LOD Discussion

[R3vo 2654]

I also feel there is a huge step forward now.

It is, the changes are much more subtle now.

 

 

This^ 

Can you improve on that BIS?

These plants have some serious Lod issues , they keep changing  shape/form  although you are 3-4 meters away :

 

Yes, those small plants and tree roots are incredible annoying.

[reaper lok 82]

Anyone that's posted positive remarks regarding the LOD's in the last few posts care to record and upload a sample video or three to show how it is now on the dev/rc branch? TIA, (btw, I am not on the dev or rc branch, hence why I asked).

 

I have uploaded a quick and dirty look at the foliage on the APEX Dev Branch

 

http://youtu.be/RkbDvHdkftg

[DancZer 65]

I have uploaded a quick and dirty look at the foliage on the APEX Dev Branch

 

http://youtu.be/RkbDvHdkftg

 

As i know the engine uses the "engine load" factor, when it's calculate which LOD should it display. Am I right?

 

As you turn around the lower LOD is loaded and the better LOD after. Is it possible that small peaks (due the loading) when you turning rapidly,  changes the LOD calculation in the wrong way? I'm just speculating. If they can filter those short peaks, it would enhance the LOD switching further.

[haleks 8212]

This^ 

Can you improve on that BIS?

These plants have some serious Lod issues , they keep changing  shape/form  although you are 3-4 meters away :

 

 

Same here; LOD switching seems to be completely off for vegetation.

Some trees and bushes keep flickering at close distance.

[Greenfist 1863]

Anyone else seeing the leaves of these trees almost constantly blinking in and out of existance?

[R3vo 2654]

@Greenfist, could you provide the position of this tree?

[Greenfist 1863]

@Greenfist, could you provide the position of this tree?

Well there's plenty of them, for example:

[9299.63,10310.1,19.5318] , [9305.93,10240.8,21.7455] , [9341.69,10283.1,21.6899] , [9357.74,10301.5,18.1664] , [9380.17,10201.8,18.432] , [9381.11,10246.1,25.6656] , [9381.79,10253.4,23.4406],

 

Model name is "t_palaquium_f.p3d".

 

I noticed that if I hide all other trees around, these trees will stop flickering. So the scene complexity limit (or occlusion culling? or whatever it is) seems to hit this tree particularly hard.

 

edit. Found another one with the same behaviour: t_cyathea_f.p3d

[bad benson 1733]

Anyone else seeing the leaves of these trees almost constantly blinking in and out of existance?

 

yes. exact same issue with exact same tree (not fixed to location but tree type). also other plants i noticed it on were red bushes and those bushes with the long leaves with yellowish veins on them (sorry for bad description).

[tpw 2315]

yes. exact same issue with exact same tree (not fixed to location but tree type). also other plants i noticed it on were red bushes and those bushes with the long leaves with yellowish veins on them (sorry for bad description).

The palm trees on Altis also flicker really badly at a certain distance.

[teabagginpeople 398]

Moving through the jungle I have been so desensitised to possible enemy movement due to short range jungle floor constant lod popping.

Needs to be stepped up

[haleks 8212]

Yep, I really hope it gets fixed - it was almost perfect a couple builds ago.

[Roddis 27]

[daveallen10 35]

For everyone asking about the ground clutter LOD pop / texture popping...there is a ticket open for it. Has yet to be assigned to anyone. 

 

https://feedback.bistudio.com/T117388

[reaper lok 82]

Try getting in the back seat (or any seat other than the driver seat) in the new 4WD Jeep vehicles.  Switch to third person view and then back to first person view again and then to third...ouch, no wheels for a second or two!

 

This only happens when NOT in driving seat, anyone else have this?

[bad benson 1733]

wow. i just noticed that not only are LODs blended into eachother but also that objects that aren't drawn at all due to being out of draw range smoothly blend in the same way once they are in range.

fantastic! no idea if my earlier suggestion in here had anything to do with this but it got executed 100%. couldn't be happier.

 

maybe in the future the pixely look could be a reduced a little but overall this is such a big step forward.

