Experiences with Grass

[nubbin77 0]

Since playing the Conspiracies mod, I've been toying around with smaller more confined missions with higher levels of details and lower view distances.  

I have been messing with the grass addons that I've been able to find and experimenting to see which one has the best compromise between playability (lag) and beauty.  

I've tried the grass from Haus and Haus2, and the Erba grass.  The ERBA grass seems to be less laggy, but the HAUS grass is nicer looking.  

Uwar has nice looking grass, but it only covers like 3 square meters and then you'd have to put 1000 pieces down to cover any significant section with grass (and at that point is extremely laggy).  I've tried the UWAR grass script, but that lags the crap out of my computer.

I've heard that  Invasion 1944's forever upcoming grass has gotten rid of some of the lag issues, but that's not available (at least that I know of )

Anywhoo, anybody have any input?  I know there isn't / won't be a perfect solution (at least until ARMA I hope).  I'm hoping someone knows of a good grass addon that I have overlooked.  What's everyone's favorite?

[berghoff 11]

I believe WW2EC has good performance grass in the making.

[CanadianTerror 0]

Quote[/b] ]Experiences with Grass

Oh...I thought this was about something else.

my bad.

[Maverick52GZ 0]

Quote[/b] ]Experiences with Grass

Oh...I thought this was about something else.

my bad.  

As I havn't used grass.... ...in OFP    I don't really know how it works...

but lets say...up close, you get your nice tall pretty grass, for like 25 feet, then at 26 feet the grass gets slightly shorter, slightly less detailed, this continues to 35 feet, at 36 feet, less detail, shorter, up to 45 feet... and eventually it cuts off to where to dont notice it. It would basically be like LOD's, just defined by a script. the grass model/textures would just be defined in the script for the distance wanted.

If this is how it works, forget about me, if not, some one should try it  

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Ah the scripting makes even my computer pause. And how to tell the grass where not to be - I shudder.

[eestikas88 0]

you just have to gather some money and buy a better processor and graphics card and some memory.

right now i can tell you that you can't fill all the area with grass as it makes a lot of lag.

[Zendjir 0]

I have been experimenting with the UWAR grass-script but once I found out that AI will not fire through it I gave up. Does anyone know of a grass addon that does not stop the AI from firing?

[nubbin77 0]

Quote[/b] ]you just have to gather some money and buy a better processor and graphics card and some memory.

right now i can tell you that you can't fill all the area with grass as it makes a lot of lag.

I just did upgrade, that's why I'm trying to take advantage.

I guess its a given that you can't fill up an area. I realize that. Keep in mind, I'm sticking to small viewdistances of around 500. So you aren't seeing expansive grasslands. So lets say instead of filling the areas I'd like to have some nice grass patches. The problem there is that most of the addons have straight edges. So the grass ends abruptly. Any suggestions for placing the grass addons so they look a little more natural?

A good solution I thought would be to use some square grass patch addons (like Erba) then on the outer edges use something like Uwar's small grass patches. But the grasses look very dissimilar so it destroys the effect. I'm just wondering what some people do to have some natural looking grassy locations.

[Fab. 0]

Quote[/b] ]Uwar has nice looking grass, but it only covers like 3 square meters and then you'd have to put 1000 pieces down to cover any significant section with grass (and at that point is extremely laggy)

if you have some basic o2 skills, what u can do is: create your own p3d, cover a 50m x 50m square (to be used like a forest), copy/pasting the grass bushes from your favorite grass model, it will lag 100 times less than 1000 pieces as "bushes" in individual models as they currently are...

doing so is the 1st step toward good perfs.

500 models on an island having each 1 bush of grass lags way more than 500 of the same bushes bushes into a single model

hope it makes sence, i just caught the plane this morning and gotta get some good old fashion sleep

[esti_the_big 0]

Hmmm... invasion 44 has been experimenting with new grass techneiques that should reduce the amount of lag, and have working lod as well and are fully functional with AI. They say the grass is less laggy than normal wood objects... Maybe ask at there forums or ask Jojimbo from inv44 mod, he's responsible for that technology...

[wildo 0]

Inv44 doesnt lag as bad as some think, the lod systems horrible though (well the last 2 lods are)

but yes, AI is completly functioning with it, and it is possible to "hide" in the grass, which is quite fun in MP when your playimg DM

But the basic build up of Inv44's grass is 50x50 square (some are circles, smaller squares for certain parts) and it is in a honeycombe shape, the only problem it has is texture pop up due to OFP poor rendering and you have to walk towards the middle of one square of grass to get the textures to show up there best (and then they stay that way, thank god)

hope thta helps

Wildo (Inv44 member before anyone complains )

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Ah, Eestikas88, my computer is a 3.41 GhZ, 2gig RAM, Geforce6800GTO monster. Believe me, this kind of grassing lags even my computer. That's why I said "even my computer." Heh.

