Terrain Improvement (dev branch)

[zimms 22]

I seriously hope they will keep looking for a solution for multiple textures, since the 1-fits-all approach isn't satisfying given how gorgeous the rest of the game is.

Unfortunately this will not happen for release, since it's too huge of a change.

[googlava 57]

This thread is very interesting for me, we want improve ground and technology for it . Even attract attention ours programmers :)

Pictures from NordKindchen are beautiful and I understand his motivation.

This is need change for future version of Arma

[blu3sman 11]

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.

So user-created maps can still can use unique middle textures if they don't exceed 4 surfaces per tile?

This is need change for future version of Arma

By future version you don't mean Arma 4, do you?

[old_painless 182]

Hehe, we're all on the front of our seats here :)

[CaptainObvious 95]

Hehe, we're all on the front of our seats here :)

Yep! Can't wait for more info! :o

[nikiforos 450]

Anyone knows NordKindchen? Give him a call and tell him to log in and tell him about the development :)

[ginger mcale 11]

Related to that i took a look today on Anisotropic Filtering.

Same scene/settings comparison:

INGAME AF ultra: http://imageshack.us/a/img443/3584/ezar.png

DRIVER AF 16x: http://imageshack.us/a/img197/8079/c26m.png

Result: Driver AF less blurry on ground texture than Ingame AF.

Settings: ultra textures, sampling 100%, no fxaa/sharpening.

Edited August 21, 2013 by Ginger McAle

[NordKindchen 12]

First:

I am really happy to see so much support=)

Because you asked for it here are two comparisson shots!

Both extensevely work in progress of course! But I think it shows us how its going allready;)

WIP_Picture

Same place without mod

@Googlava:

Basically you can find all needed information in the first post. The picture you see in the first post are all created by using different midrange textures loaded into the game and then merging the different screenshots together via Photoshop.

As I described in the OP the screens I made are pretty much what you would get when my suggested system gets implemented. Since I used only ingame material to create them.

The last pictures I posted are now from an addon I am creating by incresing the satmap size by the factor 4. That means all in all 16 times more detail. (height * wide).

I fallow your posts in this forum since the moment you first posted and I find your posts very gentle and open minded. You made a good impression on me. I just wanted to tell you that.

Your post about the shader limitations just underlined that feeling.

You wrote

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

Now I am thinking about solution to improve the midrange texture since month and I can only strongly recommend to increase the number of midrange textures for the island even if that means using less surface types. Anyone who played Arma games knows that firefights most of the time take place over bigger distances and that is exactly where the game lacks quality at the moment.

That said I would point out that you dont even needed to create all the new midrange texture by yourself. I would be more than glad to create these for you and to leave them to you if you only make it possible to use more than one texture.

Remember: Even if you implement the system it wouldnt mean you had more work to do after that. Why? Because you still could stick to only one texture as long as you want. But in the meantime we (or I) would be able to create the logic map (read the first post if you dont know what I am relating to) and texture set.

That said I have to point out that I am pretty sure that theres a possiblity to increase the shader capabillites so you can use 5-6 different surface on square and STILL have more than one midrange texture. Of couse I know that this takes development time.

But look at the screens and I think you will know what difference it will make.

On top of that it will also serve the problem with missing camouflage at distance.

So I am really glad to hear that you are looking into solution to improve the midrange. And I am telling and showing you examples that an increased number of midrange textures will solve this problem.

Best regards

Nordkindchen

Ps: Oh and @Ginger McAle: Sry to say but you only sharpened the midrange texture with your method^^ Would have been nice if it was that easy:P

Edited August 21, 2013 by NordKindchen

[Sealife 22]

Could you not abuse an added Clutter Piece ?

this would be a simple Plane with properties of always on surface or Road and this could be the mid texture ? it can aso be dynamic changed base on surface type cant it with objecttexture ?

just thinking aloud :) ?

[Smurf 12]

Looks good mate, keep it up. Performance wise, any hit?

Edited August 22, 2013 by Placebo

[NordKindchen 12]

I cant finally say if theres a performance hit.

In the end Vanzant (Big thanks to him) was the one who inspired me to do this addon. He allready uses the texture size I am aiming at and he claims he has no fps drop.

What I experienced though are some crashes. But they are most probaply related to the fact that I have had 90% of my RAM full with Photoshop files and 100 tabs of textures open in my browser while running Arma in the background.

When I run Arma without background exes it runs just fine - but I havent tested it for long periods.

Anyway - if it crashes I hope you all mount the barricades and scream for a fix;)

Greetz!

Ps: Sealife: Could you pls exemplify your thoughts a bit more?^^ I didnt get what you want to do.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

@BI: Why these type of things aren't official? http://adrenaline.uol.com.br/forum/images/smilies/OQHVS.pnghttp://adrenaline.uol.com.br/forum/images/smilies/nova2.png

Read the few last dev posts in this thread maybe?

