ARMA 3 base terrain textures WORSE than the original Operation Flashpoint

[SandboxPlaya 10]

Normally, I'm a gameplay > graphics person, but this is just mind-boggling.

There's always been multitexturing in the series and obviously the quality of textures that appear when you're close to the ground has improved tremendously in ARMA 3. However, when you're looking at the terrain from slightly further away where the close range detail samples are no longer visible, then I'm sorry, the burry base texture are all that we can see and no amount of overgrowth is going to hide the fact that the they've become catastrophically blurry and perhaps of lower resotion as well? 12 years of evolution, ladies and gentlemen:

Operation Flashpoin: Cold War Crisis a.k.a ARMA: Cold War Assault

ARMA3

click images for high-res versions

On average, our PC's have got 50 times more RAM than they had in 2001. So why do we textures like this in ARMA 3?

So the questiong shouldn't be "Why are the base textures not on par with OF:CWC?", it should be "Why aren't the base textures many times better than in OF:CWC?"

What's the deal with it? And can something be done about it at this point?

Edited March 6, 2013 by SandboxPlaya

[CombatComm 10]

Whole-Heartedly agree. Disappointing considering everything else terrain detail wise looks great. It's the only thing we see at distance when the grass LODs are eliminated. I always hated that grass view distance wasn't allowed to go out further. One because when people look through scopes at distance character models camouflage means nothing.

Edited March 6, 2013 by CombatComm

[caldrin 1]

Didnt realy notice any issues when i was testing last night..

Do you have all the settings maxed out? I will have to take a proper look when i get home tonight..

Also can anything be done about it? well yeah i would say it just a color map applied to the terrain + normal map not really hard to get that re-done with better detail.. i would think the engine can handle it just fine. Also engine might use seperate textures after you get a certain distance.. they could just pop in better textures for that.

[topas 1]

12 years of evolution, ladies and gentlemen

(...)

What's the deal with it? And can something be done about it at this point?

While it has also caught my attention (first I thought it was my graphic settings) it's something that can be fairly easily / and probably will be fixed, addressed. Basically, it's just the satmask having low detail, maybe they have decided that the alpha will focus on highlighting different aspects and have for now put a WIP satmask that is still being worked on?

[Guest]

I am afraid this is one of the things that I have noticed with Arma 3 as well, I hope they can improve these long distances textures, as for me personally, it does have a big impact on the game.

But we are only in Alpha, I am already amazed by Arma 3 and if they do not fix these textures, I am sure there will be a good reason for it.

[SandboxPlaya 10]

Didnt realy notice any issues when i was testing last night..

Do you have all the settings maxed out?

It's an offial BI Arma 3 image. And the reason I posted it instead of PrtScr'ing my own is so that people wouldn't question if I had everything maxed out.

[Leon86 13]

Yeah, I dont like the texture in the distance either, any texture setting beyond "high" has no effect by the way. If you set terrain quality to ultra you can have a bit of grass on the lowrest texture but that's about it.

[Sierra__7 10]

Just noticed the problem here....

[PMP_ViOLeNcE 1]

I also agree but, my hope is, being that its still in the alpha phase, the final product will be have sharper textures especially at a distance. As it stands, this game is hardly testing my rig and my understanding was it was going to push the limits of graphic quality

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

Takistan & Cherno - definitely higher res textures. Perhaps they couldn't afford it performance-wise with these highly-detailed units & vehicles?

[nikiforos 450]

I don't have the game yet but judging by the videos and the images I agree 100% on that.

I remember Chernarus looked the same from above and it was a big turn-off. I found an addon though that I downloaded and the quality got much better. So if community modding can do it I would expect BIS to be able to improve this drastically.

It will be a shame if everything else look so nice and the sat terrain textures look like that.

[pathetic_berserker 4]

Honestly when I look at the first post, the last image still looks the most natural. Busy doesn't equal real.

[metalcraze 290]

@OP You are missing one thing here. OFP uses smaller but tiled textures which repeat themselves again and again.

Satmap is a different thing. It's a price to pay for the variety of distant terrain so it doesn't look like copypasta of OFP.

[kavoriken 1]

Yeah, i totally agree.

This was one of the first impressions i had: The game does look AMAZING, the close range textures, the vehicles, the soldiers, the lighting, and then youve got these incredibly blurry terrain textures. Kinda reminds me of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion which had the same thing: It looked amazing, but the textures in the distance destroyed the whole looks of the game.

I hope BI can get better ground textures in the game at a later stage, AT LEAST as an option. Tbh i cant see sharper ground textures having that much of an impact on performance, all it would use is more of your GPU's ram.

[Leopardi 0]

This is one of the effects of not having a 64-bit executable. It doesn't matter if we have 16GB RAM, 32-bit application even with with LAA has a 4GB limit.

[pathetic_berserker 4]

^^ Seen this observation else where. May-be a good idea to find a high spot that sees lets you focus on a scene that is 3.5 ks away a decide how much you can percieve that would be relevant

[Dwarden 1125]

oh noes our secret was revealed , we are selling you still same OFP for 6th time .;)

and yes there is lot to be improved (ALPHA hint) and medium to far range textures was always of my interest too

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?57386-Medium-and-Distant-ground-texture-detail&highlight=texture+detail

yes, this thread I wrote in 2007 ... and I still remember and haunt our programmers with that and many similar like this

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

Cherno had excellent textures, even with terrain set to low/grass off. Altis will have to shine to eclipse Cherno. ;)

[nikiforos 450]

Cherno landtexture looked really good with the landtex mod.

Here is the old thread for this addon :http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?84082-LandTex-Texture-replacement-for-Chernarus

[Smurf 12]

No excuse for that. Streaming tech has evolved, custom terrains have a really nice texture (Celle 2 is a good example), Chernarus+ received a revamp and.... it's an Alpha.

[SandboxPlaya 10]

@OP You are missing one thing here. OFP uses smaller but tiled textures which repeat themselves again and again.

Satmap is a different thing. It's a price to pay for the variety of distant terrain so it doesn't look like copypasta of OFP.

No, I'm totally aware of that. The thing is, with today's tech, you can do more repeating samples of wider variety and bigger size than in the past, so it shouldn't be all that apparent. Perhaps there should be 3 layers of textures, close-medium distance drawing repeating base texture samples like OFP and and sat mask only kicking from higher altitudes? Making transitions fluid would be tricky, though.

oh noes our secret was revealed , we are selling you still same OFP for 6th time .;)

That's not what I said or implied at any point.

and yes there is lot to be improved (ALPHA hint) and medium to far range textures was always of my interest too

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?57386-Medium-and-Distant-ground-texture-detail&highlight=texture+detail

yes, this thread I wrote in 2007 ... and I still remember and haunt our programmers with that and many similar like this

I think the problem with using sat mask isn't long distance at all. Stratis looks great from high altitude. Point blank texture quality is excellent as well. The problematic range is just close to medium distance where the base texture simply lacks detail (approximately 10-150 meters,).

Edited March 7, 2013 by SandboxPlaya

[iceman77 18]

Hey guess what? You're playing an alpha.

[Droikka 1]

Hey guess what? You're playing an alpha.

You have missed the point of Alpha. It is not a paid demo.

We are to give FEEDBACK to the developers.

[scrim 1]

It's a freaking Alpha, there's no need to give useless "feedback" about things that are obviously going to be improved. It's just as much use as saying "the other island isn't available in the editor, inculde it nau!!!!1!!1 (so I can complain about it not being finished)"

[Minoza 11]

How do you know it will be improved without feedback? And how do you find this a useless feedback? Only thing useless in this thread is your comment.