So that's why the AI kicks our ass in the forest!

[maturin 12]

Fighting the AI in the forest is a nightmare. All their relative stupidity falls away and they become incredibly lethal.

Part of this is because their eyes don't get confused by hundreds of trunks, but a major factor is that tree trunks are glitched.

Two trees on Chernarus are thick enough to hide a unit from view completely: the mature pine and the mature autumn oak. However, BIS never gave them any viewblock geometry. The AI sees through them as if nothing is there. This contrasts with the vast majority of bushes, young pine trees, and now Chernarus/Utes grass.

So vote! BIS is reluctant to make fixes that affect core content like this, so we need dozens of votes to sway them.

https://dev-heaven.net/issues/28068

And you PC-savvy people, if you could post the classnames of the affected trees in the ticket, or PM them to me, I would be very grateful.

[gammadust 12]

I posted a report on the CIT, basicaly I confirm your conclusions...

Also, and this does not make them void, I am getting a RPT error:

Error in expression <,1], 0.2, 0.2, "", "", ""];
_bdiv = 100 / (_rad * 3);
if (_bdiv<1) then {_bdiv =>
 Error position: </ (_rad * 3);
if (_bdiv<1) then {_bdiv =>
 Error Zero divisor
File bla bla bla init.sqf, line 19

Apparently the accuracy value you get from nearTargets might sometimes be zero, and raise the error. Just making a check for zero should be good to update init.sqf. Nice script btw.

Voted Up!

Edited January 23, 2012 by gammadust

[icebreakr 3157]

Voted.

[TenBensons 10]

Voted. Can be a real P.I.T.A.

[katipo66 94]

Voted, i play Chernarus 80% of the time

[gammadust 12]

... if you could post the classnames of the affected trees in the ticket, or PM them to me, I would be very grateful.

I am not sure trees are defined the usual way in a config, I wasn't able to find them anywhere in configs. I suspect they are defined in the terrain .wrp file of the island (I vaguely remember PROPER vegetation mod author mentioning something about this)

the following is a list of all tree 3d models (uneditable though) from plants2_Tree.pbo which should include those with issues.

t_acer2s.p3d

t_alnus2s.p3d

t_betula1f.p3d

t_betula2f.p3d

t_betula2s.p3d

t_betula2w.p3d

t_carpinus2s.p3d

t_fagus2f.p3d

t_fagus2s.p3d

t_fagus2W.p3d

t_fraxinus2s.p3d

t_fraxinus2W.p3d

t_larix3f.p3d

t_larix3s.p3d

t_malus1s.p3d

t_picea1s.p3d

t_picea2s.p3d

t_picea3f.p3d

t_pinusN1s.p3d

t_pinusN2s.p3d

t_pinusS2f.p3d

t_populus3s.p3d

t_pyrus2s.p3d

t_quercus2f.p3d

t_quercus3s.p3d

t_salix2s.p3d

t_sorbus2s.p3d

t_stub_picea.p3d

Here's kju take on vegetation:

A vegetation replacement is unfortunately not so easy for two reasons:

1) You either have to modify the island wrp itself or replace the p3d files.

In other words you need to make a plants2.pbo or chernarus.pbo with

different content.

So no simple config solution possible.

2) This may have changed, yet unlikely:

The object height position is saved in the wrp. Either its the center or

bottom or ground not sure. Anyway lets say plant A is 10 m high.

This means your replacement needs to be roughly the same height.

Otherwise the object is flying in the air to a degree or partially sunk into the

ground.

It may be possible to mass read and output to a file the object height via o2

scripting. This way one can do a theoretical replacement.

The other approach, can be combined with the first, is to make an addon to

be be able to place all objects in the editor and make a visual comparison.

Which I figure can only be solved by BIS or some kind of outright model replacement created from the ground up.

Edited January 24, 2012 by gammadust
found the page

[rye1 21]

Stupid tree trunks, voted.

[KeyCat 131]

Good find maturin!

Voted.

/KC

[old_painless 182]

Voted, although there doesn't seem to be much hope for a fix?

[JSj 12]

Oh, so that's why I always get shot by an enemy I can't even see, even when sneaking around carefully in the woods as a sniper with a ghillie suit. That has been extremely frustrating, so I'm glad to finally have an explanation for why that happens. Great find!

[nkenny 1057]

Given that the vanilla enemy has troubles seeing further than 200 meters on OPEN GROUND-- I don't think all our ails can be attributed to this problem alone.

The unflattering truth is that I think it comes more down to forests being complicated (and difficult) environments to fight in-- combined with players being careless.

-k

[NoRailgunner 0]

Highly doubt that BIS are going to change/improve A2 related stuff. Hope + cross fingers that A3 will be better and devs do care about their work much more before its too late.

[Tonci87 163]

Great find!

BIS plese fix

[maturin 12]

The unflattering truth is that I think it comes more down to forests being complicated (and difficult) environments to fight in-- combined with players being careless.

-k

I completely agree. It is relatively rare that you will be perfectly framed by a tree trunk so that you are truly hidden.

But viewblock issues are a pet peeve of mine, and now that grass is improved, why not this?

[JSj 12]

I would mostly agree, I know that most of the time when I'm killed I am moving too fast and not paying enough attention.