[wiresnsnakes 1]

Thats fantastic!!!

That would really help much to reduze the only issue that makes it difficult for me to enjoy the infantry-aspect and the overall greatness of the game (concealment, not the look of the midrange). Hope they manage it (soon) after the release.

Mein Held! :D

I just hope they find a way to reduce the lightning differences between distant units and their sourounding, too.

Should be possible, if they have the time for it.

BTW: I dont find the effects on distant concrete etc. so dramatic, in relation to the use for camo with Bensons textures.

@GingerMcAle

These are a great results, even Bensons sharpest texture blur, when you look from a flat angle with the ingame AA.

How hard is the impact on performace?

[tremanarch 6]

thx Nordkindchen for your efforts.

You have great experience in doing these kind of grpahical stuff! great knowledge and know-how-to-do this stuff!

much respect!

to test the 4x size fps impact side of things.. couldn't we just use a bigger file (it doesnt need to have the nice grafy - just the size - and test the performance hit?)

[Smurf 12]

----

Thank you.

Read the few last dev posts in this thread maybe?

Did it, so what?

It was kind of a problem with Cherno back then, greatly improved with the LandTex mod, got worst in A3 since Alpha day 1 and now, close to release they come to the conclusion that it needs improvements and may be fixed anytime on the future (or NOT!) ?

I know things aren't as easy as they look and there are many (legacy) problems to fix but some things just pop up to the eyes so clearly that makes me wonder what type of priorities they have there. Even with the changes of lead, scope of the project and all that, the terrain was a sure thing since they started A3 so no excuses on that.

[googlava 57]

Basically you can find all needed information in the first post. The picture you see in the first post are all created by using different midrange textures loaded into the game and then merging the different screenshots together via Photoshop.

As I described in the OP the screens I made are pretty much what you would get when my suggested system gets implemented. Since I used only ingame material to create them.

I read your first post and I think I understand your method. You made Excellent job. I will speak to a programmers about that (on Friday).

I understand correctly?, do you want create a textures for middle detail ? If we will implement your technology into arma?

Thank you for your interesting idea

[ginger mcale 11]

Your graphical artist skills amaze me NordKindchen! :eek::)

@Ginger McAle: Sry to say but you only sharpened the midrange texture with your method

Yeah i know :(. I just wanted to report this here cause its related and helps a little bit. What it shows us is that the Anisotropic Filtering in the game could get improved (without performance loss).

@GingerMcAle:How hard is the impact on performace?

I took a look again cause i missed earlier today to keep an eye on the FPS counter. There were no FPS difference between ingame Anisotropic Filtering (AF) disabled and ultra and no FPS difference between that to forced 16x AF in graphic driver. :confused: That suprised me.

I did also found a strange thing. In the graphical options is the sampling option. With that you can change the 3d render resolution to get a high form of anti aliasing. When i changed it from 100% to 200% it doubled the render resolution (less aliasing but no change for the textures as expected). When i went from 100% to 300% it didnt change the render resolution somehow (the aliasing was the same as with 100%) but it changed the texture LOD bias i think:

Sampling 100%: http://imageshack.us/a/img543/8237/jryu.png

Sampling 300%: http://imageshack.us/a/img834/1530/iw7e.png

AF is forced to 16x in this comparison screenshots through the graphical driver interface (AMD CCC) already.

I dont want to play with Sampling be at 300% cause its unplayable and the close detail texture on the ground is overdone with this setting (texture aliasing in motion, not seen on an screenshot) but the midrange texture looks nice that way and the distant texture is not good but better compared to sampling 100%.

Conclusion:

- graphical option Sampling is broken for me at 300% but did demonstrate me how the game looks with the negative texture LOD bias

- texture LOD bias adjustements for the midrange and distant texture could bring a graphical improvement, but a developer would need to keep an eye on texture aliasing of close detail and midrange texture.

I wanted to try then a negative texture LOD bias via ATI tray tools and RadeonPro but i sadly didnt get ATT to run and RadeonPro did not show an effect ingame for the texture LOD bias setting :(

I will keep trying. Want to see how the game looks with different negative LOD bias settings.

[fraczek 4]

to test the 4x size fps impact side of things.. couldn't we just use a bigger file (it doesnt need to have the nice grafy - just the size - and test the performance hit?)

theoretically, should be easy* to test, no? Just upsampling the whole default one 4x and adding some quick random noise (to account for GFX cards tex compression possibly skewing the results). Might see then whether your computer coremelts or not :)

*) disclaimer - I have no idea how the satmask and various texture layers are binarised in the [island].pbo and how the texture size relates to terrain grid size...

[Sniperwolf572 758]

Did it, so what?

It was kind of a problem with Cherno back then, greatly improved with the LandTex mod, got worst in A3 since Alpha day 1 and now, close to release they come to the conclusion that it needs improvements and may be fixed anytime on the future (or NOT!) ?