 

i wonder why it got implemented so suddenly after being untouched for so long. did a specialist on this subject join you recently or did you just need someone in charge tell you to do this?

[soulkobk 40]

Well... the LOD 'enhancements', seem to be a step in the right direction with the cross-hatch fading between them... but it seems that the LOD's themselves have NOT been touched/modified.

 

Quite a lot of the same LOD issues (as seen in my previous videos on this thread) still exist... but now they cross-hatch fade between one another, and the drastic (color) changes still exist... *sad face*. The LOD's for most objects still need a going-over again so that the layer changes although lower quality, are the same color/saturation/etc... as currently, those damn sand bags still go from a bright sandy color to a dull greyish sandy color which is very noticeable still. Even with the H-Barriers, the wire seems to glow the closer you get (same as the barbed wire).

 

I REALLY hope that all the models get their LOD's fixed to how-it-use-to-be back in 1.58x or such, because as-is, it is still VERY distracting.

 

For comparison, the LOD issue as-it-stands, is the same it was in the 1.60x update... but now with cross-hatch fading. Somewhat disappointing TBH.

I'll be sure to throw up some new videos when I get the chance to demonstrate what I am talking about.

 

*On a side-note... one thing I would like to add is the new lighting is a huge improvement from the last over-saturated, over-bright environment... I have since returned all my post processing sliders back to default again. Huzzah!

 

-soul.

[x3kj 1247]

I got massive performance drops since the changes to LOD switching, even on Altis. Where i normally had no big issue running at close to 60 in a singleplayer with just me as unit, i now sometimes end up with just 30fps (1.9k object viewdistance).

Back then it was obvious when frames would dip (at least from what i've noticed). Many objects on screen -> bad performance. Especially cities etc.

 

Now i get even low fps where there is barely anything to see.

Such as the following example (Terrain position 131165 on the road)

Facing West toward the hill there is barely anything on the screen that is worth of notice, yet i drop down to 40fps

Facing South i get the same 40 fps, but here at least it's somewhat comprehensible. Lots of objects.

 

Facing north and things get even more weird. Aim slightly in the air - 60fps no problem. Aim slightly lower (still with all objects the same) - 45fps. And even that 45fps is better than facing West towards the hill.

 

 

It's almost as if the grass eats a huge chunk of performance... i can't explain this behaviour otherwise.

[Gwynbleidd 28]

It could easily be grass that's eating performance, in 1.60 they went a bit wild with grass:

https://arma3.com/assets/img/post/images/thumbs/arma3_comparison_screenshot06_v100.jpg (before 1.60)
https://arma3.com/assets/img/post/images/thumbs/arma3_comparison_screenshot06_v160.jpg (1.60)

 

Beagle had a lot better comparison in visual feedback thread.
 

Alone in editor, in places where it was easily 60 fps for me, after 1.60 update it dropped to 50. The 10 fps hit in Arma is huge, but I swallowed it.
Now in 1.62 it's down to 45fps on those very same places (I guess due to the new lod blending?). On top of that, unless I drop object quality to low, I have weird stutter that makes it a pain to play.

I have no idea why they changed it, grass was fine on Altis as it was, not insanely dense, but there was no grass appearing/changing at 3-4 meters in front of you. Now not only that, but it causes performance issues.

[bad benson 1733]

@soulkobk: i think the issue is that stuff switches earlier to lower lods. as others have mentioned refering to grass, which might be handled a little differently, things pop through the lods literally right infront of you. it's almost like before there was a "safe-zone" around the camera that would show stuff in full res and now it just goes gradually overall down to distance 0.

[smiley_ie 7]

It could easily be grass that's eating performance, in 1.60 they went a bit wild with grass:

https://arma3.com/assets/img/post/images/thumbs/arma3_comparison_screenshot06_v100.jpg (before 1.60)

https://arma3.com/assets/img/post/images/thumbs/arma3_comparison_screenshot06_v160.jpg (1.60)

 

Beagle had a lot better comparison in visual feedback thread.

