Terrain Improvement (dev branch)

[VanZant 48]

The misterious thing is why BI makes very low detailed textures when the work amount is not lineal. The required time is almost the same for small textures than the big ones. What it costs is searching for references, making tools, ... but the size is the less relevant in terms of time.

Someone said that Altis is 32'7x32'7 km of which 20 km2 are land. That is 400 tiles at 1k or 100 tiles at 2k. If Stratis is so, with Altis i would be really worried. Also, in the last "direct" some parts looked at least as blurry as Stratis.

[NordKindchen 12]

Dang, is it really that blotchy? Somehow always though it looked a bit more noisy...best of luck with this project of yours.

I'll keep my fingers crossed that we can see it in future, perhaps do what landtex did for chernarus.

Well......they didnt fix a lot....

Here comes some whining. Honestly - you dont have to look at it. Its just the things that frustrate me in the game graphic wise.

every time I look at the effects I cant decide wether I should laugh or cry...

Burning wrecks are still plain black. (srsly...they even have models for destroyed vehicles to put on the map. Its not that hard to put that together)

Thermal sight is still unrealistic and not fun to play vs humans.

Destroyed helicopter drop out of the sky in the worst kind I can imagine.

Bullet holes appear at distance where they shouldnt be visible (in high gras) while they dont appear where they should actually appear (at walls/houses)

Camouflage at distance still doesnt work.

Waves at the beach are done very strange

The new gras system which is assigned since 3 month still isnt even announced (and after what Ive seen i wonder if it will be implemented right)

Stencil shadows still dominate the game even though as mentionned they take away much cpu power

Shot tires disappear (come on...)

Vehicles allways explode...

If you hit a soldier he will react in a very very strange way - swiffling back and forth for one second

Many animation flaws - especially this one

And thats only the graphic part that I am talking about.

I really love what Arma wants to be. And Arma allways lived through his mods. The content came mostly from the community.

Therefore I feel that BIS needs to deliever the backstone. Namely well done graphics and well done basic systems. And the possibility to add new stuff easily.

Sadly I feel that the community even needs to improve the basics before the game becomes worth it=(

The best example is the midrange.

@-Ghost-TF

Nope they havent.

@Minoza

If I find the result satisfying enough - and Arma3 still worth the time - I will most likely do the same for Altis.

@marcai:

Everything is at ultra. I only disabled the midrange texture and replaced it with the red squares you see on the ground. What you see is the ultra satelite texture. Yes...its ridiculous low resoluted. Well...it would be ok if we had different midrange textures to use - but the way it is atm it is plain ridiculous...=/

@VanZant:

Totally agree with you. And I can assure you - the satmap will have the same resolution on Altis.

Official Example 1

Official Example 2

Sad - isnt it?

Oh and thanks for your help again;)

[acoustic 82]

Honestly, if the mid range textures don't get fixed...I may hold off from buying the game. While it may be something that is hard to fix (idk), its a major issue. All the smaller effects (explosions, bullet holes, ect) can be held off but that shouldn't imo.

[wiresnsnakes 1]

Honestly, if the mid range textures don't get fixed...I may hold off from buying the game. While it may be something that is hard to fix (idk), its a major issue. All the smaller effects (explosions, bullet holes, ect) can be held off but that shouldn't imo.

Yeah. And there are things that make it even worse, even with Nordkinches solution there are things like that: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?161885-Different-lightning-for-units-and-ground-litrally-highlight-units&p=2473139#post2473139

I always read many enthusiams when people mentioned ARMA, but its far from something I would tell a MilSim. The prioriaties seem to be to the graphics and not the simulation. The amount of ressources should clearly in the environment, cause to be honest:

It just sucks.

The pictures are pretty, but the contrast between the level of detail near and far away are just to extreme, if u use scopes the problem of easy visibity of units gets multiplicated.

Even in one decade-old games I mostly knew how easy I am to be seen and the level of detail wasnt that much bigger.

Anyway: The midrange-textures shouldnt be such a problem and a other games from the same company allready get distant shadows, plus the problem from my linked thread should be fixible. That should be the least what should be archived.

In other games (BF for example) the sim-factor and the scale is really small, but they got the most elemental things right, like a engine that can handle the environment, smooth animations and so on.

Its great to support niche-developers, but there need to be substance for that, which I cant see after the third game.

