Vegetation Texture Pop-Ups Still Ugly

[Donner 10]

if you ever run across a field or through a forest in arma2/arma3 you see how everything grass/tree related before you "pop-ups" or morphes from bad quality to better quality instantly. i think thats ugly and unnecessary because (afaik) if those vegetation pop-ups wouldn't be instant but faded in like in other games, it would look much smoother and less distracting...

i really hoped they would "fix" this in arma3. anyone else who thinks this is annoying? it kinda ruins the good overall graphics impression (obviously you cant see that on screenshots but only ingame when you're running/driving).

kinda reminds me on the early unreal3 engine LOD problems, where every texture would pop-up infront of you from bad to good quality. they fixed that eventually though... (mass effect 1 was still affected from that, me2 not)

side note: i run arma3 on a ssd with 16gb ram and on ultra settings

Yes it is very annoying, I added a 7.zip with a repro mission, a DxDiag and my settings to the ticket. I will also post a video showing how the repro mission looks for me (it´s horrible).

EDIT: Video

I avise you to watch it in Original quality and fullscreen.

seeing as there is none and this bugs me, too, i made a ticket for this:

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=5830

Edited March 30, 2013 by Donner

[XBrettlyX 10]

Yea hoping its not in the beta version, it is annoying often the flicker I misinterpret as a soldier or movement.

[WonderWaffles 1]

+1 this. I tried to fix this in options menu to no avail

[r3volution 0]

Yeah this has been a big problem for the series since the original Arma (can't speak for OFP since I never played it) and at the time of the original it was annoying but far from unique in gaming. It is frustrating because it severely detracts from the immersion factor and as XBrettlyX pointed out, it's REALLY easy to mistake it for movement in the corner of your eye. This then leads to either a hyperalert state where you have to look at everything, or you start ignoring it and then miss an enemy soldier and get killed.

So I can definitely add my voice to those who think it'd be great to have a smoothly blended LOD texture change rather than an abrupt cut which is visually jarring.

[doveman 7]

+1. Hoped they would have fixed this bug from A2 in A3 already as they said they were working on it some time ago but fingers crossed for the release.

[Mirudes 1]

For me there are no more popup-trees in ArmA3.

My observation is (A obvious example):

When you look in the 3rd person view over your vehicle, the horizon starts to move a little bit away from you, before the view gets back to normal.

My assumption is:

Thus makes it possible to render the objects earlier, before they come into sight.

So the visibility is a little more tolerant, never more like a line but like a "ring of sight".

Anyway, they use a new technic, and the amount of popup-objects are close to zero here.

[SmallBlackSheep 0]

seeing as there is none and this bugs me, too, i made a ticket for this:

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=5830

[lightspeed_aust 681]

I was just playing with an Arma veteran and we were commenting on the fact that the popups have virtually disappeared now so not sure what you're seeing.

[SmallBlackSheep 0]

could this be down to a specific setting maybe?

[Mirudes 1]

I would say it is hardware related.

If you can afford a SSD with E.g. 256GiB, it could fix the problem.

That's enough space for Windows and ArmA3 together.

It seems as if ArmA3 can address 8 GiB RAM now.

About the settings, have you tried to lower your setting a little bit?

[TheRookie 0]

The only thing that had any impact on my rig was changing the texture resolution. I noticed less pop-ups. I also run ArmA3 from a SSD.

[TSAndrey 1]

Indeed. Texture popping is very annoying. BI needs to tweak this soon!

[SmallBlackSheep 0]

i'm running from an ssd and 8 gigs of ram as well

[Tonci87 163]

Yes it is very annoying, I added a 7.zip with a repro mission, a DxDiag and my settings to the ticket. I will also post a video showing how the repro mission looks for me (it´s horrible).

EDIT: Video

I avise you to watch it in Original quality and fullscreen.

Edited March 25, 2013 by Tonci87

[Mirudes 1]

OK, thx for the video on YouTube, now it is understandable for me.

Believe it or not, I have never seen these popup-trees in A3 actually.

At this time, I don't have ArmA2 installed, if it is a conflict or depending to the swapfile.

[afp 1]

Yes it is very annoying, I added a 7.zip with a repro mission, a DxDiag and my settings to the ticket. I will also post a video showing how the repro mission looks for me (it´s horrible). EDIT: Video I avise you to watch it in Original quality and fullscreen.

I couldn't play ArmA 2 at all because of these "special effects". In ArmA 1 it was barely visible, in ArmA 2 they never fixed it, after 4-5 years, I was hoping they will have it fixed it in ArmA 3....

[Tonci87 163]

Well one of the problems is that the LODs have a different shape and even colour. You can see it on some of those trees, the lower quality LOD is actually much darker than the high quality LOD. This makes it very noticable.

[-Coulum- 35]

Yeah the popping and morphing vegetatin is still present unfortunately. I do think that the mprphing isn't quite as bad as in arma 2. In arma 2 you could think you were safetly hiden in a bush but a player 500 metres away could still see you because the bush LOD was so much different. This is not the case in arma 3.

Its funny that I actually don't notice as much popping as Tonci87 has his vid because my settings are so low even when I am up close to vegetation it doesn't change LOD very often.

[afp 1]

Well one of the problems is that the LODs have a different shape and even colour. You can see it on some of those trees, the lower quality LOD is actually much darker than the high quality LOD. This makes it very noticable.

I think there are several approaches to fix this, first the LOD change when it shouldn't, like when you turn left-right, so its kind of a bug. Second, they have to identify the several trees / buildings with the most ugly appearance and fix them "by hand", they can create a tool to see how an object performs from high definition LOD to low definition, then fix the brightness or whatever manually so it look smoother. I don't think that there are more then 100-200 really bad objects to fix.

[WonderWaffles 1]

This happened in battlefield 3 with the shadows as well. The shadows would become jagged, then slowly becomes smooth. Assassins Creed 3 does this really well. You can barely even tell

[Leon86 13]

damn that's annoying, what are your settings Tonci? and how much ram and vram?

[CriminalMinds 10]

It's really bad for me, too. And I don't know why! Ok, I have a very low spec pc, but I don't think this is the reason for LOD problems at all.

I have: Zotac GeForce 275 GTX with 896 MB DDR3, E8500 @ 3.6 Ghz, 4 Gig DDR2 @ ~870 Mhz, 2x 320 Gig HDD running RAID 0

[kamaradski 10]

3750k & 8GB & 7950 boost 3gb & ssd

And i never seen this behaviour in A3

[jefcostello 1]

isnt there a way to just fade them in and out? Would that cost too much processing?

[panimala 25]

Yeah, the fact that trees still flicker into higher and lower quality meshes and textures when you look around when in a forest bugs me. This is definitely not a high priority fix in my opinion but smoother and more subtle transitions would be appreciated.