While you're at it could you fix the A.I. from being partially submerged in the terrain when prone?

[en3x 209]

How are other games handling this challange?

[CaptainObvious 95]

How are other games handling this challange?

 

With tiny maps.  :confused_o:

[Gwynbleidd 28]

With all that said, the sinking really needs an off switch in difficulty options. I don't mind it for PVP, but even there, it's too random to make use of it (you can be completely submerged, or almost not at all, no way to know). It gives you, or another player advantage based on sheer luck, because that one patch of grass makes you completely invisible, while the other one will barely hide you, even though they both look identical to the eye from close - just check the video.

 

But against the AI, it's just pretty bad IMHO. The AI will easily see you in combat mode, no matter if you're prone or not, with iron sights. And if you don't have any optic, it can be pretty impossible to se a prone AI that sinked all the way to his head or more.

[Greenfist 1863]

With all that said, the sinking really needs an off switch in difficulty options.

That's the low terrain detail setting, not the grass sinking. You can partly fix it in the video settings when playing single player.

[Gwynbleidd 28]

Interesting, I thought the terrain detail is only for fixing the floating people in the air. Was this same in A2, because I always used standard (or normal in case of A2) terrain detail, and don't remember such serious problems back then?

Funny thing is, low looks a lot better than standard:

http://i.imgur.com/DvScaRn.jpg        -Low
http://i.imgur.com/Za8FH42.jpg?1    -Standard

 

Only ultra looks good, but the performance hit is significant. I'm tempted to download A2 again, just to check this.

[das attorney 857]

Hmm, nvm 

[old_painless 182]

Interesting, I thought the terrain detail is only for fixing the floating people in the air. Was this same in A2, because I always used standard (or normal in case of A2) terrain detail, and don't remember such serious problems back then?

Funny thing is, low looks a lot better than standard:

http://i.imgur.com/DvScaRn.jpg        -Low

http://i.imgur.com/Za8FH42.jpg?1    -Standard

 

Only ultra looks good, but the performance hit is significant. I'm tempted to download A2 again, just to check this.

Difference between High and Ultra seems to be the distance out to which things like grass and ground clutter gets drawn. In a test I did on High setting, I had a unit out at some distance with boots sunk into the ground. After setting Terrain Detail to Ultra, there was grass covering his boots which made it look more "real".

 

My performance was down 3 fps from High to Ultra (42 to 39). Nothing really going on in the scene, except three AI units visible.

[Gwynbleidd 28]

On the crossroad next to the bridge in that small town on stratis, I get 59fps on standard, and 51 on ultra terrain detail (editor - only me on map - not measured from options menu). Drop varies from place to place though, can be smaller, can be bigger.

High is still problematic, hides them pretty well -> http://i.imgur.com/2ODJ1XC.jpg?1
This is ultra for comparison -> http://i.imgur.com/Lp7PX2q.jpg

I have somehow missed very high previously, it reveals them pretty much like on ultra, just with a lot lesser performance impact (on my pc at least). So I'm pretty happy with that.

[JojoTheSlayer 35]

I have somehow missed very high previously, it reveals them pretty much like on ultra, just with a lot lesser performance impact (on my pc at least). So I'm pretty happy with that.

 

In my view it goes without saying that the "dips" in the hill will be more accurately represented if you have the settings on higher because of the more lines being used in the mesh or whatever the underlying structure is called will enable it to recreate more advanced structures at range.

 

However, if you want to be game tactical about it. It also indirectly tells you that if you are facing people with lower settings. You can use dips in hills to hide in even if there is no "local" grass there. On your images you will notice that the reason you dont see the prone soldier on the lower quality setting is because there is a slight downwards shallow U dip in the terrain that is covered with terrain when the engine is forced to use less lines to create the long range mesh terrain.

 

U dip in terrain under big rock is present: http://i.imgur.com/Lp7PX2q.jpg

U dip in terrain under big rock is gone: http://i.imgur.com/2ODJ1XC.jpg?1

 

Is this the first time HIGHER quality settings has provided a game benefit? LoL

[metalcraze 290]

Back in ArmA2 days somebody suggested a rather great solution to this problem. You do not need to render grass or sink soldier in. Instead you use a transparency mask in a form of a simple generic grass texture put over usual soldier texture. You then can use camera angle in relation to the soldier in question to calculate the displacement of said alpha mask (e.g. move it higher if the viewer camera is lower - thus making more of the soldier transparent - and vice versa, thus a soldier lying down uphill will be almost invisible to the viewer under the hill). Since behind the transparent pixels caused by separate grass' "pieces" there will be a ground texture filling the blanks it should looks quite plausible e.g. as if the real 3d grass was covering the soldier.

 

Of course the problem here is making a shader that would work like this.

[CANADAVE 14]

Have you guys thought about "simply" rendering the grass and other details when zoomed in enough on land far away?

This.   other Sims with high draw distance use this tactic.