Volumetric clouds changing shape?

[Red_Ninja 10]

In reference to this recent video:

@ 1:00 and on

You can see the effect most clearly in 3rd person, that the cloud formations nearing the left and right edge of the screen are morphing as the player looks around. Yet the clouds closer to the middle of screen remain the same shape.

Is this just a down side of having volumetric clouds, an engine limitation? or perhaps they haven't been polished yet?

The clouds themselves look fantastic! but I can see this being annoying for the jets/helis perhaps seeking cover in the clouds, only to find the one they steer to changes shape! like chasing a mirage. :confused:

[Ekko 1]

My guess is that this happens because of view distance. And if that is the cause, then I don't see how they can possibly fix it. :(

[Mr. Charles 22]

It's been like this since TOH where they first implemented them. I hope they fix them in a timely manner and shove a patch in TOH's direction.

[Red_Ninja 10]

Oh, that's too bad.

I guess from a distance the clouds aren't actually 3d shapes then? they are just placeholders?

I suppose calling out targets in relation to a"turtle shaped cloud" wont be very effective since everyone will be seeing different cloud shapes.

[MisTyK 12]

There is already a ticket on CIT, i've made since few weeks

https://dev-heaven.net/issues/37157

You can comment or vote up

[Red_Ninja 10]

Good to know! Sadly seems to be an engine problem.

I must admit though I only notice if staring at the clouds. When watching the landscape or the character/vehicle I don't notice.

[tremanarch 6]

I have this effect in TOH too- I guess it depends on the view distance and the shapre of the view field...

[Red_Ninja 10]

ah good point! I wonder if the draw distance matters. In the video above Jay mentioned that it was set at 3km I think (correct me if I'm wrong) of the potential 20 km on full. So perhaps with the view distance (or maybe object draw distance) turned up higher this effect will not be as noticeable.

[tremanarch 6]

ok i believe in TOH the behaviour is not editable. I still think it has something to do with cloud vieweing range somehow..

[ruhtraeel 1]

It would be nice if the clouds were affected by external factors in general, such as lighting from the ground, wind, choppers, etc

[NeuroFunker 11]

yep ive noticed that too in some arma 3 preview videos. And i really hope, they can fix this.

[Steakslim 1]

It may not be something they can fix, at least not till after release.

[tremanarch 6]

we still dont know. In my eyes it is not so important either. you dont recognize it too much when playing...

[frostwyrm333 1]

What's interesting is that there's no reason for this redrawing because clouds are far away and they should look the same from the same position anyway.

[CriminalMinds 10]

Yup, I noticed this bug too! But it's not only present in ArmA 3. Nearly all games with volumetric clouds have this problem, because these kind of clouds consists of many surfaces which are always facing in the direction of the player.

So while the player moves, these clouds keeps adjusting to the players position. The effect is that clouds seems to be turning. That's the reason for the problem. The complete Flight Simulator series (e.g. FS2004, FSX) has this bug as well...

I think the same effect can be seen on trees in TES 4 : Oblivion. It's simply SpeedTree turning the leafs in the direction of the player to save resources and still have nice trees and vegetation.

P.S.: I think this bug can't be fixed. Even with todays top GFX card (e.g. GeForce GTX 680), we would still have a laggy game. There aren't enough memory resources.

Edited August 4, 2012 by CriminalMinds

[Steakslim 1]

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. I noticed this with FSX, Crysis 1, and other games, even OA with their volumetric clouds. Only difference is TOK and A3 clouds have that detail to the particles that give them that nice "tattered" look. So when they shift about, it's much more noticeable.

[dmarkwick 261]

I haven't really seen the effect you guys are talking about (the example vid could be a bad combo of wide FOV and poor video encoding) but it sounds like the same problem ArmA generally has with large particles. Aside from the scaling bug there is also an issue where large particles don't stay still in the scene as you turn your view. They seem to move off the screen faster than they should, and I assume this to be a workaround to stop particles from popping out of existence at the edge of the screen as it's culled from the rendering pipeline.

[tremanarch 6]

then why not make it blurry at the clouds edges or soemthing?

[CriminalMinds 10]

@DMarkwick

The effect can be seen at 3:00 min:

Look at the clouds when Jay is moving the camera and keep an eye on the upper half of the screen.

[frostwyrm333 1]

so its just sophisticated particles, they will always look fake from some point of view

[liquidpinky 11]

Don't forget that you can take a plane up and throughthose very same clouds, they are real entities and not just some background filler like previous way clouds were done.

[mr burns 131]

Don't forget that you can take a plane up and throughthose very same clouds, they are real entities and not just some background filler like previous way clouds were done.

That´s a feature with many flightsims i´ve played, and none of them had those weird clouds rotating with your viewpoint issues.

I don´t have TakeOnHelis, but it´d sure disturb the heck out of me having that nagging "this shouldn´t happen" voice in the back of my head.

[liquidpinky 11]

That´s a feature with many flightsims i´ve played, and none of them had those weird clouds rotating with your viewpoint issues.

I don´t have TakeOnHelis, but it´d sure disturb the heck out of me having that nagging "this shouldn´t happen" voice in the back of my head.

It looks even more bizare on triple monitors BTW, the two outer monitors magnify the effect.

[metalcraze 290]

That´s a feature with many flightsims i´ve played, and none of them had those weird clouds rotating with your viewpoint issues.

None of them had proper volumetric clouds either, only 2D sprites. Oh and they rotated. Like literally with your viewpoint, always facing you.

These 3D clouds in ToH and ArmA3 are also not BIS tech.

Edited August 6, 2012 by metalcraze

[mr burns 131]

None of them had volumetric clouds either, only 2D sprites.

These 3D clouds in ToH and ArmA3 are also not BIS tech.

I dont think we should stress the 'volumetric' term too much, as what were talking about is only eye candy.

And as long as it stays that, i´ll gladly take my 2D sprites over your erratic outsourced cpu/gpu hungry mishmash.

When those volumetric thingies begin to reflect rl behaviour, like seen in some NVIDIA tech demos, clouds reacting to aircraft turbulence, or proper smoke simulation on the ground where e.g. rotor downwash should blow away any smoke particles beneath it - then we can toss volumetric all day :D