 

Alone in editor, in places where it was easily 60 fps for me, after 1.60 update it dropped to 50. The 10 fps hit in Arma is huge, but I swallowed it.

Now in 1.62 it's down to 45fps on those very same places (I guess due to the new lod blending?). On top of that, unless I drop object quality to low, I have weird stutter that makes it a pain to play.

I have no idea why they changed it, grass was fine on Altis as it was, not insanely dense, but there was no grass appearing/changing at 3-4 meters in front of you. Now not only that, but it causes performance issues.

 

Think im having same problem, Running in tanoa look left @ 60fps fine, do it again drops to 20-30's looking at the same thing then jumps backup very unplayable. I tried Altis and now getting the same pause's and drops since 1.62 it's very annoying hope it gets sorted.

 

[x3kj 1247]

it's very obvious when you pan around using a turret. You will notice the stutter as the frames drop and get higher again.
 

 

The 10 fps hit in Arma is huge, but I swallowed it.

I wish it was just 10 fps, but it's 25 fps depending on places... And it's not like it is consistent, performance goes up and down alot, which is bad. Constant 40 can be better than constant changes between 40 and 60.

[soulkobk 40]

@soulkobk: i think the issue is that stuff switches earlier to lower lods. as others have mentioned refering to grass, which might be handled a little differently, things pop through the lods literally right infront of you. it's almost like before there was a "safe-zone" around the camera that would show stuff in full res and now it just goes gradually overall down to distance 0.

 

That makes sense, yeh. I'm not sure why the LOD's seem to change right-in-front-of-your-eyes at a short distance, that in itself is an annoying distraction, then add in drastic LOD changes that are extremely mismatched from one to the next, and it just screams 'horrible'... and then there's the performance aspect also.

 

If only we could have these LOD issues resolved properly (proper LOD 'fade' changes, proper distancing LOD changes, matching color/saturation LOD changes, etc).

 

The LOD changes are just-one-aspect of the game that definitely needs attention and improvement.

 

You can see in this screen shot (highlighted areas with the red borders), that the same object type (sand bag green corner and long) that the LOD's were cross-hatching between the 2 different levels when I rotated around... and when the coloring/saturation is off, it's a very noticeable change. Not to mention that the normal sand bag object types are even more a noticeable change.

 

A quick 5 minutes in photoshop... and this is the result of that sandbag. The changes made were... 'color balance' of the 'midtones' of the sandbag to '-5 cyan/red', '+15 magenta/green', '+20 yellow blue', and a small 'burn' on the white shine. That's how the two LOD's should differ, in the AFTER screen shot.

 

I have no idea the process on how they 'updated' the LOD's since the 1.60x update, but most of them are horrible. Either that, or they are the same as previous, but we're only noticing the drastic LOD changes due to the now in-your-face changes, rather than the highest LOD at further away distance from the object.

 

BIS, please fix it proper! TIA.

 

-soul

[bad benson 1733]

Either that, or they are the same as previous, but we're only noticing the drastic LOD changes due to the now in-your-face changes, rather than the highest LOD at further away distance from the object.

 

yea that was kind of what i was hinting at.

 

ideally i would love to have a slider for how far away lods start switching and maybe also one for how fast the gradual switch is done. not sure, if that is possible but that could be a nice addition. arma has and needs a lot of graphics settings since it's pretty demanding. would be great to have another tool to find that sweet spot for each individual system.

[campo109 0]

Trees and grass in Tanoa are rendering like the picture below. Does is render like this for anyone else. Thanks!

 

[KoalaDSK 122]

Trees and grass in Tanoa are rendering like the picture below. Does is render like this for anyone else. Thanks!

Yes, this is the fading of the level of detail (lod). Some kind of cross hatch fading to cover choppy changes of two different images.

If you pay attention to games like GTA 4/5 or Fallout 3 you will also notice this kind of fading of objects in the distance.

For now the fading in Arma 3 is still too obvious because it happens pretty close infront of the eyes of the player and not in the distance. This technology (cross hatch fade) is pretty new in the Arma series so give it some time to get polished.