Orshanets terrain 12.8x12.8km (Ukraine)

[classic 38]

It looks very nice.:)

[mistyronin 1181]

Well, there is your "more":

http://imgur.com/a/VGzPd

Imgur duplicated two images for some reason.

Never been in Ukraine, but have seen a lot of photos and coverage from this last year's news reports and a lot more of a good friend who was born there; and these screens really feels like it.

Good job!

[mordeaniischaos 3]

Wow, looks great. If you need testers anytime soon, let me know, my group would love to help out!

Really nails the look and feel of Ukraine so far. Looking forward to it!

[dragon01 902]

Lovely. You nailed it. :) It could've been eastern Polish countryside as well, I live somewhat near Ukraine (not in it, thankfully. I'd rather have war stay in my PC :) ).

[r3volution 0]

Shelestov this looks awesome! The amount of effort put into the details (object placement, density etc) makes those screenshots look amazing. If you guys can carry that quality to the whole map this will be probably one of the best Euro Arma maps of all time. :)

As someone who's been watching a LOT of footage from Ukraine recently (having never been there) this does seem to me to capture a lot of the character of Ukrainian countryside.

[miketim 20]

Yup still lookin great, hopefully there will be some fields with 3 or 4 foot tall grass, I remember in some of the combat footage from ukraine I saw from VICE, these russian sepratists were like crawling in a field of grass about 3-4 feet tall.

[subunit 31]

This looks crazy good, guys, keep it up!

[il_padrino 1530]

Well, there is your "more":

http://imgur.com/a/VGzPd

Imgur duplicated two images for some reason.

Damn, thanks for the quick reply. It looks really awesome, I really like that you seem to pay attention to details, so every lot seems carefully planed, and unique, as in RL. If you could include as many enterable houses as you can, this map would be perfect.

[poudjik 5]

Excellent quality work!

From the screenshot it seems the terrain features are essentially flat; may I suggest to add alongside roads and crop fields some irrigation ditches/trenches which would allow for cover/movement conceilement?

---------- Post added at 16:02 ---------- Previous post was at 15:53 ----------

Yup still lookin great, hopefully there will be some fields with 3 or 4 foot tall grass, I remember in some of the combat footage from ukraine I saw from VICE, these russian sepratists were like crawling in a field of grass about 3-4 feet tall.

I fear the risk with tall grass in Arma is AI shooting through it

[miketim 20]

I believe if you use the right grass model and actually keep it tall enough, its very possible to make sure AI arent gonna mlg snipe thru it, I have seen maps with taller grass that AI didnt shoot you through it.

[Shelestov 263]

Excellent quality work!

From the screenshot it seems the terrain features are essentially flat; may I suggest to add alongside roads and crop fields some irrigation ditches/trenches which would allow for cover/movement conceilement?

---------- Post added at 16:02 ---------- Previous post was at 15:53 ----------

I fear the risk with tall grass in Arma is AI shooting through it

With 6.25m cell size i doubt it can be done in appropriate way, we'll see. And yes, ai will PWN. I hope it will be more like pvp map than pve.

[stephsen 79]

wow this looks so realistic and detailed ,good job Shelestov.

how is the frame rate in section ?

greetz

[Gudsawn 93]

Wow - the map looks incredible so far, really looking forward to seeing how this progresses. Excellent work! ;)

[RSF TheCapulet 59]

With 6.25m cell size i doubt it can be done in appropriate way, we'll see. And yes, ai will PWN. I hope it will be more like pvp map than pve.

I've wondered how to do this myself for quite a while. The one thing I've come up with is perhaps using custom models for roads that actually include the entire ditch area, etc. I've no idea how feasable it is though. I'm sure I'll get around to trying it on my own sometime, but hopefully someone tries it before I do.

[Shelestov 263]

wow this looks so realistic and detailed ,good job Shelestov.

how is the frame rate in section ?

greetz

FPS is good for now, but this is still a tiny piece of map, so it's kinda early to make conclusions.

[falcon_565 11]

Hey guys great looking map so far! It's very nice to see some 1:1 realistic terrains being made. In reference to the ditch and grass problem I would look at how Lancer and I solved the problem in the Schwemlitz terrain for ARMA 2. By using grass objects (essentially bushes) instead of clutter objects you can create fields and grassy areas that are both rendered at range and prevent the AI from seeing through them. Additionally we implemented a ditch system using objects to represent the various ditches and irrigation canals. While both of these solutions worked well we are attempting to improve on them for our next terrain. One idea we've had is creating some better grass clutter objects that can be destroyed by collisions so that people or vehicles moving through fields would leave tracks and destroy the crops. We'd also like to work on making the various objects blend better and look more realistic, closer to the look of the clutter. Anyway we'd be more that happy to help you guys if you need some advice or resources, just let us know. I'd be awesome if we could pool some resources to work on some objects that could be used across multiple maps.