But there have also been many times when I am slowly sneaking through a forrest, in a ghillie suit, constantly scanning all around, and still I got killed by an unseen AI. So, there is definitely something more going on than bad tactics on the players part.

[maturin 12]

But there have also been many times when I am slowly sneaking through a forrest, in a ghillie suit, constantly scanning all around, and still I got killed by an unseen AI. So, there is definitely something more going on than bad tactics on the players part.

That's probably a grass issue, as a tree trunk can only hide you if you're trying hard.

Young pine trees and bushes, anything with low-level leaves is very fair. if anything, they hide you from the AI too well. The real problem is the canopy leaves, up above head height. BIS assumed that they wouldn't cause problems because the leaves are up in the air, then made maps full of hills and helicopters. :butbut:

[gammadust 12]

I would mostly agree, I know that most of the time when I'm killed I am moving too fast and not paying enough attention.

But there have also been many times when I am slowly sneaking through a forrest, in a ghillie suit, constantly scanning all around, and still I got killed by an unseen AI. So, there is definitely something more going on than bad tactics on the players part.

This is another issue, related to the way AI "sees" you, it does not matter if it "sees" only a tiny small part of your body or its entirety to identify you. This is unrealistic because humans will have increased difficulty in recognizing a body the more it is occluded.

For this I think there is also a ticket, I'll post it if I find it.

EDIT: Not every grass type blocks AI view - model issue?

And this one which is now closed (and merged with the above) but refers exacly to what I meant.

Edited January 24, 2012 by gammadust

[maturin 12]

This is another issue, related to the way AI "sees" you, it does not matter if it "sees" only a tiny small part of your body or its entirety to identify you. This is unrealistic because humans will have increased difficulty in recognizing a body the more it is occluded.

For this I think there is also a ticket, I'll post it if I find it.

I'm not sure where this idea comes from, because I know most of the people who profess it haven't tested it.

In my experience, the AI will ignore the entirety of your legs, and is hesitant to recognize a bit of your pelvis and torso as well. It's the head that really gets them to notice you. No idea about arms and weapon.

[metalcraze 290]

No it does not identify you by a tiny bit of a body.

I had a situation where one AI was standing behind the bush on Takistan and my squadmate AI on the opposite side. And they were facing each other. I could've clearly seen feet up until knees of the enemy and so did my squadmate. Yet nobody fired until I killed that enemy.

So either that bush has a viewblock geometry covering everything down to the ground or your statement is false.

[maturin 12]

Some bushes have ground-level viewblock and some don't. Actually that's a good way to test this issue. Back in a minute.

[gammadust 12]

I'm not sure where this idea comes from, because I know most of the people who profess it haven't tested it.

In my experience, the AI will ignore the entirety of your legs, and is hesitant to recognize a bit of your pelvis and torso as well. It's the head that really gets them to notice you. No idea about arms and weapon.

This video was attached to the 1% == 100% visibility ticket

j1SNjJ0do4A

Indeed I havent made methodical tests, but I do arrive to this conclusion from many different encounters with AI. I'll try to setup a scenerario to ascertain clearly if it is still an issue, mentioned video is ~2 yo though.

[maturin 12]

Edit: That video isn't relevant to this issue. It simply demonstrates that grass doesn't block AI LoS in Arma 2, which is completely different from the AI recognizing body parts sticking out of hard cover in Operation Arrowhead. Do you have a link to the ticket?

Anyways, I just tested and the AI won't recognize your feet as belonging to a body. It tested using Metalcraze's method with a particular Utes bush that doesn't hide prone people.

Edited January 24, 2012 by maturin

[gammadust 12]

Edit: That video isn't relevant to this issue. It simply demonstrates that grass doesn't block AI LoS in Arma 2, which is completely different from the AI recognizing body parts sticking out of hard cover in Operation Arrowhead. Do you have a link to the ticket?

Anyways, I just tested and the AI won't recognize your feet as belonging to a body. It tested using Metalcraze's method with a particular Utes bush that doesn't hide prone people.

AI can see 1% of you as easily as 100% through grass, bushes & tress as posted in previous page, this is as been considered a duplicate of AI view not obstructed by grass layer, perhaps wrongly. As I said I'll try to figure this out.

It is not exacly the same thing as having a body part "sticking out" what I suspect is happening is that AI if it "sees" a body torso (ie. so that your issue does not apply) even if just for a few pixels (or raycasts) through many planes of vegetation or trees it is still able to make a positive ID whereas a human would not unless focusing in that suspect small area after a certain time.

[maturin 12]

Yes, that isn't actually a duplicate. And yes, it is true that an LoS check performed by the AI will reveal a player in some situations where a human eye would probably (but not necessarily, and therein lies the problem) would be confused or distracted.

But it does not appear to me that this is a problem of them seeing small bits of you, unless that bit is your head or upper torso. And if your head is sticking out, you deserve to be seen and shot. A situation where only your torso is visible is going to be incredibly rare.

So in my book: not a problem/beyond the scope of a commercially available videogame. The eye gave nightmares to Darwin, it'll do the same to BIS.

[d3lta 10]

Highly doubt that BIS are going to change/improve A2 related stuff. Hope + cross fingers that A3 will be better and devs do care about their work much more before its too late.

I agree. I hope A3 fixing this basic issue.:cool: