A readily attainable improvement to middle-distance terrain?

[Defunkt 431]

We've all thought, Arma looks great apart from that bit stretching from where the clutter ends to where the resolution of the satmap is sufficiently dense to appear photographic. We hoped BI would improve it with A3 but unfortunately that didn't transpire. Aside from looking bad (like it's 1999) it exacerbates issues with detecting units at range, with no clutter and very little noise in the terrain enemy units are all too easy to pick-out at these distances.

The issue is that A3's terrain only implements a single, decorative repeating overlay in this region which can be used to introduce noise by darkening the satmap but as the same texture is tiled throughout the entire terrain BI opted to use it only a very lightly (for reasons that should be clear below).

Early on in A3's life Bad Benson illustrated how much more effective a heavier mid-detail overlay could be, turning 'OFP-nude';

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...into something that almost began to look vaguely 'current-gen' (if you squint);

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And that's the solution most of us who care enough about it probably use (if any). The huge drawback is you get the same heavy application in all the areas you don't want it, in towns, piers and compounds, on roads and on runways (at the distance beyond where they're rendered as actual objects). So instead of concrete...

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...you get something that looks more like carpet;

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Subsequently a proposal was made that this mid-detail texture should have it's own layer or be applied according to an additional whole-terrain mask. It's still the 6th most voted for issue on the FT but over 2 years on still not acted on. I never thought they'd go for it. Aside from having to make a fundamental change to terrain rendering (and court potential performance costs), I couldn't see them wanting to make whole new layers for the two released islands.

Now it's entirely possible BI are going to address this issue with the release of the terrain in the new expansion. But it's equally (or more) likely they aren't in which case I've an idea that could yield a big improvement with next to no development cost.

The thing about concrete and roads and runways is that they're all some shade of grey and those organic areas where you do want noise added are all greens and browns. So if the shader that additively applies this overlay did so on the basis of each pixel's hue we might get to have our cake and eat it too. Here's the mask I made for the above scene, there's no whole frame evaluation required, it's just each pixel's hue 'dodged' with itself multiple times in my graphics program. It's the sort of manipulation a pixel shader should eat with just a few extra instructions;

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And here's the result of using this mask to combine the light and heavy mid-detail texture.

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Now I don't think Crytek will be quaking in their boots over the prospect but I would guess somewhere at BI there's some HLSL source that could incorporate this change very, very readily.

A further possible improvement would be to allow map makers to config a single RGB value that influenced the weighting to be used in evaluation of the RGB. So if you're doing a desert map where you want smooth sands you could weight the yellow components such that the mid-detail was applied only lightly (and really go to town noise-wise on your green belt).

If I use the same process to create the hue-based mask for the first scene you can see that it preserves almost all of the organic detail added by Benson's mid-detail;

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If you think this looks feasible, I have posted the same to the Feedback Tracker for your voting pleasure; http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=24287

---------- Post added at 00:16 ---------- Previous post was at 00:05 ----------

Hmmm... maybe this should have gone in http://forums.bistudio.com/forumdisplay.php?186-ARMA-3-DEVELOPMENT-BRANCH

Edited June 20, 2015 by Defunkt

[vran. 13]

It does look like OFP's detail texturing where low-res blurry textures had an extra texture layer to cover them up. :p

Personally, I don't mind the mid range textures too much. It's a bit like wishing for better looking terrains up close in a flight sim from my point of view.

[jumpinghubert 49]

@Defunkt

Thanks for the summery and reminder. The midrange-Thread sadly is very moldy..

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?149905-Terrain-Improvement-%28dev-branch%29/page85

[kklownboy 43]

good job.

Middle-distance terrain is the weak part of A3s terrain fidelity.

[Llano 11]

Yes

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=4635

And nothing have happened for more than 2 years.

[opteryx 1562]

I think it's funny how ArmA1 had a solution to this, in A1 each texture had their own .mco. They removed this in A2 and A3 for some reason.

[il_padrino 1530]

Probably for the same reason they removed ponds "can't be arsed to fix it, so let's throw it out of the game".

