Sa'hatra, Iraq/Middle Eastern Terrain

[JD Wang 351]

Cool that makes a ton of sense, I'm glad you've given it thought.
 

[jujurat 767]

Fleshed the river out and made new trash assets. 

[chops 111]

Mate, your trash objects are utter garbage! 😁

[jujurat 767]

New GDTs and clutter objects (stones)

[LSValmont 789]

This map looks like what Arma 4 is supposed to look like! Just insane!

[nikiforos 450]

2 minutes ago, LSValmont said:

This map looks like what Arma 4 is supposed to look like! Just insane!

Don't let him fool you he is working on Unreal Engine 5 😁

[LSValmont 789]

14 hours ago, nikiforos said:

Don't let him fool you he is working on Unreal Engine 5 😁

 

That would explain a lot! 😅😄

[jujurat 767]

Finishing up east wing.

[jujurat 767]

New sidewalk objects finally imported. Textures wip.
Additionally, here's a video of driving from the east wing to central.

[gatordev 214]

This continues to look amazing and really looking forward to the release.  Thank you for all your work.

 

I noticed that the center island on the highways doesn't have any breaks in it, is that correct?  I'm just thinking it might cause an issue if vanilla AI need to cross the road since they can't seem to hop over fences/barricades like the player can.

[jujurat 767]

6 minutes ago, gatordev said:

This continues to look amazing and really looking forward to the release.  Thank you for all your work.

 

I noticed that the center island on the highways doesn't have any breaks in it, is that correct?  I'm just thinking it might cause an issue if vanilla AI need to cross the road since they can't seem to hop over fences/barricades like the player can.

I'm sure the advanced AI of Arma 3 will have no problem using their teleportation and phasing through wall capabilities to cross the road. Just kidding. Well, probably not. But there's breaks. Just not there. I'll add them now and then.

[gatordev 214]

Gotcha.  Thanks!

[jujurat 767]

Just now, gatordev said:

Gotcha.  Thanks!

Sure! Thanks for the support

[jujurat 767]

Lot of heavy work in-progress, not too much to really show, but I definitely will share when it's been mostly fleshed out and conceptualized.
I had to make a choice on a rather important matter in the terrain; in the sat map in the OP, you can see that south of the city there is a large stretch of open fields and plains. While on paper that seems all fine and dandy, I suppose for myself as a terrain maker I felt it was wasted space. Fields are fun, but if there's an option to bring more content and interesting game-space to an already diverse location, why not take advantage of that?

So, I went hunting, and I found a few nice samples of data that were somewhere north of Baghdad, presumably on some outskirts, primarily for farm land that was dense enough to provide hamlets of population and small compounds mixed with dense farms. South of the river still has this 'open-field' area, and that won't be changed. But I felt that having these small hamlets would really provide an interesting build up of population from a southern invasion/approach. It also just visually looks better in my eyes. Additionally, this data included an irrigation system, and I figured with the river being nearby, it wouldn't be heresy to include irrigation channels in these farm-regions.

To get an idea, you can look at the sheer amount of small compounds and farm sections here on the sat:


That being said, to accompany the new space, I needed to figure out a technique for producing these hamlets. The city assets I have now are not suitable for rural villages/homes. The Takistan houses I found are split into to two primary styles, which is mountainous and low-land, and I opt'd for the notorious low-land. Combing through reference photos, they're not exactly a million miles off from the real thing, but they're not exactly the same either. I'd like to make replacements for these houses in the future if I have the time and energy, but I'd also not like to monumentally slow down the progress of the terrain by adding to the backlog of extensive model work I already have to do. Thanks for the support, work shall continue!

[jujurat 767]

First major detail pass of the east wing is complete.

[Alwarren 2765]

I'm really looking foward to trying this map. Looking really good!

 

[joostsidy 682]

The work so far looks highly professional! 👍

[chops 111]

Have to confess I rolled my eyes a little at the idea of Takistan houses - spent so many years in them now.

 

But having seen the actual screenshots, you've done a superb job of blending them into the environment you've created. They look great!

[jujurat 767]

4 hours ago, chops said:

Have to confess I rolled my eyes a little at the idea of Takistan houses - spent so many years in them now.

 

But having seen the actual screenshots, you've done a superb job of blending them into the environment you've created. They look great!

They weren't my first choice either, but in the future, it's a possibility that I will get around to substituting them with something more accurate.

[icebreakr 3100]

I'll said the same thing here: love your work, can't wait for my team to do an op on it.

