Terrain Improvement (dev branch)

[Ekko 1]

it means blurry textures will never be fixed (

Yepp, Bis doesn't seem to give one shit about it, they like keeping it old. The ancient bipod technology is ofcourse an exception, they don't want any of that, or the ability to jump like most humans have done for thousands of years... (and a good number of gaming years)

[nikiforos 450]

I can't play on Stratis without Picolly's landtex mod. It was exactly the same with Chernarus, ugly textures without the landtex mod.

It's a shame IMO that we must rely in different player mods to enjoy the game.

[VanZant 48]

These are some testings. The detail is 16x compared to the original Stratis map, and the mid-range texture is 64x.

Right now the engine can handle such level of detail, but not by using satellite images. Sadly the BIS designers do not have enought time to paint manually all the terrain.

Even it is possible faking ambient occlusion in a automated way for trees, bushes, ...

Edited August 11, 2013 by VanZant

[EuroSlave 1]

Van, those look pretty nice I gotta say

[Anachoretes 10]

Yeah, this is much more realistic views(but looks more like May,June..sun and and volcanic past make this land dry-looking ).

Edited August 10, 2013 by Anachoretes

[gliptal 25]

These are some testings. The detail is 4x compared to the original Stratis map, and the mid-range texture is 64x.

Right now the engine can handle such level of detail, but not by using satellite images. Sadly the BIS designers do not have enought time to paint manually all the terrain.

Even it is possible faking ambient occlusion in a automated way for trees, bushes, ...

http://imageshack.us/scaled/thumb/713/zyni.jpg

http://imageshack.us/scaled/thumb/580/o3yf.jpg

http://imageshack.us/scaled/thumb/194/xbel.jpg

http://imageshack.us/scaled/thumb/33/q5p7.jpg

http://imageshack.us/scaled/thumb/543/fbj9.jpg

Am I the only one that can't close the freaking Imageshack spam popup to see the images?

Looks good in the small thumbnails, I guess there is no way you can make a Mod?

Yay!

[VanZant 48]

Yeah, this is much more realistic views(but looks more like May,June..sun and and volcanic past make this land dry-looking ).

These are from the same set. More green ...

Am I the only one that can't close the freaking Imageshack spam popup to see the images?

Looks good in the small thumbnails, I guess there is no way you can make a Mod?

Painting the whole terrain is insane. Too much time, too little reward ;)

Edited August 10, 2013 by VanZant

[Anachoretes 10]

VanZant

Vert fresh. But Efstratios produce more "dry" impression

[xendance 3]

VanZant

Vert fresh. But Efstratios produce more "dry" impression

Depends on the season I guess:

Google maps ref

[tremanarch 6]

so you manually painted a lndscape texture. is it able to blend in with the sat map at higher ranges when you take off with a plane! if so this would be the best of the two worlds. if not this is still good and I would like to have the option to play with it.

how long does it take to paint this?

maybe we can do this as community?

[marcuskac 10]

Wow, this idea of yours i just superb.

And i am sure they will implement it into the game sooner or later.

[NordKindchen 12]

@tremnarch theoretically it would be possible to paint the whole island.

If the resolution was high enough than it would even be "quite simple" to take the satmap - increase the resolution and lay over the according textures like I did in my example.

This way you wouldnt need to paint all by hand.

Still theres the time factor and some hardware reglementations.

Time:

For example to look at your work: I had a look into map making some time ago. Its quite possible that it takes AGES to be able to see your changes to the texture ingame because of the time it takes to compile the map. That means it could take extremely long to be able to see small changes on the map. Even if the work itself would be easy and quick - this would make an adjustment of the texture take ages.

However maybe the bulldozer view is good enough to see the details of the map ingame - we need an experienced map maker to answer that question.

hardware reglementations:

The workflow I followed to create a map needed the satmap to be put into the machinerie IN ONE PIECE. Now a satmap of stratis of the size needed to put in all details is 3gigabyte of data minimum. I was not even able to save the file without error because windows doesnt support this file size...

Now Altis is about 10 times bigger...

However this map would then get cut into little pieces of 1024 pixels each.

A workaround could be to insert a satmap with smaller resolution and then increase the resolution of each little piece. IF THIS WORKS...well I dont know.

Then again: The examples we saw above were made with 16 times the resolution as he said. The current resoltion is about 1 pixel per sqm so his one is about 16px per sqm. I think the resoltuion he used is quite good. But Stratis is 10 times smaller than Altis. We dont know if it will work with Altis.

In the end: I would be more than willing to create a big satmap with more details - as long as I get somebody to tell me how to get it work.