[nubbin77 0]

I did a little messing around with the erba addon, since it seems like it had the best performance of the grasses I tested. I replaced the texture used for the grass with one from berghof's nordic pack. It really improved the overall look quite a bit.

[longstreetcsa 1]

hey nubin77!

Sounds like you are on to something there - I'ver also tried the uwar grass stuff in mp missions but the LAG was there (although there is a method to make the AI fire through it if you just use the short grass and leave the long grass out of our mission). Is there any chance of you puting you method up for download?

Longstreet

[Shashman 0]

ithout alcohol's involvement, I tend to get all drowsy and fall asleep

[cl10k 0]

i tend to get red eyes from it

(sry)

[nubbin77 0]

LongstreetCSA

PM sent. I'm not uploading it anywhere because I didn't get permission from either addon maker. I will send it to people if they request through PM. Its not like its great or anything, I just think its a little better than it was.

[Zendjir 0]

Quote[/b] ]although there is a method to make the AI fire through it if you just use the short grass and leave the long grass out of our mission

I tried this aswell, but it didn't seem to work for me. Could you tell me exactly which grasstypes you used?

[-HUNTER- 1]

i tend to get red eyes from it  

(sry)

That would be nice to have, a proper looking weed plant. I know there is allready one, but its really old! It doesnt look as sharp as modern day plants. Thinks about anti drug missions, ive used the older grass for a plantation in africa, rows and rows of plants. Mapfact cargo stuff, some trucks nearby landing strip...

I didnt feel like making 1 thread about it...

Ive used the I44 grass but it looks nice and all but when your in the grass you cannot see or shoot anybody, but then can see you and open fire... Looks really nice though, screenshots or particular sections in missions, or just to make things look like real nature! > farming tractor thrue grass is nice!

*Excuses himself and quickly leaves the room

[Shashman 0]

i tend to get red eyes from it

(sry)

That would be nice to have, a proper looking weed plant. I know there is allready one, but its really old! It doesnt look as sharp as modern day plants. Thinks about anti drug missions, ive used the older grass for a plantation in africa, rows and rows of plants. Mapfact cargo stuff, some trucks nearby landing strip...

I didnt feel like making 1 thread about it...

Ive used the I44 grass but it looks nice and all but when your in the grass you cannot see or shoot anybody, but then can see you and open fire... Looks really nice though, screenshots or particular sections in missions, or just to make things look like real nature! > farming tractor thrue grass is nice!

*Excuses himself and quickly leaves the room

Or good for PROTECT DA STASH FROM DA FUZZ missions

[longstreetcsa 1]

@ Zendjir

Sure no problem: I used "uwar-grass" and if you take a look at the readme or a peek into the script itself youcan see that all weeds with the number "1" in the name are weeds where AI can hide or you can hide so the AI will not see you (even if those weeds are look through in the game) - hence if the AIs are sitting in those weeds they can not fire through. So I took all weeds with the number "2" in the name because those do not obstruckt the vision of the AIs (as described in the readme). If you use those with the "2" in the name and don't make the grass to dense it should work fine (if you haven't too many soldiers running around and using too many grassobjects making the whole thing quite laggy).

Hope that was helpful?! Fire away if not...

Lonmgstreet

[Zendjir 0]

You my friend, are correct

I think the tests I had done on the grass earlier were flawed in that I had not set the damage of the grassobjects to true.

I might test some more but the first results were promising.

[miles teg 1]

Just curious but why would you want the AI to shoot through the grass??? I always find it rather frustrating when I'm hiding in some grass and the AI shoot me from far away even though there is no way in hell that they can see me.

Thats one reason I loved the grass on the last version of Christoph's Normandy map. When the Ai was standing they would fire at the enemy, but when they were in the prone they wouldn't fire or if you were in the prone they couldn't see you. Thats the way it should be to simulate it in a realistic manner. A good mission maker can then use such grass to simulate ambushes by ordering all AI to "setunitpos "up"" when the enemy pass by. The only time there is a problem is if its a tank ambush and the grass is too high for the kneeling AI to shoot their rockets.

Anyways,

Just my opinion,

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[Zendjir 0]

I use the grass in a similar way as seen in arma; a relatively small dense field of grass around the player that 'moves' with him and the grass does not stick out of the ground very much (when crouched soldiers do still have a good field of vision). This caused problems earlier because AI soldiers refused to fire even though the enemy was in plain view.

[hardrock 1]

I thought you're speaking of Günter Grass

But hey, this is no literary board.