[Shelestov 263]

Hey guys great looking map so far! It's very nice to see some 1:1 realistic terrains being made. In reference to the ditch and grass problem I would look at how Lancer and I solved the problem in the Schwemlitz terrain for ARMA 2. By using grass objects (essentially bushes) instead of clutter objects you can create fields and grassy areas that are both rendered at range and prevent the AI from seeing through them. Additionally we implemented a ditch system using objects to represent the various ditches and irrigation canals. While both of these solutions worked well we are attempting to improve on them for our next terrain. One idea we've had is creating some better grass clutter objects that can be destroyed by collisions so that people or vehicles moving through fields would leave tracks and destroy the crops. We'd also like to work on making the various objects blend better and look more realistic, closer to the look of the clutter. Anyway we'd be more that happy to help you guys if you need some advice or resources, just let us know. I'd be awesome if we could pool some resources to work on some objects that could be used across multiple maps.

Thanks, about not-clutter grass -- that is very performance heavy, i doubt i can use this method here, but maybe i'll think about few wheat fields.

[falcon_565 11]

Thanks, about not-clutter grass -- that is very performance heavy, i doubt i can use this method here, but maybe i'll think about few wheat fields.

Actually it is not performance heavy at all. Our new terrain is about 17x17km and we have tens of thousands of grasss objects (every field, open space, along roads) with almost no performance hit. The models are extremely simple and easily rendered. We can help supply you with these high performance models if you are interested. One thing that we discovered is that performance is extremely dependent on the number of different objects that need to be rendered in the frame. If the game has to load fewer textures then the performance is markedly better. This is particularly important with regards to vegetation within built up areas. Although it's slightly less visually appealing try to limit the number of different types of trees and bushes you are using to get a large performance increase. The same goes for any forests that you have on your map try to pick 2-3 tree types and stick with them.

I'm guessing your terrain will suffer form the same pitfall that our terrains do; because we are modeling rolling fields with very little gross elevation change the game will have to render to the view distance most of the time. ARMA does not account for objects when deciding what to draw, only terrain occludes the scene being drawn. This means that most of the forests on the map will be drawn in their entirety the majority of the time, which can be resource intensive if you don't make good vegetation selections. I recommend experimenting with different vegetation to see what gives you the best performance, some is much more intensive than others.

[Shelestov 263]

Actually it is not performance heavy at all. Our new terrain is about 17x17km and we have tens of thousands of grasss objects (every field, open space, along roads) with almost no performance hit. The models are extremely simple and easily rendered. We can help supply you with these high performance models if you are interested. One thing that we discovered is that performance is extremely dependent on the number of different objects that need to be rendered in the frame. If the game has to load fewer textures then the performance is markedly better. This is particularly important with regards to vegetation within built up areas. Although it's slightly less visually appealing try to limit the number of different types of trees and bushes you are using to get a large performance increase. The same goes for any forests that you have on your map try to pick 2-3 tree types and stick with them.

I'm guessing your terrain will suffer form the same pitfall that our terrains do; because we are modeling rolling fields with very little gross elevation change the game will have to render to the view distance most of the time. ARMA does not account for objects when deciding what to draw, only terrain occludes the scene being drawn. This means that most of the forests on the map will be drawn in their entirety the majority of the time, which can be resource intensive if you don't make good vegetation selections. I recommend experimenting with different vegetation to see what gives you the best performance, some is much more intensive than others.

Well, that's sad, because i want variety in everything. Still I hope our map would be suitable for some action, and not only for taking fancy screenshots.

[Shelestov 263]

moar screenshots

When we finish this small piece (1.6km) we'll release it as demo.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Shelestov

[miketim 20]

Nice.

Good to hear you said youll do a demo, seems like it will serve well as a PVP area.

Is this gonna require mods, or is it going to be standalone with all stuff packed in? It seems like you used alot of various stuff from different places... so making it standalone might be a good idea so we dont have to install 300 mods from arma 2 to use it, or at least make it only require AiA TP or something if possible.

[Shelestov 263]

Nice.

Good to hear you said youll do a demo, seems like it will serve well as a PVP area.

Is this gonna require mods, or is it going to be standalone with all stuff packed in? It seems like you used alot of various stuff from different places... so making it standalone might be a good idea so we dont have to install 300 mods from arma 2 to use it, or at least make it only require AiA TP or something if possible.

I was dealing with packing all the stuff entire summer. All standalone, you download -- you play. But it's size is about 3GB.

If i'd know that AIA would do all the things i need in observable future then i think i'd use it, but at that point i saw no alternative of making map as standalone. Maybe lot of useless work was done, but now it's too late to complain.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Shelestov

[mistyronin 1181]

I was dealing with packing all the stuff entire summer. All standalone, you download -- you play. But it's size is about 3GB.

IMHO I think standalone it's better as at this point the other packs have some issues with the game. Although if you fancy you could consider release both options if it's not too much hassle.

About releasing a demo, well that's an awesome idea as it will allow us to already enjoy part of it and also give you some feedback :)

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Dude, this map looks so realistic! It's so beautiful. I imagined a map like this with mountains and rivers... but i don't think they have those in that part of Ukraine... anyhow, amazing looking dude, looking forward to this map now.

[PenguinInATuxedo 18]

Those pictures are beautiful, you have a good eye for detail.