Terrain Improvement (dev branch)

[SissiSaatana 1]

Well uhh, he hasn't yet finished the mod, you can't really say "is able to surpass". Texturing the islands at the resolution he is doing is going to months, if not years.

ymmm your right, but well watch the screenshots and make your conclusions ... And nordkinchen talked that stratis would require 1-2 months of work, don't really now how many working hours a day that means ... But as bis having professionals working regular 40h / week (at least I think :D) they imho should have the manpower for this and as watching the screenshots this is imho something they really should do, as mid range textures are being the most lacking part of the graphical looks atm. + this would also have huge game play effect as stealth play would come more viable option

[maddogx 13]

Some useless spam posts deleted and the offenders' posting privileges in this thread revoked. If the people in question intend on making sensible contributions to this discussion at some point in the future, they can contact a moderator first.

[el_muerko 0]

So, where do we stand on seeing this fix in the game? Are BIS considering patching? It's hard to fathom why they wouldst want to make their game look better.

[CaptainObvious 95]

So, where do we stand on seeing this fix in the game? Are BIS considering patching? It's hard to fathom why they wouldst want to make their game look better.

Does someone really think it's about Bohemia NOT wanting to do this? :confused:

[EDcase 87]

I'm using BadBenson's texture enhancement and that's already a great improvement over vanilla look.

Try it out: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=19524

Why can't BIS just do that as standard...?

[fred41 42]

... worth reading and maybe this procedural approach offers a solution to improve midrange textures for arma?

http://web.unbc.ca/~bolch/publications/DachsbaAl06_VMV.pdf

Edited October 22, 2013 by Fred41

[wiresnsnakes 1]

It seems Nordkindchens idea results in far to much work, to archive it any time soon, even I would be happy to see it happen.

Overall Bensons approach makes the the distant environment much better, without much effort. Based on his results you could maybe optimise it a little.

At least till BI find a better solution I would like if they use this solution.

I played the campaign with the standard-textures and was again shocked (...cause I installed Bensons Textures only for Altis at the release of Arma 3).

[SaBrE_UK 0]

As I reckon many in this thread will be interested in this, check out Gamma Dust's work in this area; he has managed a script to dynamically change the land textures on the fly depending on field of view. Check it out:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?151752-Alternative-Midrange-Detail-Texture-experiments

[suprememodder 11]

the bis' textures are even worse in the new episode release. is this some type of hardware controlled rendering? please change it back. we can't have this awesoe system, but at least we don't have to look at blurry mess.

---------- Post added at 06:48 ---------- Previous post was at 06:40 ----------

One foolish/entitled person is doing that.

to that person who shall remain unnamed:

it's not really nord's fault that the game is so flawed and lazily put together that he no longer has any desire to waste his time on it.

i can sympathize because i planned to do a full set of historical soldiers with right equipment, armor, baked normals from high poly, etc. but then i saw the lazy animations, the shallow "sim" aspects of the game and thought, what's the point. i won't be able to enjoy my units when they're flopping around spinning 180 while hovering on the ground.

oh and the optimization is still terrible.

[sqb-sma 66]

+ this.

As I stated before the game samples all my textures down to standard size after a certain amount of time. And only a restart will reload them to their old size.

+Only that this is my own free time I am putting into it.

Its more like you are working in a food distribution center on a volantary basis and suddenly you experience that the center only sells bad food. So you decide to drop for the time beeing.

Its that simple: If Arma has the potential to be what I want it to be - then I am willing to put all the time in it that I can afford. But as it is now - I wont be playing the game unless there is some big improvement in the effects part.

And if I am not going to play the game than the huge amount of time that is going to be needed to finish the mod is gone to waste. Altis will take months of work to complete. Even for Stratis I was counting one month at least.

on top of that I am a student and need to work on other stuff as well - not to mention my social life;)

And to the effects: I cannot say often enough how bad they are in my eyes. (apart from muzzle flashes and sunglare - these are acutally great) For example the sabot impact effect is nothing more than the simplest of things you could have ever put into a game.

I think Ive shown enough support for the game in the last year. If the devs improve the part that are important to me/ if blastcore improves them enough then I am back on the stage.

And I just wanted to keep you guys up to date.

I cannot agree more. Thanks for all your hard work NordKindchen, you've done something very few on the forums here believed possible from a modder. Just look at those screenshots! The detail is superb! Whether or not you want to continue work on this at any future date, you've achieved something great already, and shown the community what's possible. Oh and by god, those effects really do need work. You're completely right. The engine's sprite management is godawful, preventing PR style effects as well.

BIS has managed some truly awesome updates from A2 to A3, but I still feel like in some ways there was minimal effort. A large team (such as the talented people we are/have payed for this game) should be able to knock out stratis at least in a few months. Especially seeing the huge progress nord has made in a few months by himself!

Anyway, thanks again. It makes me wish I knew how to do this myself, then perhaps more people from the forums could work on it together...

[dnk 13]

Hope you come back to it, Nord, but I know this sort of thing can take literally 100s of hours and is just truly boring as hell work, so I understand your hesitance. You certainly don't owe us anything. I wanted to do a very, very similar mod to another game, but gave up after about 15 hours of work since there was at least another 100 to go and I just wasn't that in to the game.

