about swaying grass - hope you can turn it off

[Phleep 0]

An alternative to rendering long range grass would be to possibly make soldiers and other objects semi transparent when viewed from a distance where the grass would have provided some concealment. Maybe it would depend on the angle also, i.e. from above they would be opaque but at a tangent to the ground they are lying prone on they would be invisible.

Other options:

- The "forest block" style sheet a foot above the terrain which would be semitransparent so that the soldier is still slightly visible;

- The soldier could be "sunk" into the terrain (or terrain raised) a small amount so only the parts above the grass show. Then BIS just needs to develop "fuzzy edged horizons" to simulate the grassiness.

[Hekezu 0]

An alternative to rendering long range grass would be to possibly make soldiers and other objects semi transparent when viewed from a distance where the grass would have provided some concealment. Maybe it would depend on the angle also, i.e. from above they would be opaque but at a tangent to the ground they are lying prone on they would be invisible.

Yes, that could work. But again it looks very stupid if you have potted the enemy and he is a ghost.

Another solution besides touching the ammount of unit's alpha could be mapping the unit with semi transparent terrain texture, or grass texture. The blending ratio could be 50% of unit's original textures and another 50% grass/terrain.

That would look better IMHO and make it more realistic to spot an unit. Ofcourse it still wouldn't be realistic enough but better than being able to shoot clearly visible units because they couldn't see you through their grass. And definitely better than seeing all the grass within 1km radius and playing with 5 frames per second.

Maybe snipers could have a different blending ratio, like 25 to 75?

[philcommando 0]

While we worry about the game performance issues of grass...in real life, grass is a good form of concealment and is used practically in all aspects of soldier's movement from cover to cover. The purpose of a soldier's uniform is made so that it blends in with the ground when he prones....and in many real life situations, old soldiers will tell u grass saved many a soldier's life in the real world, with enemies just 2 metres or closer and not spotted. Not all theatres of war are deserts.

However, i would admit it would be a real challenge to simulate real grass in the 3d world without affecting performance, even with today's 4Gig and above processors..but one day it will be possible..just not today.

[Commando84 0]

i like the idea of moving grass and stuff makes it a harder for guys that have that super exellent vision and aim to spot you 600 m away and fire at you without their scope or ironcross because there could be tons of leaves and dust moving around making it harder to spot stuff at a far distance i think Armed assault is going to rock peoples socks off. i still meet people that never heard of ofp and i show them the islands , the engine , the addons , the editor and the possibilities and they usually go wow never seen that shit before I hope Arm A. will make the word go around better than for ofp

[hipacross 0]

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ] (jantenner @ Dec. 05 2005,17:58)

as i heard about that swaying vegetation kind of thing, i thought: oh no not again

all swaying plant stuff i have seen in games so far looked incredibly stupid (to me;) as if you on some weird drugs, which make all the plants do a bellydance. looked nothing like: oh theres wind there.

so the current swaying stuff thing in modern games is just deplaced, as it looks always very unnatural. so better skip it, untill you really have enough processing power to simulate the effects of wind on 1 million tiny plant things.

I disagree 100%, the waving flora in Vietcong was brilliant and really made the environments feel alive and not so static, even the waving trees in GR werent too bad at the time, i think having dust and flora reacting to the rotors of a helicopter will be quite a spectacular sight, im imagining helicopter insertions/extractions in the new Aras game already  .

i agree!

the wind in veitcong was nice and i was impressed when i bought the very first GR, i thought the wind was beautiful and the sound was good too. So i don't know what your talking about when you complain about the wind in games

[Dwarden 1125]

you know grass is great thing .... if it works correctly for affecting line of sight for all (not just You but also the person looking at you from far distance (ie hiding in grass)) ...

definitely implementation like Joint Ops should be NO go ...

also ... i would like to see things like plants / tree leafs reacting to touch/hit from units passing by ... but because i doubt such engine improvements will be in ArmAs ... i bet it will be in game3 (OFP2) ... for now only engine supporting this is next generation one from Crytek ...

[Marshal 0]

Ive played OFP:E and I didnt like the grass at all. It was one of the first things that I thought was odd about the game. Anyone play Soldner and seen what that looked like? Well, its pretty similar.

Fair enough, moving trees can add atmosphere and I would definitely add rustling sounds as you move through bushes (as in COD2), but why do we need moving grass? If you had wheat fields then that would be fine, but in all reality, how often do you see short grass blowing on a sunny day?

[Dwarden 1125]

because there are huge meadows around i can tell You until wind completely calms ... you will see it ... but for game it's not so important ... like You said trees and bigger vegetation (bushes) are first ... grass is last ...

[PriMo_ 0]

However, i would admit it would be a real challenge to simulate real grass in the 3d world without affecting performance, even with today's 4Gig and above processors..but one day it will be possible..just not today.

This is where the PPU comes in! Please god implant it in OFP2!

[Journeyman 0]

Ive played OFP:E and I didnt like the grass at all. It was one of the first things that I thought was odd about the game. Anyone play Soldner and seen what that looked like? Well, its pretty similar.

Fair enough, moving trees can add atmosphere and I would definitely add rustling sounds as you move through bushes (as in COD2), but why do we need moving grass? If you had wheat fields then that would be fine, but in all reality, how often do you see short grass blowing on a sunny day?

Hmm! Did the moving grass in OFPE cause any performance problems though. Or was it well optimised and the only thing wrong with it is that U didn't like it?

Grass does move in the wind if it is meadow grass that is not grazed by animals. Did U see any sheep or cows grazing the grass whilst playing OFPE?!  

Like I've said in another thread, with a bit of luck BIS will make the animated grass optional in the graphics menu if they think it has the potential for causing a performance hit on lower spec systems.

However, I think that your gripe is more of a visual one. I've not played OFPE so I can't comment much on its visual accuracy. I've seen the videos however, and I can say that the grass makes the terrain look a hundred times more realistic than those baren landscapes of OFP!  

[GGX_Lennon 0]

-The grass must be visible on the hole viewdistance.. not only around 100m...

-Better make it non-animated IF NEEDED for the cause of performance

btw... I hope it wont be possilbe to switch grass off..

If yes, the work was for nothing (mp-combats)

[Scrub 0]

Thinking there needs to be a hybrid method to implement what everyone's looking for to offset performance issues.

1st- It's doubtful you'll get grass in full view past 100-150m on mid-range 2006 hardware without taking a hit.

Edit: I believe I'm completely wrong. And happy about that fact.

Possible solution: Use grass as the only graphical cover inside the radius that it exists, no other special effects.. Past that, if the character trying to hide is concealed (locally derived from their comp, variable value on yours)  Fade them into the (hopefully better textured) background, and have (here's a perf hit if I ever saw one, but gotta say) the ground textures with a grass alpha mask on it, possibly moving?

2nd- When zooming past the grassed in location, the same applies to the focal plane of the FOV you are at. Past the 'grass radus' of the focal plane fade them with mask.  That way if you zoom way in on someone, and their in cover, you'll see the cover and have to pick them out of that, but if it's past the point where you can't see individual blades of grass, then only larger foliage really matters for rendering.

Just some thoughts.

Oh yea, and a switch in the options panel that has 'OFF' somewhere on it.