Structures - Ambient Occlusion Improvements

[bis_iceman 7384]

Over the past few weeks, our Artists have been working on improving the lighting in buildings on all vanilla Arma 3 terrains. Being nearly finished with polishing the ways interior surfaces are rendered by updating the lightmaps, it is time now to share it with you, our community.

 

Feel free to provide your feedback on these improvements, and if you notice some inconsistencies or problems, let us know in the comments. The changes are currently present on Dev-Branch, we intend to release them with the upcoming Update 1.68. 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Varanon 892]

Looks great. Will those changes only affect sunlight, or can it be used to block dynamic lights as well (thus preventing the usual "car headlights shine through the whole building" problem) ?

Edit: Never mind, misinterpreted the technology, it's simply ambient occlusion, not any visual occluder

[Flax 397]

Looks really nice, looking forward to testing this in Dev. If that screen shot is anything to go by looks like a good change.

[bPatrik 1]

6 minutes ago, Varanon said:

Looks great. Will those changes only affect sunlight, or can it be used to block dynamic lights as well (thus preventing the usual "car headlights shine through the whole building" problem) ?

Edit: Never mind, misinterpreted the technology, it's simply ambient occlusion, not any visual occluder

Lets hope one day they will add DayZ's ligh occluder tech to Arma.

[baermitumlaut 62]

This is worse than the original.

• White walls and floor will reflect a lot of light, the walls will never be this dark when the sun shines so bright
• The spot the sun shines through has too much contrast with the surrounding floor, this would only happen in the dark when a car light would shine through the window
• The god rays are way too strong, is the room filled with gas or a dust cloud?
• When removing the bright spots from the image, you cannot tell at all that this is supposed to be noon - I'd guess it would be bright full moon or very cloudy day with rain

Is this how your room looks in summer? I don't think so.

Spoiler

 

 

Here's how it would look with 50% before, 50% after:

 

This would already be better imo.

[road runner 4344]

It seems no matter what steps BIS devs take, there's always going to be complaints, they're damned if they do damned if they don't.

At least they're still active in updating their product entering its 4th year of release, how many other games have this level of support?

[baermitumlaut 62]

It seems like you haven't read the OP: Feel free to provide your feedback on these improvements.

[pettka 694]

1 hour ago, baermitumlaut said:

This is worse than the original.

• White walls and floor will reflect a lot of light, the walls will never be this dark when the sun shines so bright
• The spot the sun shines through has too much contrast with the surrounding floor, this would only happen in the dark when a car light would shine through the window
• The god rays are way too strong, is the room filled with gas or a dust cloud?
• When removing the bright spots from the image, you cannot tell at all that this is supposed to be noon - I'd guess it would be bright full moon or very cloudy day with rain

 

Thanks a lot for the feedback. Could You, please, possibly try it in the game? The downside of example images is obviously a stark contrast between old and new, while the game should look more natural.

[Beagle 684]

Every improvement is welcome. Everything is better then the "mold in the corners" we have now with ambient occlusion. It worst with HBAO+ at high. All room interiors look way to bright right now in 1.66. Its particularly silly with the military container buildings beeing so bright inside depite the very small single window. The vast difference between inside and outside on a sunny day was complety lost in the visual upgrade in 1.60

[road runner 4344]

50 minutes ago, baermitumlaut said:

It seems like you haven't read the OP: Feel free to provide your feedback on these improvements.

I have read the OP, all I've said is that no matter what changes BIS Devs make, there's always going be complaints, they're damned if they do, damned if they don't,

 

I would, if I was still using dev branch, however I never had issues with the splendid upgrade in the first place, to me it was a step in the right direction, to many guys like yourself, it's a step backwards. It's always going to be a case of you can please some of the people some of the time, you can't please all of the people all of the time

Dev branch broke too many scripts for me for what I was trying to achieve, however, I'm offering an observation that the devs are doomed to fail regardless of what they do to some members.

As I also pointed out, there's very few games still offering updates 4 years post release.

 

[EDcase 87]

I really like where this lighting improvement is going!!!

It always bothered me how bright the interiors were.

I do think the example is a tiny bit too dark.

