Graphics engine improvement

[Uber 10]

So, not to burst anyone's bubble, but have any dev's posted in here stating that something is underway or that they are acknowledging that something needs to be done? I really don't feel like sifting through 48 pages of posts.

[wooly-back-jack 10]

just read from page 45

[LJF 0]

I'd like to see shadows from individual light sources.

Maybe only have 2-3 enabled at a time.

Would it be easier if it was "light" instead of shadows? I mean, if you cast light instead of casting shadows for the individual light, and you would fade the normal shadows for these areas of course to avoid it looking like it's a light casting over a shadow (which it would be) .... yeah, not sure if that's possible, just an idea.

It just looks awful at night.

[diveplane 0]

no dust effects in wet weather.

[v11cu96 10]

Minor thing, but the bullet shattered glass effect looks really poor, the cracks should stay white rather than alter according to reflections and light.

i hate the way constantly appear and dissapear, looks REALLY bad when they are in your windshield in 1st person view....

I hope to god they can manage to fix such a small thing.

It was much better in OFP even though it wansn't dynamic.

[Uziyahu--IDF 0]

Lighting from fires needs to flicker.

[King Poulet 1]

Trees reacting to winds. It kinda flat and lifeless as it is. Which brings: does this game has wind?

When Ghost Recon was released 8 years ago while playing OFP, I was just flabbergasted of the trees effects. 8 Years later ArmA still lacking in this area.

Edited July 25, 2009 by King Poulet

[Thirdup 0]

Trees reacting to winds. It kinda flat and lifeless as it is. Which brings: does this game has wind?

When Ghost Recon was released 8 years ago while playing OFP, I was just flabbergasted of the trees effects. 8 Years later ArmA still lacking in this area.

Hmmm, maybe there is too much going on around you and you simply never noticed it. Have a look at this clip (watch the trees):

[King Poulet 1]

Damn that was subtle, you are right, never noticed before. Maybe too inanimate?

[Pyronick 21]

Don't these trees dynamically interact with wind and helicopters flying by?

I'm sure they do...

[NZXSHADOWS 0]

Real clouds or close to it. that gives shadows on the ground an move etc. you know what clouds do.

[Jimmy the Saint 10]

SgtH3nry3

Don't these trees [...] interact with wind [...]?

Yes they do. You can aswell see the grass interacting with the wind of (helicopter) rotors or when somebody steps over it or goes prone on it.

NZXSHADOWS

[C]louds [...] gives shadows on the ground an move [...].

Yes, if the weather module has been used in the editor you can experience such effects.

[Colossus 2]

I love ArmA II from dawn to dusk, but by night it shows its less beautiful side. This is just a concept.

What I have done in this illustration is to smoothen up the stages of the light from the actual lightbulb, and get more light where the light source comes from. I've also added a different colour from the light source, since this looks much closer to the real colour temprature a street light produces. Which is about 2600-2800 K (Kelvin to RGB, Planetpixelemporium.com)

[Alpha007 0]

Hi there,

i have one suggestion - can you, please, disable rendering of water under the land? Everytime you are killed and you fall down, you can see water under surface and i think, that rendering of that beautiful water is taking load on GPU... Hope it will be better in next patch :cool:

[PRiME 1]

Top list:

1. Better Reload animations esp. with rockets etc. (more well timed and realistic) AND allow the interruption of reloading MID way, say if player FIRES in middle of reloading a RPG then it goes back to its default stance. (I have been stuck in reload mod for ages once when looking down a tank barrel thinking, if only I could just BUG out, forget the rpg lol)

2. Getting into vehicles needs better animation positioning and perhaps fluid animation. IE perhaps try adding it to the CAR first or BIKE were you GETIN and animation plays till player sites down, THEN move to the GETIN function part. For cars it pays to make the doors open first. BIS this seriously isn't that hard! some vehicles had opening doors already.

3. The smoke and fire system needs work, it does not look very real and often is too puffy and cloudy. Someone needs to look at LIVE fire examples from military of Grenades/Mortar/ARTY/ and ROCKET trails. Normally it looks better when smoke is streaked to symbolized movement, but in arma2 it just creates motionless puff clouds.

4. More death animation variation, perhaps a rigid body system (or a better one), but NOT rag doll effect because it disobeys joint movement often and the fact soldiers still have natural posses when they fall rather then complete brain to body disconnect.

5. Optimise the loading priority of textures in towns esp more. Sometimes textures don't load, also it helps to put a VALUE in the texture memory setting in the options screen so people can adjust to their video-card. Even a profile selector for veriest cards would help I think allot of people who are running at incorrect settings. For example the normal slider could be suited for HD4850/9800GT Cards ? perhaps a note underneath, some new comers just have not got a clue and try and play with things way too high.

