Issue With Pixilated Transition From Shallow to Mid-Depth Water (pics included)

[dinoboy123 1]

I've been scratchin my head off and on for the last week figuring out the best way to handle this tricky situation. I've double checked my heightfield to ensure a smooth drop off from land to water, but that doesn't seem to be the issue. I guess the Arma 2 engine prefers a distinct seperation in heights underwater, as opposed to a gradual slope. I'm hoping that someone out there knows a script for the config that can resolve the large pixilation of shadows to represent the deeper water, or remove it altogether, or knows a simple way to fix this issue in l3dt. Hopefully the pictures below can help show my situation!

Thanks for any input!

-Andrew

aerial view of the blocky shadows

http://i1308.photobucket.com/albums/s612/andrew_voorhees32/ArmA2OA2013-05-0623-53-32-32_zps486001f3.png

how it looks up close in game

http://i1308.photobucket.com/albums/s612/andrew_voorhees32/ArmA2OA2013-05-0623-52-20-39_zpsa8d2fd60.png

my smooth heightfield

http://i1308.photobucket.com/albums/s612/andrew_voorhees32/heightfield_zps47ae5622.png

[dinoboy123 1]

I'm truly stuck on this problem it seems. I tried redoing the xyz file by adding defined dropoffs, in the hopes that this would allow for the game engine to add deep water shadow/effects smoothly. However, i still get the same blocky look. I assume there is some way to tell the game engine to better outline/follow the terrain, rather than just adding a giant grid of shadows for deeper water effect.

My map is currently inheriting the default settings, so I may try tweaking those.

any advice is appreciated!

-Andrew

[jakerod 254]

I've noticed this recently too. It might be possible to add your own in by putting the "depth" factor into the sat map or just keeping the water depth above the level where it goes black but that might be undesirable.

[dinoboy123 1]

thanks a ton for the response! i'm surprised no one else has run into this issue before. I'm weighing a couple options, such as painting the terrain a darker color around edges, but for now i'm keeping it mostly shallow, and having steep dropoffs which seems to mask this boundary issue a bit. I'm hoping this is one of those things that I will notice as the editor, but the average gamer will overlook.