I am an engeneer student and need to do a lot for the university. I think I showed enough how much I love what this game wants to be. I put allready more than 30 hours into figuring out how to improve things in Arma.

But I have other things to do in my life too.

So if somebody can tell me how to alter the textures and get it running (and if its doable) - then I will do this with great pleasure.

Greetz

Ps: Lets not forget guys that I even pointed out this system and its possibilites in the Opening Post^^ Just saying that I really thought this through well:P

Solution_1: Increase the size of the satmap

This is the simpliest solution to this problem but comes in with a whole lot of problems.

But first the advantages:

Advantages

The advantages are simple. You get more px/m so you get more details. Basic math. Also this will render the different distances EVEN BETTER.

This would of course be the way to go if there was no performance hit and if you had all the manpower youd want. You could draw infinite special details on every part of the island and it would look great - if the resolution was big enoug.

Disadvantages

1.A goddamn whole lot of work....Increasing the detail enough to make it count will be a huge amount of work and basically means recreating Stratis (and probably Altis) since the satelite layer resolution is likely to be final after the first creation of the map.

2. Every detail would require to be painted individually making the progress even more time consuming.

3. perhaps not even feasible to increase the satmap resolution enough while still keeping the game playable.

4. Since Arma is 32bit it wont profit from much RAM - therefore this will be even more performance intense. This means there must be a solution for lower Res PCs - maybe this could be achieved by differently resoluted satmaps. But maybe not since the satmap currently is saved in a non compressing procedure.

Since these are a lot of disadvantages I spent a lot of time thinking about another solution. And I think I found one!

Edited August 13, 2013 by NordKindchen

[KyleK29 1]

@tremnarch theoretically it would be possible to paint the whole island.

If the resolution was high enough than it would even be "quite simple" to take the satmap - increase the resolution and lay over the according textures like I did in my example.

This way you wouldnt need to paint all by hand.

Still theres the time factor and some hardware reglementations.

Time:

For example to look at your work: I had a look into map making some time ago. Its quite possible that it takes AGES to be able to see your changes to the texture ingame because of the time it takes to compile the map. That means it could take extremely long to be able to see small changes on the map. Even if the work itself would be easy and quick - this would make an adjustment of the texture take ages.

hardware reglementations:

The workflow I followed to create a map needed the satmap to be put into the machinerie IN ONE PIECE. Now a satmap of stratis of the size needed to put in all details is 3gigabyte of data minimum. I was not even able to save the file without error because windows doesnt support this file size...

Now Altis is about 10 times bigger...

However this map would then get cut into little pieces of 1024 pixels each.

Not familiar with ARMA's maps. But are you talking about time and hardware requirements for the editing? Windows x64 should be able to handle over 3 gig files - the 3 gig limit of Windows was because of the RAM limitation of x86. I used to work with massive 4 gig+ files when I edited maps for previous games. Other games have terrain tools that will automatically paint/blend a texture/color/etc based on terrain elevation and other user parameters (ie: a severe slope indicates a rock texture). I can see those being adapted. The mapper then goes in and edits these base layers with more detail manually. Such tools to slice and recompile large textures exist(ed).

Is the compiling you're talking about a one-off thing (after each change)?

I do think repainting is a good solution as shown in the photos. Commercial satmaps have *never* offered enough detail to be used in game, they serve best as a reference photo for something to be painted over. It's like taking a picture of a gun from the side and using that picture as texture on a model - light sources, shadows, focal length, all of those show. Doesn't look right from close up. Using multiple detail layers is also decent and can yield excellent results when combined with higher-resolution base textures and a logic map for the details. This is how other games do it. BF1942 originally had only one detail texture per map, that was later expanded on in the sequels/expansions as they introduced logic maps to handle sounds/physics/environmental.

Remember, you can take "Detail" textures and turn them into brushes within Photoshop. This would allow you to paint detail over the base layers.

It'd be a labor of love, that's for sure. I'd imagine it'd have to be done piece by piece. I have access to powerful 3d rendering machines, so who knows, I may be able to assist with that if it was taking too long to compile.

Edited August 13, 2013 by KyleK29

[NordKindchen 12]

@Kylek29 I worked as a professional artist in the gaming industries for 3 years creating background environments for adventures and several related stuff;) Thanks for your insight in photoshop but I can assure you I know 90% of all shortkeys by heart.

I am very familiar with texturing. But I havent worked on a map for Arma yet.

I can tell you that saving a satmap for stratis with 16px/sqm did not work on my pc. Apart from that it took up to 4 minutes to save the largest possible file format for that satmap.

