Terrain Improvement (dev branch)

[St. Jimmy 272]

I think that was alredy introduced, at least you have the possability to achive exact such effect.

Oh cool. So it's this?

"Added: Clutter coloring by satellite map can be adjusted"

I've missed that one

[badluckburt 78]

Oh cool. So it's this?

"Added: Clutter coloring by satellite map can be adjusted"

I've missed that one

Does anyone happen to know how it works? I don't think it's documented anywhere.

[bad benson 1733]

Could you implement the grass tech from DayZ to Arma? It makes the grass look much more rich when it has variations of greens and not just the satmap green or where ever it takes the color.

Examples:...

oh that's nice! i bet you could already do similar stuff using procedural textures as layers inside your material. not sure how capable it is in arma though. so far i only used it for water stuff.

What the grass needs is specularity. The grass should shine when hit by the sun. Otherwise it looks flat and weird.

This is already the case for other vegetation (trees, etc).

i tend to agree. although i think it needs to be done right. i like how it's done on arma 3 trees but the specularity intensity needs some slight tweaking imho. although it could be a certain species they are trying to depict that has really shiney leaves.

i remember dwarden mentioning though that the feature was used in arma 1 too (on trees) and wasn't very popular. too bad.

[twisted 128]

Talking about lighting and specularity, be nice to see terrain actually casting shadows. with the new terrain coming end of the year it'd be the perfect time to introduce this and other refinements to help the evolution of the game.

Edited June 12, 2015 by twisted
cellphone English sucks

[bad benson 1733]

oh that reminds me of something semi ontopic.

increased global specularity of materials when it's raining. tbh i would already love just the terrain materials looking wet for a start. it's way better than nothing. rain just feels way too dry. i want to feel like i have to go inside or seek shelter under a tree when it's pouring.

i actually have been playing with a scripted solution to this that overlays a transparent polyplane that adapts to the ground. it looked pretty cool but it failed in terms of performance because it had to be totally hacky. meaning it was an object that follows the player. and i think the combination of updating its position and thus having to rerun the ground adaption algorhythm a lot was too much.

so a less hacky straight forward solution would be awesome. even if it's just the possibility to access the terrain material spec values for modders.

[sniper pilot 36]

Talking about lighting and specularity, be nice to see terrain actually casting shadows. with the new retain coming end of the year it's be the perfect time to intriduce this and other refinements to help three evolution of the game.

This was in ArmA 1. Very sad how many features we have lost over the generations.

[DancZer 65]

deleted

[blackpixxel 53]

Shadows of clouds should be considered as well, they can make the terrain look alot more interresting

[bad benson 1733]

oh ye good point. there's also some great tricks to achieve fake cloud shadows to keep it performance friendly. you basically use an animated procedural texture on hte terrain mesh. perlin noise or something.

[fabio_chavez 103]

it would allready be a huge improvement if the cloud detection would really work so that you had really two different sunlight intensitys according to wether sun i hidden behind a cloud or not, the lighing config is implicating such a function but ingame its not really working that way... i was hoping for that for so long and i have serval WIP configs that would bring a lot more variation, dramatic lighting and awesome dynamic atmospheric effects with just this little improvement!

could release this tomorrow but it isnt really working because the dropshadows etc remain the same wether sun is hidden or not, which defeats the purpose kind of... :/

Edited June 28, 2015 by Fabio_Chavez

[NeMeSiS 11]

it would allready be a huge improvement if the cloud detection would really work so that you had really two different sunlight intensitys according to wether sun i hidden behind a cloud or not, the lighing config is implicating such a function but ingame its not really working that way... i was hoping for that for so long and i have serval WIP configs that would bring a lot more variation, dramatic lighting and awesome dynamic atmospheric effects with just this little improvement!

could release this tomorrow but it isnt really working because the dropshadows etc remain the same wether sun is hidden or not, which defeats the purpose kind of... :/

What did you change exactly?

[fabio_chavez 103]

[edited] would be interessting to see if one can tell by simply looking at the result!

p.s. i forgot about this old demo video, watch it through and you can see exactly in the end what i mean about the cloud detection...

Edited July 2, 2015 by Fabio_Chavez

[fabio_chavez 103]

maybe googlava will share some insights at some point in the future, if mappers can expect some new tech features that might come along with tanoa?

"nice to have" eyecandy stuff aside, there has been a popular and persistent dissatisfaction with terrain shadowing of objects but for me the only really unlovely shortcomming in arma3 world simulation was the experience while flying (e.g. flying in a void of distorted clouds with no horizont is more surrealistic than realistic ;) ), i wonder what we can still look forward to within the lifecycle of arma 3?