[NordKindchen 12]

Heres a new screen showing how much more detail would have been possible....(I have to point out thats not the final texture I use. Its only for showcasig and to bumpy)

I am working on a midrange replacement now. So far the results are pretty nice while still really timeconsuming...the worst part is that I have to height maps to compare my working files to - so if I wanted to check if the texture I draw is actually ON a hill or on its side, I am allways forced to pack the addon and look at it ingame.

Anyone here who can help me with getting the height data as an image? It would help A LOT.

@wiresnsnakes Jeah I know that problem since long time.

It could be easily fixed by imlpementing sth like: "if unit in shadow then darken unit at range"

The soldier model could simply get darker in its whole. No need for fancy realistic shadows at that distance. It would increase camouflage a lot.

Now you could say "well what if only his left feet is in shadow?" Well then simply add sth like a percentage filter. More than 50% shadow - then this system kicks in.

Anyway i dont think this will ever happen

Best regards

[tremanarch 6]

you are awesome!

makes me wonder if the devs just forgot about that or if their time schedule was too small?

[gliptal 25]

This is incredible. Look at that screen.

Yay!

[Tonci87 163]

That screen is very nice, but isn't that a little bit too dark compared to the original?

[NordKindchen 12]

Yes thats the reason why I said its only a showcasing texture. The final ones are more like the current ones.

I try to recreate all patterns of the islands with higher resoluted ones.

After that I will most likely put some more textures over it where I find it fitting. I have to say - once I have created the basic patterns it becomes quicker.

I think Stratis is a fair amount of workload. Its quite doable. Altis however will be a lot more work. Still - I cant play the game with the current midrange so I will work on that too.^^

[Minoza 11]

Very nice! Thank you for putting so much effort into this!

[NordKindchen 12]

Another comparisson

and yes I see the line between the two textures;)

[fruity_rudy 16]

top-notch..Why don't they hire you, you do it all, we are happy and they pay you?! Problem solved i would say

[gammadust 12]

I really lke this :)

[MavericK96 0]

This NEEDS TO HAPPEN. BIS, get on it!

[SirJD 10]

Would love to see this happen in an official sense - not a knock against your work - but so that we might see it as a part of the base game/widely used. That, and it would likely be completed that much quicker too!

Is there any noticeable performance hit when using the new textures, vs the old, default mid-range textures?

[LondonLad 13]

NordKindchen,

This is one of the best posts I've seen in relation to an improvement idea.

The post comes with the current issue with a detailed explanation (and examples) & proposed solutions with examples.

I'm sure this is exactly the type of feedback the DEV's like to see :)

Well done fella, and especially more so if this is improved in-game - As from your mock-up/examples, it looks fantastic.

[googlava 57]

Hi NordKindchen I saw your pictures about a middle detail texture and look very nice (the middle texture).

We can use only one middle texture for all surface, if we want to use 5-6 type surface on square.

Do you edit these screenshots ? (no artefact on concrete surface ?). If no, then you have very good texture and I be interested about it.

[tortuosit 486]

Last image looks very good again; I hope it will be useful for BI and make ArmA better.

[nikiforos 450]

Wow, amazing improvement over the default textures.

[Brain 12]

Nice work, will you release it (before devs will hopefully take it over?)

[roberthammer 582]

Hi NordKindchen I saw your pictures about a middle detail texture and look very nice (the middle texture).

We can use only one middle texture for all surface, if we want to use 5-6 type surface on square.

Makes me wonder why only one middle texture for all surface? it wouldn't be better to have 3 or more those textures to make a nice variations and for each surface type?

and if this cant be changed - at least try to update the one middle texture like some mods do .

[googlava 57]

it wouldn't be better to have 3 or more those textures to make a nice variations and for each surface type?.

Yes of course, this is limit of shader, which must render 5-6 detail surfaces. If we use only 4 detail surfaces, we can use own middle texture for each surfaces.

[Brain 12]

Is that an issue only appearing in ArmA's engine or is it a common issue all over the engine landscape?

[googlava 57]

and if this cant be changed - at least try to update the one middle texture like some mods do .

Yeah, this is a problem, if we would use single texture, a very significant one, an artefact would arise on surfaces, such as concrete, asphalt, dessert

[SirJD 10]

Fantastic to hear from the Devs in this thread :)

Curiousity on my part - is the current mid-range texture situation by-and-large accepted: i.e "We've done the best we can with the limitations we have". Or is this something you're continuing to look into?