, oh."

Here's a couple of screenshots. Notice the general gray blob that represents the I-5 corridor through downtown Seattle. If you go a bit south, have a look at the Sea-Tac airport as well.

Also note the sort of sandy green underlying color of the terrain. This seems really off to me. This area is defined by deep browns, deep greens, blues, and (through the I-5 corridor) the gray of concrete. None of the colors in the sim seem right.

Trying not to be a downer. I love Bohemia games. But this is just a deal breaker for me. Other people will probably think it's fine.

I'm hoping what I am seeing is system-specific and/or indicative of the beta.

[kludger 10]

I installed to a SSD and the textures seem not too bad from ~2000 feet in the light helicopter (maybe it gets more blurry in the faster ones) but what I noticed once I got out of Seattle into far North Seattle (Richmond Highlands) and went low altitude is that there is no autogen 3D objects down low besides cars that far out of town.

It kind of reminds me of FS9 back when I used to run Megascenery 2005 PNW photo scenery with no autogen.

So I am assuming the autogen was only mapped so far for the beta, I am hoping the final version will have autogen buildings mapped farther outside the downtown or that they can be added later as a mod.

Still the helicopter handling is pretty fun and the mission possibilities should be great, enjoying this especially as someone who lives in Seattle and was not a fan of the FSX helicopter modeling.

Edited October 5, 2011 by kludger

[.kju 3240]

Here is a developer statement on the subject:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=2026915#post2026915

Some things to keep in mind:

• PC performance directly affects the detail of any texture and also the ground texture. While playing, the game simply needs to handle the massive amount of data being streamed in and out, and it will not show the most detailed level all the time. We are doing our best to optimize the engine to handle this the best it can, but not all imagery you see published on the Internet will be showing the game at the best available detail of course :)
  
• There are data size limits we run into and had to make decisions about. The amount of pixel data necessary for a 60 by 60 km (let alone 120 by 120 km) texture quickly becomes unmanageable for: development (editing tools), distribution (amount of DVDs) and the streaming engine (internal memory).
  

Maybe the pre-release beta does not have the highest level texture to cut down the download size?

[OMAC 254]

Obviously trade-offs must be made to balance looks and feel (performance). I have to say that the beta is VERY DEMANDING on my system already - almost ridiculously so. AVG fps is way down, low 20's max if vis distance is set to ~12,000 and obj dist. to about 5000. Even with all settings set to normal (which is utterly unacceptable in terms of visual quality), fps never exceeds 35. In the training sessions I almost never get above 20 fps, flying over water. Gonna have to tweak my settings big time.

If they increase ground detail without tweaking something else, performance will decrease further, which will be disastrous. I'd hate to be playing this game on an average system. The guy above is running at 4.7 GHz with two GTX 570's in SLI and gets only 20-30 fps with settings maxed? THAT SUCKS! Something must be done to increase performance, and that cannot include reducing detail, which is already quite bad on the ground as it is. A conundrum indeed.

[.kju 3240]

Did you try to disable picture in picture?

[YasT 10]

Obviously trade-offs must be made to balance looks and feel (performance). I have to say that the beta is VERY DEMANDING on my system already - almost ridiculously so. AVG fps is way down, low 20's max if vis distance is set to ~12,000 and obj dist. to about 5000. Even with all settings set to normal (which is utterly unacceptable in terms of visual quality), fps never exceeds 35. In the training sessions I almost never get above 20 fps, flying over water. Gonna have to tweak my settings big time.

If they increase ground detail without tweaking something else, performance will decrease further, which will be disastrous. I'd hate to be playing this game on an average system. The guy above is running at 4.7 GHz with two GTX 570's in SLI and gets only 20-30 fps with settings maxed? THAT SUCKS! Something must be done to increase performance, and that cannot include reducing detail, which is already quite bad on the ground as it is. A conundrum indeed.

I'm getting the same fps using a 2500k @ 4.8Ghz and two GTX470. The problem is that the graphic cards are not being used by the game. It's usage, according to MSI Afterburner is always around 50% each, and it doesn't seem like the cpu is being stressed a lot (less than 60% if I remember well).

[BiggerBoat 10]

Did you try to disable picture in picture?