 

Technically the floor outside the light pool would be darker than the upper right wall because the light would bounce up.

 

The problem is that people will have different settings on their monitors which will bias what they see.

[PuFu 4600]

13 hours ago, bis_iceman said:

Over the past few weeks, our Artists have been working on improving the lighting in buildings on all vanilla Arma 3 terrains. Being nearly finished with polishing the ways interior surfaces are rendered by updating the lightmaps, it is time now to share it with you, our community.

 

Feel free to provide your feedback on these improvements, and if you notice some inconsistencies or problems, let us know in the comments. The changes are currently present on Dev-Branch, we intend to release them with the upcoming Update 1.68. 

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would you be so kind and once you have figured the optimal contrast for the ADS(HQ ?) bakes, to share the bake settings as well, so the few that have WIP structures adjust to it?

[teabagginpeople 398]

2 hours ago, pettka said:

Thanks a lot for the feedback. Could You, please, possibly try it in the game? The downside of example images is obviously a stark contrast between old and new, while the game should look more natural.

just putting these here for people that don't have time to get on dev.

These are some more images from the dev build. note this monitor is a shitty samsung 22 inch tv(my rog swift is on another rig with shit bandwith so no dev branch hopping) and I've been messing with tv settings. 

 

15:00

[Kerc Kasha 102]

1 hour ago, road runner said:

I have read the OP, all I've said is that no matter what changes BIS Devs make, there's always going be complaints, they're damned if they do, damned if they don't,

 

I would, if I was still using dev branch, however I never had issues with the splendid upgrade in the first place, to me it was a step in the right direction, to many guys like yourself, it's a step backwards. It's always going to be a case of you can please some of the people some of the time, you can't please all of the people all of the time

Dev branch broke too many scripts for me for what I was trying to achieve, however, I'm offering an observation that the devs are doomed to fail regardless of what they do to some members.

As I also pointed out, there's very few games still offering updates 4 years post release.

 

 

Baermitumlaut gave very constructive feedback, the only complaints I'm seeing is yours about his post.

[bars91 956]

After the visual update this seems to be a step in the right direction to augment and further the visuals.

 

As was mentioned tho, the contrast needs to be loosened a bit (somewhere in the 25-50% range IMHO).

 

Ideally, somewhere down the pipe there would be a solution for interaction (read: blocking) between objects/structures and dynamic lights.

[eriktrak 76]

Before I never saw these ugly stripes on the buildings. Is it somehow related to the AO?

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Could someone confirm?  And also how to get rid of?

[road runner 4344]

58 minutes ago, Kerc Kasha said:

 

Baermitumlaut gave very constructive feedback, the only complaints I'm seeing is yours about his post.

Do you see me quote his post? No, I'm well aware of how to use the quote function. Did I mention his post specifically? No. I didn't mention him, or his post by name either,  did I respond after his post with a GENERAL opinion and observation with regards to the visual upgrades, yes I did. Are you jumping to conclusions that the post was directed at him specifically? Yes unfortunately you are.

I will say this again, when it comes to the visual updates, the devs are damned if they do, damned if they don't. that is the whole point I'm making, it's not about anyone's post in specific, it's in relation to all the negative feedback  towards the devs since the "splendid" visual update was introduced, some love it, some detest it. catch 22.

The biggest complaint I see mostly is the night time, and the night illumination, or lack of.

Are you yourself offering any constructive feedback with regards to the improvements?
 

[luki 53]

I like the improvements, ingame it looks way better than on the screens.

 

 

1 hour ago, PuFu said:

 

would you be so kind and once you have figured the optimal contrast for the ADS(HQ ?) bakes, to share the bake settings as well, so the few that have WIP structures adjust as well?

 

Would be great to get some insights on that.

[pansyfaust 69]

44 minutes ago, road runner said:

Do you see me quote his post? No, I'm well aware of how to use the quote function. Did I mention his post specifically? No. I didn't mention him, or his post by name either,  did I respond after his post with a GENERAL opinion and observation with regards to the visual upgrades, yes I did. Are you jumping to conclusions that the post was directed at him specifically? Yes unfortunately you are.