6. Combat debris needs better optimization, I think its possible to have everything stored in a file or memory and just display it when someone is in range to some suitable limit instead of this AUTO clean-up crap. It would be nice to include shell casings in this, some smart management of what to display and how much will be needed obviously, like if a cluster of 400 shells exist then obviously only a few of these need to be present for the effect of residual combat to exist. (I have only mentioned this last one because I have SEEN combat bodies and THINGS just vanish infront of me, this kinda breaks the realism and I see no need to do it, esp if FPS wasn't impacted)

7. Lighting esp. street lighting should be a projection mostly down, this insane outer glow should be less intense. Some very limited shadowing effect could be added for high-very-high settings. Most the glow should be on the bottom surface, check the images. NOTE: there is some ambient but notice its dependent on the viewers position and isn't static!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71821925@N00/2938742157/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26684957@N04/3077156674/

The last one is in fog and the ray tracing effect is most obvious. These are the types of lighting small villages might use. The SUPER ambient massive wattage ones will be used for suburb/city.

Edited August 12, 2009 by PRiME

[Flash Thunder 10]

Totally agree with all your points. :)

Edited April 8, 2010 by Flash Thunder

[Sleek78 0]

i`d like to see option for Brightness,Color,Contrast option ....i think that would make the game feel/look better ...please BIS consider it

[GLeek 10]

i dream about a vertex deformation of vehicle . ala GTA4. imagine a M136 impact the side of a LAV, letting a crater on it. or crunching terrorist with a tracked heavy goliath :)

[Radnik 18]

There is apsolutly no need for such detailed (quality not quantity) vegetation, eg. trees. Bushes and grass are o.k., most of trees look quite dicent from distance but in a closer look with all those million of leaf poligons are needlles. GPU is wasted in any combat or non-combat situation when actualy no one realy care about it and yet still rendered.

[maddogx 13]

... million of leaf poligons ...

I think you need to take a closer look at the bushes. The effect is mostly shader-based - they aren't made up of as many polygons as you think.

... no one realy care about it ...

Also wrong.

[dmarkwick 261]

Tell you what would be nice for ArmA3 - deferred lighting. No more hardware lightsource limitations.

[Pyronick 21]

Tell you what would be nice for ArmA3 - deferred lighting. No more hardware lightsource limitations.

That would be nice.

And if they are working on a new render engine for ArmA 3 with multiple render targets and render-in-texture they could also implement procedural texture generation for FLIR and NV and add mirrors.

Hybrid raytracing would be nice aswell, but that's lightyears away.

I'm hoping that there will be a D3D11 path in ArmA 2 through patching or sth.

[GLeek 10]

There is apsolutly no need for such detailed (quality not quantity) vegetation, eg. trees. Bushes and grass are o.k., most of trees look quite dicent from distance but in a closer look with all those million of leaf poligons are needlles. GPU is wasted in any combat or non-combat situation when actualy no one realy care about it and yet still rendered.

PROPER PLANT LOW VISUAL install , you will :)

[desertjedi 3]

There is apsolutly no need for such detailed (quality not quantity) vegetation, eg. trees. Bushes and grass are o.k., most of trees look quite dicent from distance but in a closer look with all those million of leaf poligons are needlles. GPU is wasted in any combat or non-combat situation when actualy no one realy care about it and yet still rendered.

OMG!!! I thought I was the only one who thought this. But maybe my "problem" is slightly different.

IMHO, the A2 vegetation looks like crap and there's WAY too much of it. IMHO, it greatly affects the quality of gameplay and to some extent the game's balance...i.e...combine that with the shadows and in many situations, I can't see crap.

Improving graphics in each successive version of Arma is a noble goal and a necessary one from a business perspective. But if BIS is going to go for full-on vegetation realism, then they're going to have to limit its quantity (or something) so that the visual accuity presented in the game is somewhat (and I stress somewhat) representative of real-life vision. Don't just dump my ass in a morass of grass, ferns, weeds, bushes and trees for the sake of "realistic vegetation". I have played a couple of missions where I never saw the enemy. Gameplay is God, not realistic vegetation. If BIS created the best AI algorithms in the world, I won't care if the game took place in Lego-Land. And I bet neither would anyone else.

BTW, this post was written after I started using PROPER Vegetation Low. Thank God for that mod.

Edited September 18, 2009 by DesertJedi

[Pyronick 21]

@DesertJedi: With modern GPU's (8000 series, HD2000 series), these trees hardly affect framerates.

It's the terrain, loading (bandwidth and buffersize) and probably AI which is killing performance.

And perhaps outdated APIs and render paths like D3D9 which have to be emulated.