I know things aren't as easy as they look and there are many (legacy) problems to fix but some things just pop up to the eyes so clearly that makes me wonder what type of priorities they have there. Even with the changes of lead, scope of the project and all that, the terrain was a sure thing since they started A3 so no excuses on that.

I find it a bit strange that the moment a dev shows up showing interest in improving it, after such amount of time this has been an eyesore, you show them the middle finger. How is that supposed to be helpful?

[gammadust 12]

^^ toughening Dev's skin maybe?

But if i understand right... the latest NordKindchens updates are a derivative of his original idea, right? We're not exacly talking about updating the engine to allow a different detail texture depending on local terrain surface. The lastest has been a sort of workaround to "prebake" into the stratis sattelite textures all the detail one would have if the engine was doing it natively...

amiright?

In any case i am just amazed... :)

Edited August 21, 2013 by gammadust

[Sniperwolf572 758]

I believe this is what NordKindchen is proposing:

[gammadust 12]

yes... i understand his original concept, but as it looks, at a lack of better solution, he is doing that "manualy" instead of letting the engine do it dynamicaly.

[VanZant 48]

Hi! talking about performance and with numbers ...

I have the whole island patched, including the sea zones. All the satellite maps, normal maps, and the midrange are 4k. That is 129 huge textures and 1,4 GB of addon.

My hardware is i7 2600k OC 4,5 Ghz, 32 GB ram, GTX590, 2x SSD RAID0 (1 GB/s), XFI Elite Pro, ...

In the infantry showcase i get a solid 75-80 fps at the moment of the first shoot out. Without the addon i get the same, maybe more 80 than 75, but that difference is irrelevant.

In the editor i get 100-150 fps with or without the addon.

I have never had a game crash by this reason.

The Bad:

4k textures are really badass. Without the proper hardware you are going to notice stuttering and frame skipping.

Maybe from a certain level the fps will not very affected, but the memory amount, bandwidth and such things will suffer. You can play at 70 fps and meanwhile notice stuttering, so the fps are not always the most important.

The Good:

Once done the 4k addon, making a 2k version or 1k should not take more than an hour. For people with older hardware.

If NordKindchen decides to continue and release his work, i'm not sure that everyone can use it. Some people will notice some artifacts, some will be OK, and those with the proper hardware will be amazed xD.

The same occurs with very well known addons that improve effects, explosions, ... so nothing new in this world.

By the way, an amazing texturing job and tests NordKindchen. ;)

To our beloved devs: please give us the ability to tweak the lightning of the soldiers dynamically using scripts. We will do the method if necessary, but a single brightness multiplier for every unit would be one of the most wanted solutions for concealing. :rolleyes:

[NordKindchen 12]

Oje oje...so much to answer in each post^^

First: What I am doing at the moment is a "derivative" as you (Gammadust) said yes. I am trying to put in the detail by hand. It takes longer than creating the detail via texture sets.

Also it has less resolution than the midrange textures will deliever.

On the other hand it would still profit from the integration of several different midrange textures. And both together would deliever an even better result!

Second: Towards the testing of the performance. Yes it should be easy to test. But its not as simple as simply increasing the size - because Texview ...I dont know the word...it crops it together. Like winzip does with a file. Or a jpg. Only that its loss-free as far as I can tell.

Therefore a 4096x4096 pic which is all white will result in an ingame file with only one white pixel. Because thats all the information that is needed.

I hope you understand what I mean.

But if you put randomn stuff into that 4096x4096 pic then its good enough to test stability.

In the end: Vanzant allready tested it and hes got no problems and no noticable fps drops. So I think its safe to say its a stable approach and has a small (if at all) fps impact.

@Sniperwolf

I really like your graphic! And you nearly got it right. Only difference is that we need a different logic map for textures. Just because it wouldnt look that nice. But this procedure can be automated too, as I described in the OP. Simply by selecting colour with a tolerance and giving certain colour ranges certain default textures.

If you could add that to your graphic I would link that pic in my OP! Its quite nice=)

@Googlava Yes if I understand you right, then I think you understood me right, too;) If you deliever the system then I would be glad to create the needed logic map and textures.

Best regards!

[gammadust 12]

Hi! talking about performance and with numbers ...

I have the whole island patched, including the sea zones. All the satellite maps, normal maps, and the midrange are 4k. That is 129 huge textures and 1,4 GB of addon.

This is why i was asking exacly... the mod will be a huge download, not that i would bother myself.

To our beloved devs: please give us the ability to tweak the lightning of the soldiers dynamically using scripts. We will do the method if necessary, but a single brightness multiplier for every unit would be one of the most wanted solutions for concealing. :rolleyes:

This is also a great suggestion, can't tell how feasible it is for BI to go with it. Is there a ticket for me to vote?