Contact Expansion Livonia Feedback

[oldbear 390]

Railway Tracks Inspection Team still at work.

Three defects have been detected on the ramp North of Topolin Bridge.

 

 

The first defect is minor, it is located at the point of break of slope, after the bridge.
The other 2 most important are located a little higher and are the consequence of a bad positioning of a track panel.

Repair team called on the spot has been unable to repair, Terrain Builder intervention needed.

[DnA 5143]

And the Most Creative Bug Report award goes to ... ^

Cheers, the Livonia dev team is stalking these parts, and will do their best to address what they can. Internal QA is also still going over many sectors with a magnifying glass.

[Glow 181]

I glitched once when I drove those rail tracks in a Jeep (at 035088).

 

BTW: It would be more useful to have those statues rendered with bases. The second one come from Contact.

https://imgur.com/a1Mq05o

https://imgur.com/jqDA9kO

[EO 11275]

Sunken barrels at the back of the warehouse at Lukow Airfield...

Spoiler

 

[oldbear 390]

From my Bug Hunter Party ...

- Hi Ivan, for the fun I shot some rounds around a guy who planted his 4WD in the middle of a meadow, the moron is hidding behind the car now !

 

 

- If you don't stop shooting that car, the moron will go up your rock to kick you ass* ...

- ... , but you said you were in a cornfield!

 

 

- Well, well, well, I need to tell somebody !

 

 

Edited May 27, 2019 by oldbear
Ivan's response heavily loaded with graphic style figures has been severely edited

[pr9inichek 133]

@DnA hi!
Please check this tickets:

https://feedback.bistudio.com/T139793

https://feedback.bistudio.com/T139794

https://feedback.bistudio.com/T139795

[CaptainDawson 93]

After looking over the map for awhile, I have to say the terrain itself and buildings look great IMO! But quite honestly, with such a small map size, the poorly implemented map border is problematic. Aside from flying over the terrain, there are so many places where the "blank" terrain is visible from the ground. In areas near the border, it seems the terrain is perfectly arraigned for the border to ruin the view of the horizon. The stark change from detailed terrain/roads to blank light green nothingness really ruins the effect for me. In certain areas and locations of the map, the terrain slopes downwards towards the edge and leaves the transition area in view, meaning the border ruins the whole vibe of the area. Say what you will, but those of us who are mission makers know that areas like that are highly annoying to deal with when planning in the editor.

 

Something really should be done to at least ATTEMPT to homogenize or just hide the extreme borders of the map. If we could get a bit of a terrain upslope towards the edge to hide the transition, or even a exclusion zone fence, it would greatly increase the usefulness of this map to mission builders! Even if we could just get a dark green terrain color outside the map's borders to resemble forest, it would look so much better!

[FoxFort 341]

I just want to added that Livonia looks good, reminds me of Bosnia 🙂

[EO 11275]

1 hour ago, CaptainDawson said:

After looking over the map for awhile, I have to say the terrain itself and buildings look great IMO! But quite honestly, with such a small map size, the poorly implemented map border is problematic. Aside from flying over the terrain, there are so many places where the "blank" terrain is visible from the ground. In areas near the border, it seems the terrain is perfectly arraigned for the border to ruin the view of the horizon. The stark change from detailed terrain/roads to blank light green nothingness really ruins the effect for me. In certain areas and locations of the map, the terrain slopes downwards towards the edge and leaves the transition area in view, meaning the border ruins the whole vibe of the area. Say what you will, but those of us who are mission makers know that areas like that are highly annoying to deal with when planning in the editor.

 

Something really should be done to at least ATTEMPT to homogenize or just hide the extreme borders of the map. If we could get a bit of a terrain upslope towards the edge to hide the transition, or even a exclusion zone fence, it would greatly increase the usefulness of this map to mission builders! Even if we could just get a dark green terrain color to resemble forest for the outside of the map, it would look so much better!

 

This has been mentioned a few times now, but none more descriptive than this. ^^

And it's probably the only downside to Livonia, it grates a little more because the last 4 vanilla terrains we've had in A3 have all been islands and or archipelagos

[oldbear 390]

Of course, making an island or an archipelago do not pose this kind of problem to terrain builders.