[wsxcgy 1960]

I probably wont be able to run it above 27 fps, but it sure does look good.

[jujurat 767]

Just now, wsxcgy said:

I probably wont be able to run it above 27 fps, but it sure does look good.

I personally average around 40 on ultra settings with view distance set reasonably high. (That's staring into the main city and having stuff going on). Outside of the city, I have no issues getting around 60. It's unfortunate because I really only think there's so much I can do, with the limitations of the engine and how it processes occluding and stuff. I'm also just one guy doing all of this, so it probably won't be perfect.
However, most of the buildings are in a currently unfinished state; some models aren't as optimized as they could be, and that's something I'm definitely planning on working on towards release. I imagine there will be a performance boost then. How significant I'm not sure. I think all cities in arma ultimately run like shit.

But, if it makes you feel better, it's something I've been very conscious about. I've had to sacrifice things I wanted to do for the sake of gameplay purposes with the AI and for optimization. I hope Enfusion can handle cities better?

[jeza 5415]

I'm not sure how much of a pain it would be aside from taking stuff out however, one of my favourite maps from Armed Assault was schmafelden and what was unique about it is that the author released 3 versions light, medium and heavy (this was for vegetation density ect. I've not come across this in A2 or A3 but I guess it might be a viable option? As that way you would not need to sacrifice your vision and have a version lighter on the hardware. But again whether its feasible or not I guess is up to you. 

[jujurat 767]

47 minutes ago, jeza said:

I'm not sure how much of a pain it would be aside from taking stuff out however, one of my favourite maps from Armed Assault was schmafelden and what was unique about it is that the author released 3 versions light, medium and heavy (this was for vegetation density ect. I've not come across this in A2 or A3 but I guess it might be a viable option? As that way you would not need to sacrifice your vision and have a version lighter on the hardware. But again whether its feasible or not I guess is up to you. 

I've never released multiple versions of the same map packed into a PBO, so I wouldn't know what the precise process would be for having separate WRPs and configs, I'd have to look into it, but what I'd probably do is cull basic detail objects (I know their classnames) such as the trash, garbage cans, and misc stuff that isn't necessarily 'essential' to people who have a preference to having something that is primarily focused on just delivering simulation than eye candy. Realistically, I try to build all of my terrains by balancing both of these ideas/visions, but obviously with a city it can get performance intensive. I don't believe vegetation density is a problem (per the apex update), but for buildings and misc objects perhaps yes. Every building beyond sheds are enterable in Sa'hatra at the moment, so it adds up. It's something I'll perhaps think about in the future if I start to see that performance is very intense towards the end of release. Thanks

E: I did see that @swurvin made a module for his terrains recently that remove garbage and etc, so perhaps that's something I could perhaps try to implement myself for a wide variety of objects that I suppose would fall primarily under detail. 

[wsxcgy 1960]

22 hours ago, jujurat said:

I personally average around 40 on ultra settings with view distance set reasonably high. (That's staring into the main city and having stuff going on). Outside of the city, I have no issues getting around 60. It's unfortunate because I really only think there's so much I can do, with the limitations of the engine and how it processes occluding and stuff. I'm also just one guy doing all of this, so it probably won't be perfect.
However, most of the buildings are in a currently unfinished state; some models aren't as optimized as they could be, and that's something I'm definitely planning on working on towards release. I imagine there will be a performance boost then. How significant I'm not sure. I think all cities in arma ultimately run like shit.

But, if it makes you feel better, it's something I've been very conscious about. I've had to sacrifice things I wanted to do for the sake of gameplay purposes with the AI and for optimization. I hope Enfusion can handle cities better?

I definitely blame RV4 more than I blame you. because like you say, it just doesn't handle dense clutter or occlusion very well. personally, I think interiors on buildings are overrated too - they compromise basically all details and furnishing to run better, but still trash performance anyway. and performance aside, fighting indoors in arma just sucks tremendously and isn't fun most of the time, it isnt worth the performance losses. pathing and hitboxes are typically really bad in interiors and player movement is too clunky, the whole experience just isnt good. but people still cry incessantly about not having interiors on everything.  if you didn't make the buildings thats not really your fault either though.

 

I've been playing arma games for at least a decade and still haven't had the sense to install its on a solid state or upgrade to a high-end CPU that can actually keep up, so its kind of my fault for perfomance problems lol.

 

I do like the idea of a diet version of the map with less of the detail objects like trash, furniture, etc and less dense clutter. definitely have to wait and see. might not be necessary at all.