Question About LOD (level of detail)

[Keyes 10]

I've noticed that if I move let's say 10 meters away from an object the model quickly changes and loses a bit of detail, and maybe the texture changes. If I move further, maybe 20-30 meters the model goes from 3D to having just 2nd sides and textures.

For vehicles, wheels may lose their curvature and have a dodecagon shape. I have all settinga on ultra, at 1080p, and generally keep above 20fps.

Is the lod suposed to drop at a short distance? The objects don't become disfigured, but the changes are noticeable. Is this a bug or anot intended old feature? I don't have this problem on any other game besides arma 2, which was remedied by enabling default vram usage.

[m1lkm8n 410]

It's really dependent only many factors. Most of them revolving around your computer speeds and capability. Obviously the better the computer the better graphics you can have and the less noticable the lod changes will be at (because they may not change at such short a distance).

All well designed 3d models will have lod loss as you get further away from the object tho. It helps with computer performance. But "keeping above" 20 fps is leading me to believe your computer just can't handle the setting you have it on. Tone it down and they may actually get better

[Keyes 10]

In an empty world or multi player I keep above the 50s sometimes surpassing 60.

On relatively demanding editor messing around with 100s of Ai I can keep around 20 or higher.

Even toning down the settings until I get 100s of fps while keeping 1920x1080 and object detail, the lod distance is the same. It seems to be an age old issue with arma 2. Can I adjust the ram usage like arma2 in arma 3?

[CyberpunkDev 1]

No, this engine is a joke, LOD's swapping at a short distance to the camera is just 1 issue, take a look at my thread about lights at night,

BI has alot of work to do on RV

[warlord554 2065]

DEVs have talked about uping the ram, but nothing yet. To this day my best performance gains were OC'ing GPU/CPU. Addon makers have a small amount of control of LODs depending on what how they arrange and make them.

[old_painless 182]

I agree that it does not make sense that a rock which I approach from 30 meters suddenly changes its appearance once I get within 10 meters of it. I think this is the topic, right? IIRC turning up the shadow detail will give LODs within your vicinity of a higher quality.

-OP

[DancZer 65]

Is it possible to decrease the LOD count or force one specify LOD for a specify distance via mod? As i remember there was a mod like this for A2.

[Necramonium 10]

This has pretty much been in a issue in every game BIS has released on their engines, i wish we had more control over it. You can boost your game settings to ultra, but still can see a hill on the other side completely empty.

[Polygon 11]

Is it possible to decrease the LOD count or force one specify LOD for a specify distance via mod? As i remember there was a mod like this for A2.

Seconded. Such a feature on the engine level would be neat.

[max1944 16]

To minimize the LOD reduction the object visibility range has to be the same as the overall visibility. It will chew on your FPS but quality has it's price (I had to turn it down from 5000 to 3000).

[fluttershy 2]

Is it possible to decrease the LOD count or force one specify LOD for a specify distance via mod? As i remember there was a mod like this for A2.

Yes it is, if you simply use the same LOD for 2 different sets. Like LOD 2 beeing the same model as LOD 3, or LOD 1 beeing the same as LOD 0.

[m1lkm8n 410]

I'm not sure if that works but i know that will throw rpt errors.

[kremator 1064]

I still see Zfighting on several objects ... really does spoil the effect!

Also have you noticed that extreme LOD switching when the next LOD is completely the WRONG shade? Seen mostly on roofs of buildings.

[cifordayzserver 119]

As mentioned, the best thing to do is to reduce the view distance so what is trying to draw can do it as well as possible. If you have high view distance the object count limit gets hit very quickly and the engine starts trying to occlude, and swap lods wherever it can.

Modellers have a lot of control, it just takes TONS of patience, the LODs for many of the A2 buildings and objects were just done poorly. There are even cases where there is an entirely different building in a sublod of another building. We spent 100's of hours on Sahrani fixing those, and there are still quite a few that are still popping to some degree.

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that the new renderer that they build into DayZ stops relying on that system of LOD switching, but who knows. If it does we'll likely see that change in a future update or version of Arma.

You essentially do not want to lock the 1st lod anyway, as it would be horrific for performance to be fully drawing every object in a 3k radius around the player. You also CAN'T choose the 2nd or lower, because in many cases a building with windows, is now a building with windows drawn on, and you wouldn't see if there was a player or AI standing in that window, although they would see you.