The thing is I am not that experienced with map making in Arma 3 and therefore dont know which is possible concerning the satmap.

I would however love to take on that task. The nice thing is: Its possible to take on this task bit by bit. You could change small parts and leave the rest like it is.

Oh and: I cant say how disappointed I am about BIs that they release a game with midrange textures, explosion effects and vehicle wrecks like this. Id love to not say this but I just am. I was allways optimistic but the quote of the actual sitrep says it all:

"Internally we are going to be on a development lock down very soon and up to release. This effectively means we will only make important fixes to release content."...

I still hope they will improve it in later patches. But...well...

[Smurf 12]

Would be nice and fair to know from BIS if they're planning anything on this front.

[KyleK29 1]

@Kylek29 I worked as a professional artist in the gaming industries for 3 years creating background environments for adventures and several related stuff;) Thanks for your insight in photoshop but I can assure you I know 90% of all shortkeys by heart.

I assumed as much based on your examples in the OP, wasn't meaning to come off as if you didn't know this stuff already. Was just stating it for others who might be considering doing it as part of a community effort as it's one of the easier methods to paint onto a base layer. When I was editing large files, I usually had to do them on a 60lb gorilla (16 xeon-core, 24gig, quadro powered).

Sadly, I doubt BIS will do anything. It'll probably be left up to the mod-community to fill the gaps for a lot of things. Priorities and such. That wouldn't be such a bad system, if the best feature producing mods could somehow be spun into the official branch for patching to the whole community (to reduce fragmenting). Or an auto-download on server join was included, like in some games (Source? I can't remember what game does it) - a simple "The server you're joining has X installed, you must install this to proceed. Yes/no?" message .. it'd check a mod-database for a git-like link (so it doesn't hammer the server).

Edited August 14, 2013 by KyleK29

[wiresnsnakes 1]

For the future: How high is the chance for proper midrange textures - proper means, not look pretty but make the conditions realistic/as at close ranges for concealment - and a shadowdraw-distance for all relevant ranges (visibal enemys through the scope with the highest zoom) from BI or the community?

I tried for months(!) to enjoy the game and everything in this game, besides the influences for gameplay from the visuals differences at the different ranges, made me bother. But I just cant deal with it that you are far easier to spot at high distances and can do shit to act stealthy, besides being sunken in the grass-layer.

That there was no repsonse to Nordkinchen great idea and the implentation of shadows/a compensation for the relevant distances (i mean WTF? the soldiers even get highlighted by the sun!!!) was a clear indicator that there isnt the will or the skill to fix that early on.

Would been nice to hear "Yeah, No, there will be nothing", so I could just accept the conditions and just delete the game.

There argued by an other aspect, that they wouldnt do something, if not right. I think they never used the zoom/scope.

I would be happy to return to the game if would be fixed, actually it could be one of my favs.

Till then I just return to "cod-kid-arcade"-games with engines that can deliver functional conditions for their purpose.

[Niklas 1]

There is mods that are a few mbs big that increase midrange texture quality and it looks so well. What exactly keeps BI from improving them?

[Minoza 11]

Check this thread:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?149905-Sophisticated-considerations-on-how-to-get-rid-of-the-blurry-mid-range-textures&highlight=sophisticated

That's what we need.

[NordKindchen 12]

No worrys Kylek! It didnt took it down the wrong pipe;)

Actually - because I lost my hope in BIS fixing the issue I took the hard way and am now working on a midrange replacement(a big thanks towards VanZant for inspirationa nd advice) with 16times the detail. Sadly even 16 times more detail than standard arma is still less than BF3 for example has as default.

I am planning on recreating a small part of the island first and then I will decide if its worth to continue the work or not.

Anyways - here is a first peek at the difference the detail increase brings:

Heres the big one

Greetings

[-ghost-tf 12]

Looking good man, I still cannot believe those midrange textures havent been fixed by BIS yet, have they mentioned anywhere about the reasons why they havent fixed it yet?

[gliptal 25]

That looks awesome.

Yay!

[nodunit 397]

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.

[Minoza 11]

Appreciate the effort but I have to say that, even if you manage to get Stratis texture replaced this way, what about Altis which is a lot bigger? It does look much better though! I'm still kinda hoping that BI is gonna do something about this at some point...

[marcai 1]

Whilst they undoubtedly look better, and I salute your efforts, your comparison does appear to have the terrain quality on a terribly low option for the "Old" ground texture. I think you'd be better showing the game at its best for your comparison rather than at its worst- especially as yours seems far better than even the ultra quality terrain.