Terrain, my main concern....

[Lightspeed 0]

You know I love the fact that we can wage battles, and plot missions over these vast open landscapes...brilliant.

My only concern is that in many SS of OFP, and Armed Assault there seems to be a real lack of cover in the way of smaller vegetation (bushes, grass, scrub) and also undulations besides the hills. Either you're on a rolling hill, or you're on a flat plateau/plain.

I would like to see a bunch of craters, gulleys, ditches....I could go on but Im sure the message is clear enuff.

Lighty.

[Uziyahu--IDF 0]

Yeah, some kind of erosion modelling on the terrain.

[Lightspeed 0]

Im guessing that one of the issues might be the huge amount of memory that would be chewed up placing these etra objects. I mean to get a real impact over such a large map youd have to be adding literally millions of these objects across the island. Even if the engine only renders/draws objects out to 2km or so, you're still talking about some seriously high number of objects to add, still into the 100, 000s perhaps.

Does anyone know how the rendering works? In OFP, did you guys find that while you may be hiding behind a bush or grass, that a sniper 100's of yards away would only see the player and not the bush/grass?

I mean really thats what it comes down to, the vegetation of these smaller objects have to visible to all from any position to their futhest range, and anything beyond that is not loaded into the map.

[Heatseeker 0]

Terrain set to very high = Bad performance degradation. Even the smaller games are afected by this. And OPF draws alot of terrain and world detail compared with the rest, concealment in the bushes does the trick every time, i always find a bush to hide or a advantageous position .

[mattxr 9]

Trench and Underground System could be nice

[lendrom 0]

More detailed terrain is important but AI that can use it for cover would be most welcome. And when talking about what COULD be done in Arma i can think of lowering cells size on maps. We saw it in ARCTICPAW in InfantryRange tech demo. This way islandmakers could make much more detailed environments (little hills, causeways, little rivers etc). I dont think cells can be reduced to size of 5ft without a lag on 2km viewdistance but if we had cell size somewhere between original value and that from ARCTICPAW's 'island' with viewdistance at 1km i would be happy. When speaking of viewdistance I would like it to be as far as possible but not if this means haveing plane terrain without cover. And if the 'islands' were based on planes (like Leusderheide or Havelte islands) with forests and grass lowering visibility there wouldn't be hills from which you can see for miles and we wouldn't need so high viewdistances.

[snoops_213 75]

Im guessing that one of the issues might be the huge amount of memory that would be chewed up placing these etra objects.  I mean to get a real impact over such a large map youd have to be adding literally millions of these objects across the island.  Even if the engine only renders/draws objects out to 2km or so, you're still talking about some seriously high number of objects to add, still into the 100, 000s perhaps.

Does anyone know how the rendering works?  In OFP, did you guys find that while you may be hiding behind a bush or grass, that a sniper 100's of yards away would only see the player and not the bush/grass?

Well in OFP yes that is the case, but since "Sarah" apparently has more objects on it than all the OFP islands combined im sure there wont be to much disappointment there

Undulation is already in the game! It was added with Resistance. Set your detail to Very High and you will see the "bumps" in the ground, only problem is the FPS will drop dramaticly especially with large veiwdistances (Very High is not supported over 3500m)

I am currently playing with viewdistance's between 2500m - 4000m (depends on mission, 900m for original campaigns casue any higher and problems arise in certain missions) detail set to medium and everything is drawn. Yes that sniper 1800m away does see the bush your in/behind and not you, however if you start to kill people or do something dumb while hiding they will spot you!

[cain2001 0]

with low,med,high they should have a 5th setting. One that highers the ground level on 10 diffrent places with in100x100m. This means that most of the are will be flat but some parts will be a bit more "hilly", no montains but normal.

This shouldnt lag as its not like the unrealistic very high res haves so it should be possible. And also, instead of going up, it could go down hill and into the ground.

[jtec 0]

Armed assault will have a totally different way of dealing with terrain (streaming terrain) so hopefully alot more detail etc can and will be added

[Mahatma 0]

If rivers are added,I hope for grunts who can swim.Is that so difficult?

Never understood why-if one landed in water-one can't swim to the shore in OPF.I agree that carrying a heavy assault weapon,RPG launcher+enough ammo to win a small war would seriously degrade your ability to swim for any great lenght other than measured in singledigit inches;)But why not have the option to ditch your weapons if in deep water?

I also prey for join in progress,and laid-back players out there

[D.murphy man 0]

Armed assault will have a totally different way of dealing with terrain (streaming terrain) so hopefully alot more detail etc can and will be added

Just to confirm that, a quote from the last press release from BIS.

Quote[/b] ]Environments

* Environments are richly detailed and varied.

* New huge sized battlefield (landmass exceeds that of all islands from Flashpoint & Resistance combined)

* New densely populated battlefield (approximately twice the number of objects on all previous islands combined).

* Dynamic weather and daytime simulation (including tides and star constellations)

* Ambient wildlife.

Linky

Edit:

Also:

Quote[/b] ]Engine/Graphics

* DX9 Engine incorporating many of the latest features, including High Dynamic Range rendering

* Reworked lifelike animations.

* Fully streaming game engine allowing extremely large environments loaded with various special effects.

[Ronin Warrior 0]

Yeah, exactly. Streaming Terrain means that not all objects have to be rendered at once. Which would make it reasonably easy to create small ditches in the ground, which would make for much better coverage than a bush that can be shot/seen through.

