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bad benson

midrange terrain texture replacement

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Makes sense. If this were a super-hi-res texture replacement pack for everything in the game, one would expect a performance hit. But for what it does, any PC that can run A3 should handle it without issue.

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I can definitely add my experience to those who are experiencing nil discernable impact on framerates from this. I honestly can't see any difference in performance. It just looks about 50 billion times better.

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just to make it clear. there is a slight FPS drop. very small if you don't have a shitty PC. and it's kind of mysterious to me where it's coming from (for the reasons described several times). must be the way the texture is processed by the engine.

anyways i think it's kinda obvious that this weird little episode wasn't about the performance of this addon:rolleyes:

EDIT:

this is a perfect example of user input elevating the source material.

yea i want to thank everyone for the input and enthusiasm. while i'm not as passionate about the whole "mid range improvement movement" thing and the camouflage capabilities as some people, i am glad i worked more on this than i wanted ;)

Edited by Bad Benson

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Ain't it typical! Arma3 alpha is released and 24 hours later I'm flat out with RL work for a fortnight! :(

I've barely had time to browse the new forum section, never mind actually contribute in a meaningful way to the Big Adventure so far... dammit!

Anyway, I've shaved 5 minutes off my lunchbreak to respond to this thread 'cause....

These are quite possibly the best MCO textures I've ever seen!!!

Well Done BB!!

Seriously, seriously impressive & professional artwork! I really must pin you down on Skype sometime and ask you to tell me how you made these!!!!

* For the "new" guys - here's how these "replacement" addons work...

At runtime, the first thing the Game Engine does is survey all it's own addons - it reads EVERY config it finds and assembles them all - in memory - in one gigantic "superconfig" that contains all details about everything...

At this stage, the engine knows all about Stratis... where it's Sat Layers are, what time of day to start at, and - where to look for it's "Middle MCO" file...

Next thing the engine does is to look for Modfolders - it adds all the configs it finds for these assets to it's "superconfig" too...

Then it finds Bad Benson's addon... It reads the config, and the first thing that config says is "I'm a Patch"... The rest of the config basically consists of a duplicate line from the Stratis config - a path to a texture...

The engine understands that this config is therefore a "replacement path for Stratis", so it looks at it's in-memory superconfig - finds that line in it's Stratis details, and replaces that line with Bad Bensons one...

So... Before - when ever you run around on Stratis, the game engine was reading a "middle_mco" path from memory and displaying a graphics file...

After - when ever you run around on Stratis, the game engine is reading a "middle_mco" path from memory and displaying a graphics file...

Theoretically at least, there should be no performance impact whatsoever from a "patch addon" of this type - particularly since the "replacement graphic file" is of a comparable size and resolution to the original...

Practically however, the engine does have to stop looking in the Stratis.pbo for a couple of nanoseconds, while it goes to BB's .pbo to fetch the alternate MCO file - after which, if you're actively running around on Stratis and have even halfway adequate Graphics Memory, then that "often used" graphic file is likely to be held in Graphics Memory for continued use, and thereafter there should be no performance difference at all...

There goes my Five Minute window.... back to work for me :(

I'll just mention briefly that, from the little delving I've managed to do so far, it seems that the "usual arma2" style individual ground texture mco files are strangely absent from A3 - so far.

In Arma 2, these are stretched on a per-landgrid basis (usually about 40x40m) and provide yet another "mid-range bridge" - between the super closeup groundtex's and the Middle MCO, so their seeming total absence from the Alpha may have something to do with all this current "mid range wierdness" evident in the current Alpha version...

Terrific work once again, BB!

B

Edited by Bushlurker

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(...)

I'll just mention briefly that, from the little delving I've managed to do so far, it seems that the "usual arma2" style individual ground texture mco files are strangely absent from A3 - so far.

In Arma 2, these are stretched on a per-landgrid basis (usually about 40x40m) and provide yet another "mid-range bridge" - between the super closeup groundtex's and the Middle MCO, so their seeming total absence from the Alpha may have something to do with all this current "mid range wierdness" evident in the current Alpha version...

Terrific work once again, BB!

B

It is great to know there is this extra stretch of flexibility, after the recent release of landtex 1.0 in combination of these detail textures allows to really improve current default appearance.

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Regarding performance, my curiosity was aroused by those trolls. I just did a bunch of benchmarks and got:

Without mod: Average framerate (no/very low CPU load) 78.2fps. Standard error of measurement ~+-2fps

With mod: Average framerate (No/very low CPU load) 77.7fps. Standard error of ~+-2fps.