Anyway, seems like a nice solution Defunkt, let's hope it's not in vain.

[warlord554 2065]

My only real concern would be what performance impacts would it have? If it went along with current ingame quality settings and was enjoyable for those that can use it, or turned off by those lower end rigs then I'd be all for it

[opteryx 1562]

Probably for the same reason they removed ponds "can't be arsed to fix it, so let's throw it out of the game".

As far as I know, it was never broken. Seems to me like they removed a perfectly good feature for no obvious reason.

[Defunkt 431]

My only real concern would be what performance impacts would it have? If it went along with current ingame quality settings and was enjoyable for those that can use it, or turned off by those lower end rigs then I'd be all for it

Honestly I don't think there should be any measurable performance cost at all. The shader must already have the RGB, the masking should only be a few more instructions. If we found somebody who was sufficiently experienced with DX shaders (to rewrite one from a disassembly) it's highly likely we could implement this as a mod ourselves (but it would be so much easier for BIS).

[mr.g-c 6]

Ohh yes this should be improved. I hope it will be in the expansion and also re-applied to the Stock A3 maps and a possible solution for modders to add it to custom maps/A2 maps

[nikiforos 450]

Bad Benson's mod is a must for me, can't play without it.

[toysoldier 35]

:now:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4934308/Arma%203/mid_range_problem/MashUP_engine/both_3.jpg (1455 kB)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4934308/Arma%203/mid_range_problem/MashUP_engine/both.jpg (1773 kB)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4934308/Arma%203/mid_range_problem/MashUP_engine/both_4.jpg (1502 kB)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4934308/Arma%203/mid_range_problem/MashUP_engine/both_6.jpg (861 kB)

[bullet purveyor 85]

That looks great Toysoldier. Have you put Defunkts idea into a working mod , or is it just "concept art"?

[KeyCat 131]

Yes, please! ;)

/KC

[old_painless 182]

Looks like Nordkindchens images ?

[bad benson 1733]

yea they are. they pretty much show what per surface character midrange textures could look like ingame.

[Defunkt 431]

I think it's funny how ArmA1 had a solution to this, in A1 each texture had their own .mco. They removed this in A2 and A3 for some reason.

You've got me thinking here. Do you know, did they actually remove it completely or is it just something that's not available with the newer Terrain15 shader? Could you still choose to use one of the older shaders and get a separate surface detail layer (and simply forego having a normal map)?

[opteryx 1562]

The arma 1 maps I've ported does not have the _mco textures working, so as far as I can tell the feature is removed.

-edit-

Download my Avgani map and try to port it yourself and see if you can get it working, I couldn't.

[Defunkt 431]

Download my Avgani map and try to port it yourself and see if you can get it working, I couldn't.

Yeah... about that, I actually converted it to a Terrain15 map :blush: (it looks fabulous - so I'm really looking forward to your official port).

I think it's odd that they added the normal map for a terrain that would have looked a whole lot better with decent middle distance detail. Chernarus' grassy rolling hills didn't really benefit much from a normal map.

Edited June 16, 2015 by Defunkt

[bad benson 1733]

yea but they added it in arma 3. so for Chernarus they just removed _mco and added parallax maps for close range. imho Altis and especially Stratis could make better use of the sat normal map.

Takistan with all those bare hills could've benefited a lot too. in general it is most useful on smaller maps though i think. then you can get some real detail in there. not sure what the limits are for sat res.

[Defunkt 431]

yea but they added it in arma 3. so for Chernarus they just removed _mco and added parallax maps for close range.

Oh right, I'd forgotten that. A2 is also where they added the one-tile-for-everything middle-distance overlay (obviously as a replacement for the removed _mco).

Really wish they'd look at this as a retro-active fix. It's a cheat (correlating otherwise unrelated truths) but the best optimizations often are and I struggle to think of any man-made blocks of colour on a satmap other than perhaps a tennis court. Everything else is some shade of grey. I'm totally convinced this could work.