PIP makes a big difference in performance (I assume this is the mirrors)? Turning it off adds about 10 fps for me. This keeps me at 30+ fps when setting all of the dials pretty high. Making some other adjustments easily gets me to 50-60 fps.

The textures do get a bit sharper as you make sure your system has some headroom. You can start to see a bit of the detail in roads and railways.

However, the quality of the textures still tops out pretty low for me, no matter what I do with settings. Seattle-Tacoma airport looks like it's been ravaged in some sort of war.

And since all of us are going to be buzzing between buildings in downtown seattle, I'm not sure why we're not seeing a bit of 3d detail to the freeway interchanges (maybe coming in the final release?)

More worrisome is that, even at 60+ fps on a pretty robust system, I am getting constant shifting of textures from kinda' blurry to very blurry and back again. If any of you are familiar with FSX and the constant battles to avoid "the blurries", this is that situation compounded 100x. It's pretty distracting.

I'd love for this to be unique to my system. If anyone is seeing something dramatically different, please post screenshots.

[DnA 5020]

... and went low altitude is that there is no autogen 3D objects down low besides cars that far out of town.

The Pre-Order Beta only has Seattle (Lite). That mostly means that about 25% of the environment has objects and the rest was removed. Of course in the full version the entire environment is covered by objects.

[Toroges 10]

this sounds good DnA :)

so i like the Beta and im looking hopfully to the final :)

[neojd[ny] 10]

Yeah its like when you use BAF in ArmA2 but dont have the DLC I guess. ;)

[lusht 10]

Terrain detail behave really strange. When looking away from helicopter, grass pops up and trees are much nicer. But if i look AT the helicopter, grass disappears and trees become less detailed.

Is that some scaling at work i'm not aware of? Even if one pixel of a helicopter is visible on screen, LOD (grass, trees) drops.

[OMAC 254]

Did you try to disable picture in picture?

I refuse to turn PiP off (so far). Although there is very little time to look (and enjoy) the rear-view mirror, it is such a cool feature that there's no way I'm gonna compromise on it. My performance will have to suffer accordingly, and I'll tweak other settings to optimize.

I noticed the poor FPS performance in the preview, but the Seattle environment is much more demanding (and spectacular) than Takistan.

I may start a new thread pertaining to optimal video settings, where people can post their game settings that they have developed through experimentation. Settings I use in A2 CO/RNF and the comm prev are simply not optimal for the beta. I will eventually put my optimal settings in my signature.

---------- Post added at 08:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:13 AM ----------

I'm getting the same fps using a 2500k @ 4.8Ghz and two GTX470. The problem is that the graphic cards are not being used by the game. It's usage, according to MSI Afterburner is always around 50% each, and it doesn't seem like the cpu is being stressed a lot (less than 60% if I remember well).

I have noticed the same. My gpu usages are commonly around 50%. Does anyone recommend going to the more recent NVIDIA beta drivers? I'm using 280.26 (see signature).

---------- Post added at 08:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:19 AM ----------

PIP makes a big difference in performance (I assume this is the mirrors)? Turning it off adds about 10 fps for me. This keeps me at 30+ fps when setting all of the dials pretty high. Making some other adjustments easily gets me to 50-60 fps.

Could you please post your in-game video settings?

[zoog 18]

The best performance boost I had was with changing view distance and object distance. Still I can get only about 15fps max with decent settings (with Quad PhenomII 3.2ghz, 4890HD 1GB, 4GB memory and installed on SSD with recently reinstalled windows 7 64 bit)

[OMAC 254]

I updated my signature with settings that look pretty good and have ok fps.

After more flying, I don't really have a problem with the terrain detail. Working with satellite and airborne imagery has been my career since 1988, and the detail in the beta seems to be a nice compromise. Sure it could be better at close range, but when flying it looks pretty good from low altitude. You could have higher-res IKONOS or Quickbird imagery interpolate in when standing on the ground or from very low altitudes, but that would degrade performance.

I'm almost done with the first challenge involving the PMC guys, and it is a HIT!!!!!!!!!!!! Love the dialog, difficulty (playing on expert), and the various BIS touches. Top notch.

Had a few soft, flushable CTDs with nothing shown in RPT file. Possibly AToC?