[tremanarch 6]

I made a comparison Video and zoomed in GIFS of GTA V. In my eyes they use many tricks in GTA V (mostly very hilly landscape to hide the Object on distance problem. But they also use some nice tricks - I think could be applied aswell to ArmA 3 possibly:

They load in the grass Objects when you zoom in with the scope dynamically.

this is the Youtube Video (is still uploading though)

And these are some smaller GIFs:

GIF 1 GIF 2

Additionally these are 4 screenshots - each taken at a higher Zoom - more difficult to see the bushes / grass popping in:

- 1 - - 2 - - 3 - - 4 -

GTA Vs Ground textures look very bad though - I dont use max settings (more like medium - high) - as I only have 2 GB VRAM.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

I made a comparison Video and zoomed in GIFS of GTA V. In my eyes they use many tricks in GTA V (mostly very hilly landscape to hide the Object on distance problem. But they also use some nice tricks - I think could be applied aswell to ArmA 3 possibly:

They load in the grass Objects when you zoom in with the scope dynamically.

this is the Youtube Video (is still uploading though)

And these are some smaller GIFs:

GIF 1 GIF 2

Additionally these are 4 screenshots - each taken at a higher Zoom - more difficult to see the bushes / grass popping in:

- 1 - - 2 - - 3 - - 4 -

GTA Vs Ground textures look very bad though - I dont use max settings (more like medium - high) - as I only have 2 GB VRAM.

That makes PERFECT sense. Why the heck hasn't anyone thought of this? Lol

So your seeing the grass through the scope only at the clear distance in which your zoomed at, thus removing the grass where your not looking, meaning that what you see looks fantastic, and what you can't see doesn't matter, because it isn't rendering, which means it's great performance wise as well. Brilliant.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

That makes PERFECT sense. Why the heck hasn't anyone thought of this? Lol

So your seeing the grass through the scope only at the clear distance in which your zoomed at, thus removing the grass where your not looking, meaning that what you see looks fantastic, and what you can't see doesn't matter, because it isn't rendering, which means it's great performance wise as well. Brilliant.

This was proposed when this first became an issue in Arma 1, but the core problem was, you'd still see the person with the naked eye/lower zoom when the grass isn't there. A ghillie sniper at a distance in the grass would still look like a lone bush with a lower zoom factor.

GTA Vs Ground textures look very bad though - I dont use max settings (more like medium - high) - as I only have 2 GB VRAM.

Yes, but only within the very close distance. On the other hand, their midrange textures look perfect. While the long range they are similar in quality to Arma.

Up close: Arma

Midrange: GTA

Long range: Similar

Tho it's easier to say GTA has better overall presentation of terrain because while yeah you can say up close is kinda bad, it's consistent and there are no situations like this that make you want to throw up (Screenshot by NordKindchen).

[DancZer 65]

That makes PERFECT sense. Why the heck hasn't anyone thought of this? Lol

So your seeing the grass through the scope only at the clear distance in which your zoomed at, thus removing the grass where your not looking, meaning that what you see looks fantastic, and what you can't see doesn't matter, because it isn't rendering, which means it's great performance wise as well. Brilliant.

I did almost 2 years ago, but i my case i want shadows like this. :)

I made a feature request ticket too: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=16421

[inlesco 233]

I speculate many people already lost any faith in further terrain development, unless we're talking Arma 4 or Enfusion engine which has almost everything reorganized or developed from scratch.

P.S. One can hope for Tanoa expansion to bring in very noticeable improvements. For instance, non-fixed terrain grid or high-res terrain insets on demand... Talk about dreams!

[chortles 263]

P.S. One can hope for Tanoa expansion to bring in very noticeable improvements. For instance, non-fixed terrain grid or high-res terrain insets on demand... Talk about dreams!

So far there's some interesting possibilities for Tanoa, what I'm not expecting is for those to be "backported" into Altis and Stratis... I mean that in the sense that (as a DLC instead of a standalone expansion) the base game's engine will have the terrain capability upgrades and thus will be available to modders, I just don't foresee the current Arma 3 leadership prioritizing upgrade of Altis/Stratis "after the fact" and allocating devs/resources accordingly.

[tremanarch 6]

shouldnt this thread be moved into general where more people can see it?

[neodammerung 8]

Remember this post ? :

Dec 5 2013

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?149905-Terrain-Improvement-(dev-branch)&p=2571150&viewfull=1#post2571150

You can try it yourself, just download it, load it and check how Stratis could have looked.

Just a little reminder that you can achieve incredibly awesome results on the midrange texture without any new tech.

Instead we still have this watercolor painting ugly mid-range texture and the only "solution" for now is the midrange terrain texture replacement by Bad Benson.

I hoped we'd get something better for Tanoa but seeing the last trailer, looks like it will still be the same watercolor painting texture :(

NordKindchen mid-range texture mod made in 2013 :

Printscreens made today...

Cliclk on pictures for High-Res.

[alanford 27]

thats so sad. BETTER WORK ON UNARMED SPRINTING

[twisted 128]

Remember this post ? :

amazing. want. performance difference much?

[Fushko 59]

thats so sad. BETTER WORK ON UNARMED SPRINTING

Surely animators must have something to do with freaking terrain, right?

[neodammerung 8]

thats so sad. BETTER WORK ON UNARMED SPRINTING

any work on animations is always a great improvement and it's not the same dev fixing animations then the one in charge of textures I guess.

But Arma 3 has been out for more than 2 years so I understand BIS don't want to enhance Altis nor Stratis but improvement on Tanoa would be great.

amazing. want. performance difference much?

I didn't noticed any difference, I guess it's because it's only mid-range texture being reworked. Edited July 17, 2015 by Neodammerung