grass? eye candy?

[MT4K 0]

ok i been following this game and forum for awhile ok so before anybody thinks im just some silly new twit posting without knowing anything can be aware that i am pretty upto date with everything goin on here, i know there was a thread about the grass before and ever since i saw that and the screenshots and stuff this ha sbeen on my mind since and i aint been able to find the old thread either so apologies for this new one

anyway to the point

in the screenshots and everything the grass is brilliant, sure, but it goes at further distances to the old ofp style right where its just like flat terrain.... well, the whole prospect of hiding in the long grass kind of becomes impossible and more of a negative than a plus as you will have long pieces of grass in ya face while the terrain around you will be as empty and flat as ofp and you will stick out like a sore thumb to an enemy, so why make the grass so graphicly appealing if it wont serve any real purpose apart from eye candy?, i might have missed something sure, so i fi did please fill me in, but its been playing on my mind for awhile now and just wanted to see if i missed something or what anyone else thinks, feel free to flame me call me names or whateve ryou people do :P love ya all anyway lol

[chipper 0]

BIS said they are working on it.

[deanosbeano 0]

you wont learn any detail reading these forums mate this is just a dumping ground for the community websites, you want to check them , try the squads and fanpages ,chose a good one and bookmark it .

Quote[/b] ]The screenshots shows grass only near by the player but not in far distance. Will the grass be a real cover for detecting by the enemies or only an optical effect?

Robert Stipek: This is also work in progress. Atm the AI will see you and you cant hide in grass. But if Armed Assault is finished the grass will be a good cover. But if you lay in grass don’t think that’s easy the shoot the enemy at the distance from this point.

[Smokki 0]

In game "Joint Operations" grass was generated only near you but enemy far away (hiding in grass) was partly invisible.

So you were able to hide in grass that was generated near you.

[Heatseeker 0]

Its all very obvious...

The Sahrani habitants wouldnt like to see tall, wild grass on their beautyfull island so they cut it regularly.

There are hay fields on the island but the farms arent abandoned and they have tractors hence the hay stacks/rolls we saw in some pics. The rest of the grass is problably eaten by the animals...

Good enough? .

[Stendac 0]

lol, so you might see two soldiers from different sides lying on the ground next to each other, but not seeing each other due to the grass? I bet it's pretty funny to watch.

[nephilim 0]

that whole discussion is non-sense

kinda bird-strauß attitude.

"if i hide my head in the ground the predator wont see me"..

honestly

if you get prone in long grass you wont be able to see something aswell as the enemy.

me think abit more logical :P

[JobJenkins222 0]

that whole discussion is non-sense

kinda bird-strauß attitude.

"if i hide my head in the ground the predator wont see me"..

honestly

if you get prone in long grass you wont be able to see something aswell as the enemy.

me think abit more logical :P

Huh, a pointless argument you have there.

What about hiding from alot of enemies? In real life its possible to find large areas of tall grass, why not in AA?

Please, arguments like this are worthless.

[nephilim 0]

well you wont find tall gras everywhere...

[mx maximus 0]

that whole discussion is non-sense

kinda bird-strauß attitude.

"if i hide my head in the ground the predator wont see me"..

honestly

if you get prone in long grass you wont be able to see something aswell as the enemy.

me think abit more logical :P

Well, that's true, but not completely. What happens, if the enemy is looking down from a hill, or from a higher place? Or what about checking the high grass area from a short grass area? The tall grass will disappear if your away and you can see the enemy?

That sounds silly.

I could only agree with you, if Sahrani were a flat place with the same grass everywhere.

[nephilim 0]

i havent brought in the hill thing cuz thats absolutally clear!

i was thinking of having two guys on the same plateu

looking thru the same grass..

sure one of them will see the other (maybe not very good)

if the other ones is lying in short grass..

thast pretty REAL LIFE

[maxqubit 1]

you wont learn any detail reading these forums mate this is just a dumping ground for the community websites, you want to check them , try the squads and fanpages ,chose a good one and bookmark it :).

Quote[/b] ]The screenshots shows grass only near by the player but not in far distance. Will the grass be a real cover for detecting by the enemies or only an optical effect?

Robert Stipek: This is also work in progress. Atm the AI will see you and you cant hide in grass. But if Armed Assault is finished the grass will be a good cover. But if you lay in grass don’t think that’s easy the shoot the enemy at the distance from this point.

I made a small comparison between Ofp and Elite, i which i also note the grass thingy. Indeed grass slows down gameplay.

I didn't notice it when playing Elite but because i recently fired up old Ofp + mods i noticed the difference.

Imho, grass, when well implemented will be a big big gameplay shocker:)

[fasad 1]

a couple of methods of simulating this could be drawing a semi-transparent grass texture above and parallel to the terrain at distance, so that anything below this texture is at least somewhat less visable.

The distant terrain could be drawn at the height of the grass, creating a sharp cut off where anything below grass height is invisable. sounds crude, but remember we are talking about a few pixels at 500m.

Either way, making the grass consistant over a range of different video settings and making the ai "see" the grass in the same way as the player would be the real complication.

[maxqubit 1]

a couple of methods of simulating this could be drawing a semi-transparent grass texture above and parallel to the terrain at distance, so that anything below this texture is at least somewhat less visable.

In Elite this is not the case:(

If you are further away, where the grass is not rendered, you are in the open (i just tested it with some dead bodies) so you are more visible.

So if something is on the ground far away (e.g. you spot it with your binoculars) and you walk up close it kinda disappears in tthe grass. Depends of course on thickness and length of grass.

Curious to see if and how ArmA will deal with this.

(i will put 2 ss of Elite later where you can see the transition)

[fasad 1]

Remember OFP:elite is old technology running on ~5 year old hardware - BIS would have needed to make many compromises just to get the game to run. Given the low res of a tv screen i'm sure grass in the distance was a very low priority.

Don't stress, I'm sure they'll fix it up for ArmA : )

[DarkOmen 0]

Rather they have or haven't fixed it up, because it's nearly here.

[spitfire_142 0]

I think it would be realistic if the sprint option was disabled while running through long grass.

Plus it would be handy if long grass was shown on the map.

[Victor_S. 0]

I dont see what the point of this thread is, if you dont want grass disable it in the options.

[mickuzy 0]

the grass in that night fight video. did they just have it on a small radius or is that how it actually looked?

[twisted 127]

grass is importnat. especially in multiplayer (but SP to be a good expereince also). joint ops (AFAIK) nearly had it right and finding and hiding in grass did give you a tactical advantage for a while (except if you started moving then you'd show up sorta like a badly rendered version of the predator movie invisiable gadget). of course turning 'effect setting' down to lowest setting pretty much cancelled out the grassd effect so a lot of people did that to cheat and be able to see enemy easier (but never perfect).

so.. 1) it's is importnat in MP and against AI.

2) it's importnat that it's not exploitable by turning 'effect' settings down.

[smellyjelly 0]

I hope turning down settings won't give other players an advantage, like shadows, grass, ect.

[Lou Montana 101]

@twisted: important, man    

@smellyjelly: in OFP footprints were not displayed when vehicle shadows were disabled, giving an little advantage to those who got a bigger PC :-/ the same for those who disabled smokes, with smokegrenades they could fire through

[Maddmatt 1]

In one interview it was said that you can't disable grass, only tone it down. That makes sure nobody cheats in the graphics options.

[maxqubit 1]

Cheating? ... can you guess what i'm thinking right now? AAAA/NNN:)