I will say this again, when it comes to the visual updates, the devs are damned if they do, damned if they don't. that is the whole point I'm making, it's not about anyone's post in specific, it's in relation to all the negative feedback  towards the devs since the "splendid" visual update was introduced, some love it, some detest it. catch 22.

The biggest complaint I see mostly is the night time, and the night illumination, or lack of.

Are you yourself offering any constructive feedback with regards to the improvements?
 

 

Your second post in this thread seems to indicate beyond any doubt that this GENERAL observation was indeed targeting an individual who dared to post constructive criticism of this change.

Moreover, this overly defensive behavior where any person who dares to criticize and/or offer suggestions gets either personally attacked or gets backhand comments on how he shouldn't criticize because so and so;

Why even hold any discussion at all if it's all directed towards nothing but praise? It's even more concerning since a moderator is advocating it.

 

Also, I would like to agree with the previous posters, the upgraded version does look too dark.

[baermitumlaut 62]

I have downloaded the dev branch and here are my observations so far:

 

Altis

Contrast from outside to inside is a bit too high as I said before, but not as bad as the screenshot in the OP. Inside is a bit too dark at noon and too dark with a full moon shining through the windows.

Not sure if this is supposed to be intentional, but the brightness/time curve has a little bump in it, so between 7:20 and 7:50 it gets darker again. The same occurs in the afternoon when the sun goes down. I guess this is supposed to emulate the sun shining at a flatter angle? Felt a bit odd but not too bad. This is far worse on Tanoa, so I only made screenshots there.

I did also notice that HBAO+ High is too intense in corners and I'm not sure if the environment lighting was changed, but it feels a bit grayed out.

Spoiler

Noon, no overcast, comparison inside to outside. Too dark inside imo.

 

Nighttime with full moon shining through windows. Full moon nights are quite bright, but I can't even see where the room ends.

 

No AO vs HBAO+ High.

 

Gray-ish environment lighting?

 

Tanoa

Definitely worse than Altis, insides feel very much too dark with full sunshine outside (feels always cloudy) and full moon nights are too dark as well.

The same brightness/time bump I described above occurs here, but at a much greater intensity. This does not feel right at all.

Spoiler

Too dark inside with bright sunshine outside (no overcast).

 

Can you guess what overcast level this is?

Spoiler

No overcast, noon

 

Way too dark inside with full moon shining in.

 

"Brightness bump" - note the time.

 

So in general I'd say insides are too dark now, and the contrast should be toned down.

[Beagle 684]

The main issue with contrast and tone is that it is defined by the user side. It depends a lot on yout ArmA 3 post process settings and the monitor and monitor present you use. I can go from real looking to an colourfull LSD Trip look just by using the different preset settings of my ASUS monitor. In general my new ASUS tends to be too bright for ArmA 3. I have to reduce contrast and brightness 10.20 marks for a natural look and tinker around with pp settings, mainly gamma and colour vibrance.

[teabagginpeople 398]

2 hours ago, eriktrak said:

Before I never saw these ugly stripes on the buildings. Is it somehow related to the AO?

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

Could someone confirm?  And also how to get rid of?

confirmed. it occurs when the sun is shining directly on the object. as overcast will remove it. don't know how to get rid of.

[kklownboy 43]

sooo...a north light is softer than a south light (northern hemisphere).  And will never have a direct sun light.  That is the comparison that matters to me... Is there a difference when you go into the back rooms?

[djotacon 190]

I think all depends of the day time.

 

Quote

The god rays are way too strong, is the room filled with gas or a dust cloud?

 

You need to live in a country with "real" sun - like Altis, Stratis island - the sun is exactly like in the picture.

 

I see a great improvement exactly like as is it right now, 50%+50% is a horrible idea.

 

Great job bis_iceman!

[old_painless 182]

8 hours ago, bPatrik said:

Lets hope one day they will add DayZ's ligh occluder tech to Arma.

Indeed, they have dynamic shadows coming up too. But it requires an engine change for Arma, so most likely Arma 4.

 

In the meantime these look good from the screenshots, but have to see them in-game to really form an opinion.