In fact, it's also the same for all more or less barren areas, desert, mountains and even winter lanscapes.

 

The same issue is showing in forested or more or less  densely vegetation populated terrains such as tropical continuous terrain.

When you are building a terrain, many limitations drive you to try to use maximum space allowed by the Game Engine and there are not many ways to hide the border.

The problem you are reporting is related to the topography of the terrain.

Here Livonia is displaying 4 "open" view sides.

On Chernarus, 2 sides were in fact  "limited" by the sea and the North border was displaying mainly hills you were looking at from a lower position, so it was also "closed", but the West frontier was showing the same problem you are reporting now on Livonia.

On Livonia, the terrains creators have taken the precaution of limiting outward views by using ridges to the North and South of the area.

 

There are not many technical solution, and after having tested the idea myself, the outside dark green terrain color is ugly when played from the ground.

The only way around is the classical view distance limitation or fog usage.

 

I must add that testing Livonia on an entry level rig Ryzen 3 2200G/RX 460 Visibility is limited to 2200 m in order to get a playable FPS level.

By the way, this terrain is too small for high speed flying airplanes and must be played at the ground level.

 

[HaseDesTodes 62]

39 minutes ago, oldbear said:

There are not many technical solution, and after having tested the idea myself, the outside dark green terrain color is ugly when played from the ground.

The only way around is the classical view distance limitation or fog usage.

 

bring the good ole skybox to arma 🙂

just not like usual where you are inside the box.

like a large box 20m high and 4km wide surrounding the whole map, with different textures for the side and the top.

not sure if the engine would support this, but sounds like a proficient way to deal with this.

[CaptainDawson 93]

4 hours ago, oldbear said:

There are not many technical solution, and after having tested the idea myself, the outside dark green terrain color is ugly when played from the ground.

 

Right, but it already looks ugly when played from the ground. We don't want to go anywhere near the border, maybe it should at least look good from a distance? The benefit of darkening the base terrain outside of the map would be for players who are viewing the map from above, in an aircraft, or on a mountain. In parts of the map, we literally have dense pine forests on one side and a barren light green void on the other, with almost no form of smooth transition whatsoever. Averaging the hue of the tree foliage with the hue of the fields/grass for the outside of the map would still be better than the perfectly straight "wall of trees" that terminates in a totally homogeneous light green texture outside the border, IMO. Better yet, a repeating texture 2D top-down image of Arma trees. 

 

3 hours ago, HaseDesTodes said:

 

bring the good ole skybox to arma 🙂

just not like usual where you are inside the box.

like a large box 20m high and 4km wide surrounding the whole map, with different textures for the side and the top.

not sure if the engine would support this, but sounds like a proficient way to deal with this.

 

Normally I would strongly disagree with this, but for Livonia specifically, I feel like this could be a better solution than what we currently have in the map. The half-hearted attempts of featureless hills and lakes outside the map border are worse than nothing when trying to alleviate the deep contrasts on the map's borders. Unlike island maps like Altis which are surrounded by water (a naturally repeating texture), there is no reason to fly or walk outside the border of the map on Livonia. A flat background image, or a series of multi-layer backdrops vertically covering the border of the map would look infinitely better than the current border.

 

This is possible, at least on a small scale. I have done this myself for the inside of a large building in to create a sort of "wormhole" effect when the player enters or falls into it. Essentially going from the standard map into a cubical skybox within the existing map. There's gotta be a way to just do this for the whole map. All we need is simply an image of a mountain horizon, with a transparency above for the normal sky to shine through. It's not the Arma style, I know, but it would just look way better than what it looks like now. There are, of course other options I'm sure. All I care is that it should look better than it does now...

[oldbear 390]

Years ago, BI has allowed terrains makers to build not only islands but also continuous terrains using some procedural computing for the extra grounds.

We have done our best and it was easy with desert or mountains and I had once fly for hours over an infinite coastal desert made in purpose.

Main words here are open world and freedom, I will not play in an arena with walls or cliffs.

 

I just spent hours this morning patrolling the border on foot and with a car, I haven't seen anything ugly, and I enjoy the trip round.

[Glow 181]

Airport tower, ladder is other side around when you try to use it.

https://imgur.com/rY2KttC

[POLPOX 778]

1 minute ago, Glow said:

Airport tower, ladder is other side around when you try to use it.

