Forest ambient occlusion

[xendance 3]

Currently, soldiers stand out like a sore thumb when they're in forests and someone looks at them from beyond the shadow drawing distance.

It doesn't help that the far macro terrain texture is darkened at the forested bits of the map, making the soldiers stand out even more.

Would it be possible to improve the lighting of soldiers (plus other dynamic actors) with some kind of macro ambient occlusion texture of the terrain (similar to what crysis does with its terrain when you calculate sky accessibility for it) and apply that onto the soldiers. The goal of this would be to reduce the brightness of soldier models in forests and make it harder to spot them there from longer distances.

[afp 1]

The new camo model looks very natural and realistic, enemies are very hard to spot. After playing several multiplayer TvT games I just found out that the new system is campers paradise, most people prefer to stay hidden in bushes waiting for the others. Still not sure its a good or a bad thing :). I'ts certainly more nice in coop games.

Edited May 6, 2013 by afp

[xendance 3]

The new camo model looks very natural and realistic, enemies are very hard to spot. After playing several multiplayer TvT games I just found out that the new system is campers paradise, most people prefer to stay hidden in bushes waiting for the others. Still not sure its a good or a bad thing :). I'ts certainly nicer in coop games.

I'm talking about the amount of lighting applied to soldiers in the distance when they're in forests. Currently they're unrealistically bright.

I did some paint-overs to illustrate what I mean:

http://i.imgur.com/6WYIiAg.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Hb6t7Dd.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/T3puVfB.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Dz7l9PS.jpg

[NeuroFunker 11]

in ArmA2, if you have nvidia card, you could enable ambient occlusion in nvidia control panel. It actually did a nice job, to darken the forests, so it would be hard to see whats inside. Sadly it doesn't work in arma 3 anymore, for me. Can any nvidia user confirm that?

Also, if you could set shadow draw distance, more then just 200m, let say to about 1km, we could see shadows in the woods from such a distance, and the soldier would be in cover now.

[afp 1]

I'm talking about the amount of lighting applied to soldiers in the distance when they're in forests. Currently they're unrealistically bright.

I did some paint-overs to illustrate what I mean:

http://i.imgur.com/6WYIiAg.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Hb6t7Dd.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/T3puVfB.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Dz7l9PS.jpg

One reason could be the people complained about uniforms being too similar, hard to distinguish between your own troops and enemies. The dark version could easily be mistaken for OPFOR units...

[xendance 3]

One reason could be the people complained about uniforms being too similar, hard to distinguish between your own troops and enemies. The dark version could easily be mistaken for OPFOR units...

I am not talking about the uniforms. I'm talking about how the lighting is rendered on the soldiers. Denser forest = less light hitting the soldier. Standing in the open = normal lighting, like it's now.

in ArmA2, if you have nvidia card, you could enable ambient occlusion in nvidia control panel. It actually did a nice job, to darken the forests, so it would be hard to see whats inside. Sadly it doesn't work in arma 3 anymore, for me. Can any nvidia user confirm that?

Also, if you could set shadow draw distance, more then just 200m, let say to about 1km, we could see shadows in the woods from such a distance, and the soldier would be in cover now.

That's screen space ambient occlusion, it wouldn't work here.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Pretty freaking funny OP that I was thinking this exact same thing last night while playing the Infantry Showcase. Looked at the forest area outside of my 200m shadow distance and thought it would be nice if we could use SSDO, which is the most advanced technique of ambient occlusion in realtime graphics rendering to date. It takes in account light direction and object position to realistically darken areas where shadows should be cast. Cryengine 3 uses it and it looks phenomenal. Makes you think there's dynamic shadows where there aren't any, and with the right graphics cards it doesn't hurt performance too bad. So that would be ideal anyway as even with Ultra settings, without heavy AA top end GPU's are actually still CPU bound, leaving extra GPU utilization to be desired. This SSDO implementation (which would look significantly different from what you did with your mockups) would definitely fix up the lack of distant shadows. The only thing is, I am not quite sure if it's a capability of being implemented. I don't know how AO calculations are handled for far distance rendering...

[D34 2]

I think this happens also when shadowed by terrain, in sunset/rise conditions. The whole side of a hill is basically one flat color and soldiers stand out. One of the very very few problems I have with the lighting engine, hope something will be done to it.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

I think this happens also when shadowed by terrain, in sunset/rise conditions. The whole side of a hill is basically one flat color and soldiers stand out. One of the very very few problems I have with the lighting engine, hope something will be done to it.

This particular problem is a touch issue to resolve. The only true solution would be to have shadow maps rendered out to insane distances (2km+) and render terrain shadow maps. Some other game engines do this, namely Crysis, but it's pretty taxing. We are having a tough time with 200m shadow rendering distance as it is, and that's not even rendering terrain shadows. I can't see them resolving this issue with current rendering capabilities.

[VanZant 48]

This particular problem is a touch issue to resolve. The only true solution would be to have shadow maps rendered out to insane distances (2km+) and render terrain shadow maps. Some other game engines do this, namely Crysis, but it's pretty taxing. We are having a tough time with 200m shadow rendering distance as it is, and that's not even rendering terrain shadows. I can't see them resolving this issue with current rendering capabilities.

An easier solution would be to use one of the bitmaps used for the design of the map. This can be confirmed by map makers but as far as i know simple bitmaps are used to generate zones and terrain detail. If so, a simple function could check if an unit is inside a forrest zone and lower its light level. No need of complex tricks.

[xendance 3]

The way Cry Engine does it, is that it it basically ray-traces a coarse ambient occlusion pass on objects and terrain: http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC2/Terrain+Ambient+Occlusion

[nodunit 397]

And this isn't CE3.

Generally shading of objects in shadow are handled by the rvmat map via the ambient occlusion map, however I do not think ground texture have such inclusions in their rvmat, some don't even contain normals or specular material.

Arma 2 Operation arrowhead used SSAO iirc but due to all of the post processing options, DOF, blur, and so on (seriously devs these things NEED to be separate) being compiled into one option, it didn't see much use in the game itself.

Edited May 6, 2013 by NodUnit

[max power 21]

You could colour the forests darker but I don't think that would do much for the other objects in the forest.

[xendance 3]

And this isn't CE3.

Generally shading of objects in shadow are handled by the rvmat map via the ambient occlusion map, however I do not think ground texture have such inclusions in their rvmat, some don't even contain normals or specular material.

Arma 2 Operation arrowhead used SSAO iirc but due to all of the post processing options, DOF, blur, and so on (seriously devs these things NEED to be separate) being compiled into one option, it didn't see much use in the game itself.

Yes, I know this isn't CE 3. I was just showing how it does it to show what I'm talking about, since you lot seem to think that I'm talking about a post processing effect...