Even the fact that it is a DirectX based engine now helps alot 'cause only the visible parts of the map have to be rendered and textured, DirectX doesn't render/texture things that are behind the camera or behind other objects; at least it shouldn't anyway.

Considering these two changes to the engine, alot of the things that may have had major impact on frame rate in OPF should not be very taxing on ArA, so there should be room for alot more improvement.

I would love to go to one of these islands that have no bumps/large rocks in the ground and no holes

[Metal Heart 0]

Streaming terrain is not about clipping or culling rendered stuff, it's about clipping the stuff that's in the memory. To put it simple, it means loading map data on demand, making larger maps possible because of the lowered RAM requirement.

And using the newest DirectX doesn't automagicly improve performance, clipping/culling/lodding/etc have always been present in OFP, how else such large maps and huge amount of objects could've been run back in '01. Hell, clipping has been a very basic part of any FPS game ever since Wolfenstein 3-D dude.

[Ronin Warrior 0]

Streaming terrain is not about clipping or culling rendered stuff, it's about clipping the stuff that's in the memory. To put it simple, it means loading map data on demand, making larger maps possible because of the lowered RAM requirement.

And using the newest DirectX doesn't automagicly improve performance, clipping/culling/lodding/etc have always been present in OFP, how else such large maps and huge amount of objects could've been run back in '01. Hell, clipping has been a very basic part of any FPS game ever since Wolfenstein 3-D dude.

okay dude, if tou understood the meaning of seperate paragraphs, you would understand that I didn't even hint that Streaming Terrain had anything to do with "clipping" and "culling".

And also not everybody in these forums are programmers, so I decided to share a little wisdom.

And don't ever call me dude.......thats a name for your mom.

[Placebo 29]

And don't ever call me dude.......thats a name for your mom.

Attitude like that is not welcome on these forums, if you cannot discuss something in a civil manner then please refrain from entering into discussions.

[Metal Heart 0]

Quote[/b] ]so I decided to share a little wisdom.

So did I, because I thought you had misunderstood terrain streaming, and I'm sorry if I insulted you in the process. I still don't see that I misunderstood anything you said, but it might be my lack of understanding of the enlish language. Fair enough, I will not call you dude ever again if you promise to leave my mother out of this.

[Ronin Warrior 0]

Maybe I can clarify things a little.

When I spoke of streaming terrain, I meant exactly that. With this new technique, theoretically, one could use the whole world as the terrain, and not have a major impact on playability.

When I spoke of DirectX Engine, maybe I should have been more specific, and state DX9 Engine. DX9, along with its use of Hardware T&L(transform & lighting), is capable of a lot more than any other previous 3D software. However without going into a lengthy discussion about what this means it would have been difficult to explain to non-programmers what this is.

Quote[/b] ] Hell, clipping has been a very basic part of any FPS game ever since Wolfenstein 3-D dude.

And as fas as taking offense; Where I come from we don't use foul language when criticizing someone, and we don't call complete strangers things like "dude".

Anyway, to get back on topic, if BIS makes full use of the new technologies available now that weren't available when OPF came out, the level of detail and realism should be far better than anything seen before. Whether BIS chooses to put ditches/foxholes/trenches in the ground is entirely upto them, however it is entirely possible to do so without major impact on framerate. Probably not possible without major overhaul of the engine though.

[maxqubit 1]

I think OFPE has this streaming stuff or at least partly. Check the vid in my sig. And watch the grass as i move. It kind of 'pops up' but in a good way, not the usual 'bad' popup.

When playing i never noticed it. Only watching the vid i saw this.

But perhaps you guys don't mean this by streaming.

[Metal Heart 0]

Almost certainly, isn't X-box memory only 64 mbs.

I think that if ditches, trenches etc are included, they will be objects rather than actual terrain. Other wise the terrain data would be way too heavy because of the high resolution required combined with high view distance and huge land masses. This would be good enough as long as the collision detection is fixed so that soldiers and vehicles may interact with them without getting stuck and so on.

[Batukhan 0]

I think OFPE has this streaming stuff or at least partly. Check the vid in my sig. And watch the grass as i move. It kind of 'pops up' but in a good way, not the usual 'bad' popup.

That's not exactly so. The grass is already loaded into the memory (i think ), but is rendered only around the player, to lower the stress on the VGA. But yes, OFP:E does use streaming terrains, that's why they made the technology in the first place. Wasn't that the reason they started making ArAs? To use the great technologies from OFP:E on a PC?

[Teo 0]

I would like the low land terrain to model something like the fields, hedgerows and dikes you see in Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan.

I know the terrain in France, the UK and Ireland are like this. What I've seen of Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic the terrain is similar.

[Ronin Warrior 0]

I have an idea, how about making sandbags as a part of carryable inventory, so you could order soldiers to pick them up and place them wherever you want them. Thus giving you cover anywhere on the map that you want it.

Would solve the problem of cover and wont have to be part of terrain.

These wide open spaces are great, if your on the side that has the greatest weapon range, but what if your not on that side. You're gonna need a place to hide until the enemy gets into range of your weapons, otherwise they can just stand and shoot without having to worry about getting shot back.    

[Daniel 0]

Hmm. The way I see it, it isn't simply about providing more cover (although there is a lack of it). It's that ground simply isn't flat. Therefore cell size should be reduced. As someone said earlier, "Sarah" will have more objects than previous islands, but that makes sense seeing as it's going to be a much bigger island. I hope Game 2 will use a new approach to terrain modelling.