To people bashing the devs, which is quite fun at times, let's put it this way: they weren't sitting around playing with their cats all the past 16 months. We've gotten the best they could do with the resources they have had. It's clear they can't make everything 100% perfect and graphically on par with AAA games and engines. Personally, I find Altis to be a huge improvement over Takistan, though of course not without its issues (like, why is every farm random grass/shrubs instead of crop groundclutter?) and inadequacies. But the map is a huge improvement itself, and I'm really impressed by how the mapmakers have progressed in creating more and more realistic and detailed terrains since OFP with each new iteration of the series.

Anyway, Nord, I hope you can come back to this in time. I hope even more the devs hire you to do this, since a task of this scope deserve some compensation. If you want to make it a paid mod, I'd happily pay $5 or so for access if the end result is as good as the screens show.

[jumpinghubert 49]

sorry wrong thread :p

[Liberty4508 10]

I'm no expert on the engine, but would it be possible to add a procedural terrain rendering system similar to Outerra's without rewriting the guts of the engine?

[Primarch 10]

I'm no expert on the engine, but would it be possible to add a procedural terrain rendering system similar to Outerra's without rewriting the guts of the engine?

No, it would not be.

[dnk 13]

How would you do that without basically creating a new engine?

[progamer 14]

I'm no expert on the engine, but would it be possible to add a procedural terrain rendering system similar to Outerra's without rewriting the guts of the engine?

Outerra has a bunch of bad rendering issues they try to hide. Just look at the road a few meters ahead, it's not straight and it moves side to side violently.

[Liberty4508 10]

Maybe Outerra is an extreme example. I'm thinking of just adding slightly more details to the terrain geometry by some method that does it dynamically. The micro-terrain details added wouldn't even have to be enough to need to communicate across a multiplayer network. Maybe make it a GPU task.

[ScratcH334 10]

Outerra has a bunch of bad rendering issues they try to hide. Just look at the road a few meters ahead, it's not straight and it moves side to side violently.

I don't think they're trying to hide anything, the engine is just far from finished and it's just a couple of guys working on it.

[chrisb 196]

I don't think they're trying to hide anything, the engine is just far from finished and it's just a couple of guys working on it.

Got to agree there.

I like Outerra. Anteworld is fun, its in its infancy, but like anything, time should improve things. Its pretty epic in its scale and will be interesting to watch maybe 2-3yrs ahead, if they manage to keep it going.

Some nice vehicles, aircraft, buildings and others, appearing too.

[kremator 1065]

Anyway .... back to how to improve Arma3 .....

[jgbtl292 0]

point of interests in the terrain grid would be nice for hight detail spots . such as for a big flat field no more hundreds of triangles only 6 or 10 triangles. and the saved triangles on the left and right side for an detailed dig drainage ^^

that would be a big step forward. :) for more details in the map, more interest points and cover spots for soldiers.

the other is ....

more different clutters on the map - all time the same grass clutters. i think in and around a village more cultural landscape. short uniform grass , green meadows with flowers in the garden or outside for unused field. planting fields with different types. ( current everywhere the same gras clutter - wild - cultural - field - garden from a house - Forest - industrial, airfield.... rather monotonous current . all the diversity that one sees from the air on the floor because it is nothing more for the eye. that is sad and makes the landscape boring for the eyes. :j:

now i fly with a copter see green fields and others - and as soldier on the ground on the same spot i see brown hotchpotch texture with a little green inside and the same grass clutter as everywhere and from the sky i see a green field ^^ - that give the landscape a very boring look !

more differences in the ground texture and more different grass clutter , for the different terrain types . which makes everything look alive and varied.

more varied trees ( none of the other one is larger, thicker , smaller , higher ) and more higher trees .

this would make the island more interesting in many parts of.

Edited November 18, 2013 by JgBtl292

[dnk 13]

Fully agreed with the above. It would be nice to have areas (like in cities) with higher poly counts. It would be nice to have better groundclutter. I would say, we should have taller groundclutter on average, and also crop groundclutter for farms, which currently are all 100% fallow and overrun by weeds on Altis, and this makes me worry very strongly for the island's economy...

[tremanarch 6]

Just wanted to share anothe pic.

The thing is: I am a bit disappointed by the state of the game. I was so sure things like the explosions and the vehicle wrecks were just placeholders. But they werent.

So for now I stopped the work on the midrange replacement mod.

It is now all depending on how good Blastcore 3 will be. If blast core manages to improve the effects to a state that I can enjoy I am going to work on the mod again. Till then I cannot enjoy the game and therefore wont put more effort in it.

Just thought you should know that.

Best regards!

wow what a nice pic. and you say the engine scales down the textures automatically? Yeah I noticed this since ArmA 2 too...

I guess the devs have to make this texture stuff - modders cant do it really well - but it looks so nice.

[maturin 12]

As many people have said, war is impossible without roadside drainage ditches.

Localized high-poly land meshes are a must.

[Bouben 3]

As many people have said, war is impossible without roadside drainage ditches.

Localized high-poly land meshes are a must.

If only AI could use them efficiently.