Intended since Arma 2.

[EO 11275]

A few observations after the latest update to Dev branch...

 

On 5/26/2019 at 3:42 PM, EO said:

The radar complex at Swarog has literally no small clutter objects like trash bins/containers, garbage piles etc.

Similarly the large industrial complex that sits between Rodzanica and Swarog has no small clutter objects either....these objects are convenient for loot scripts which rely on static map objects    

Still no small clutter objects in and around the Swarog radar complex, however the industrial complex as mentioned above now has some trash containers which is nice. 👍  

 

On 5/27/2019 at 12:19 PM, EO said:

Sunken barrels at the back of the warehouse at Lukow Airfield...

Spoiler

 

These barrels are still misaligned. 

[Alwarren 2767]

10 hours ago, oldbear said:

I just spent hours this morning patrolling the border on foot and with a car, I haven't seen anything ugly, and I enjoy the trip round.

 

Yeah I think the biggest issue is how obvious the border is, since grass and other clutter abruptly end there. The best thing would really be to at least continue the clutter, that way it wouldn't be that in-your-face anymore.

[pr9inichek 133]

@DnA hi 🙂

 

Please check https://feedback.bistudio.com/T139840 ^_^
Thank you

[tpw 2315]

Nice to see some updates rolling in already. The performance is still terrible in built up areas unfortunately. I guess that's a bigger update.

 

@DnA any word on getting the sound config looked at, that constant background wind noise is driving me insane.

[twistking 204]

On 5/24/2019 at 7:23 AM, tpw said:

 

[...]

Bad:

• Horrific optimisation around large urban areas, where my computer sometimes struggles to hold 35fps without mods.  (I expect this kind of thing from a mod terrain, not a BIS official one).
• Bad satmap mismatches, particularly between the tan satmap/bright green grass.
• Overpowering daytime atmospheric ambience that sounds like constant wind / distant traffic, needs to be scaled back about 95%.  
• Pretty bad ground clutter popin.
• Night lighting config is a bit extreme, I can barely illuminate 5m in front of me with a torch.
• Intermittent popping of environmental samples.
• Worldname is "Enoch", not "Livonia"

[...]

 

I haven't played it myself yet, but only from watching some videos i also noticed the ground clutter pop-in and the satmap mismatch.

Would be great if those technical details can get improved on, since from the general look and feel it has the potential to be the prettiest map in all of arma...

[Hiroya 9]

9 hours ago, EO said:

A few observations after the latest update to Dev branch...

 

Still no small clutter objects in and around the Swarog radar complex, however the industrial complex as mentioned above now has some trash containers which is nice. 👍  

 

These barrels are still misaligned. 

Thank you for reporting.
Our QA and terrain team are constantly working on improving the terrain.

[Dedmen 2700]

As has been reported a few times already, the buildings on Livonia seem just a little bit too big for the Arma soldier.

You can see it quite well here:

(https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/138904-arma-3-photography-pictures-only-no-comments-and-list-your-addons-used/?do=findComment&comment=3359019)

The door is big enough for 3 Men.

If you compare with Altis:

(Credit UMP40#0630 Arma Discord)

You can see that the doors usually only fit one Man.

 

Is that known, and are there plans to fix that? Though I assume that is not fixable anymore.

[beaar 78]

I love the terrain! I'm really excited to finally see some of the really cool buildings from DayZ SA make an appearance in Arma 3.

There's one thing I think shouldn't be left out, though - the new hardened aircraft airshelters in DayZ would feel right at home in the military sandbox of A3. If not on Livonia, then on community terrains. As we've seen on Chernarus Plus, they contribute fantastically to spicing up an airfield. 

For reference (timestamped 1m23s): 

 

 

I've collected some screenshots in an album with feedback on AI positions in buildings. In the screenshots, they show up as the numbered white dots, and I added red dots where I think more AI positions would be good and red boxes where I see something (potentially) wrong. I think it should come across without needing explaining.

https://imgur.com/a/8P52ULs

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

4 hours ago, Dedmen said:

The door is big enough for 3 Men.

You haven't seen the Livonians yet.

Spoiler

Never skip breakfast

Cheers

[EO 11275]

....or the Aliens. 👽