There is a huge SEM overlap, any performance hit must be very, very marginal. From these results I would claim that there is no performance hit.

Each benchmark was performed 10 times.

yes, because i edited the 6.7 fps framedrop of the screenshots in photoshop, for trolling purposes and to get people run benchmarks! :rolleyes:

and on the condition of my pc? from what i read i got an at least slightly above average arma rig...

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let it rest dude. no one has or had a problem with the slight FPS drop this addon causes. your number is low but still on my PC it's even lower. so if your PC can't handle it i'm sorry. you are the first and only one person who complained about performance in here.

i get it. you hate my addon and all that jazz. and i'm sorry i caused you so much sorrow. now please leave it be and get a life or something. no one cares...

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He's not the only one to complain about your mod. I would also like to protest: Since i'd installed you mid range texture, i spend more time looking at landscapes than at looking for the enemy or making my addons good :D

You really did a really good job and as far as i'm concerned, it'll stay as a "must have" in a basic Arma 3 installation.

And i haven't noticed any FPS Drop, but i don't see why there should be one technically speaking. Perhaps the Anisotropic filtering set too high...

Thank you again :cool:

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let it rest dude. no one has or had a problem with the slight FPS drop this addon causes. your number is low but still on my PC it's even lower. so if your PC can't handle it i'm sorry. you are the first and only one person who complained about performance in here.

i get it. you hate my addon and all that jazz. and i'm sorry i caused you so much sorrow. now please leave it be and get a life or something. no one cares...

no, i will now run extensive benchmarks, according to scientific standards, to prove my point once and for all, and on top of that, i am going to make an extensive survey amongst authoritys in the field of aesthetics, that will expose the taste in textures of you and your followership, as what it is: mediocre and vulgar.

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Some of these examples are really stunning - this will be a gamechanger for sure when a happy compromise/consensus is eventually reached.

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no, i will now run extensive benchmarks, according to scientific standards, to prove my point once and for all, and on top of that, i am going to make an extensive survey amongst authoritys in the field of aesthetics, that will expose the taste in textures of you and your followership, as what it is: mediocre and vulgar.

Says the guy who couldn't even tell the difference. And did you really just call Bushlurker "mediocre"? Get lost, troll.

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no, i will now run extensive benchmarks, according to scientific standards, to prove my point once and for all, and on top of that, i am going to make an extensive survey amongst authoritys in the field of aesthetics, that will expose the taste in textures of you and your followership, as what it is: mediocre and vulgar.

When you can produce a texture mod equal in quality to this then I'll take you seriously -

Until then your comments are nothing more than thoughtless blabber...

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Please no trolling/flamebaiting. It is a mod that everyone is free to either use or ignore. If someone can't decide for himself to ignore it, we can assist and we did. So please take the discussion back to the addon itself. Thank you.

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Thats the nice thing about rv modding

Take it or leave it.

Good work bad ;)

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Bump - what option is that? - looks great!!!

Maybe 'midtex strong', looks like it, though I haven't looked at the updated ones yet, even though I downloaded them the other day from AH...

There may be some more variations in those.

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Which option is that?

Those are the ultra contrasted textures I made before Bad Benson released his sharp preset.

Be warned, they look awful when you look through a scope, they're good for youtube videos because they look ok from a distance.

Here's a link to my comment: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?150645-midrange-terrain-texture-replacement&p=2352183&viewfull=1#post2352183

There's a whole bunch of videos showing it off on page 8 of this tread.

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Hi El_MUERkO,

The engine only supports one mid-range texture, so the texture is applied to everything: mountains, beaches, underwater, etc. You must decide if the improvement to the areas the mid-range is designed to improve off-sets the impact to the other areas (like beaches).

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The engine only supports one mid-range texture, so the texture is applied to everything: mountains, beaches, underwater, etc.

yea exactly. since the default texture has almost no definition you won't notice any difference on roads.

i'd recommend you to use the strong version. it's what i personally use since it's more of a hybrid texture between vegetation and gravel and it's less overdone than the last versions which i added after a requests for more contrast. there are like 8 versions in this or something.

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Hi El_MUERkO,

The engine only supports one mid-range texture, so the texture is applied to everything: mountains, beaches, underwater, etc. You must decide if the improvement to the areas the mid-range is designed to improve off-sets the impact to the other areas (like beaches).

I think this is what NordKindchens suggestion will fix - so that we can have Bad Benson quality all over the island. Everyone should vote it up: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=4635

:)

OP

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