Roads

[opteryx 1562]

What does the smooth roads script actually do? Does it smooth out uneven curves? Is it mandatory? Sorry I've haven't gotten around to try this yet.

[Planck 1]

Quote[/b] ]

This script allows to smooth the terrain along the road paths and in their immediate neighborhood.

Planck

[rstratton 0]

BIS= bohemia impractical studios lol

[opteryx 1562]

Quote[/b] ]This can be A,B or C if it is a 'T' piece.

I've added both T and X intersections, but I get no C direction alternative, why?

-edit-

Example:

img]http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1989/test1ex0.png[/img]

-2nd edit-

Nevermind I found the crossroad thingy.....

-3rd edit-

The way this engine has handles road design is depressing and seems reminiscent of DOS games such as Stuns. I cannot comprehend how I am supposed to plot out a realistic road network based on real world networks when the modulability of road shapes is so severely restricted.

Why OH WHY cannot the road construction be based on splines that are assigned with textures? Even vastly inferior game engines such as Battleflop2 features this in it's World Editor.

Also the road tool seems to be vastly bugged. After 1 hour of mortal combat with adjustments between the road layout, objects and the reference background image to make everything correlate, I begin to experience bugs where's I am missing either some individual road objects along the path, they get malplaced and even sometimes I loose entire branches of a network. This is highly anticlimactic...

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

I foresee many complaints of loud mouthed profanities occurring at night from neighbors in the coming weeks.

[charonos 0]

Quote[/b] ]

I foresee many complaints of loud mouthed profanities occurring at night from neighbors in the coming weeks.

GOOD ONE ! HEHE

When your neighbours knock on your door just tell them that you'll shut up when they explain you how to correctly build an ArmA road layout

[Edge 2]

Quote[/b] ]BIS= bohemia impractical studios lol

Hm, not funny. Better luck next time...

Quote[/b] ]Why OH WHY cannot the road construction be based on splines that are assigned with textures?

It is pretty simple - there was no need to create anything more elaborate when Arma was developed. Visitor 3 was made to create gaming worlds, not to reproduce real-life terrain. I feel your pain but there is no better way to do that in V3. Implementing any spline editor is not as easy task as it may seem, if you need to take various "invisible" features of our roads into account.

Regarding the scripts - None of them are mandatory, but most of them are very valuable. In case of BI scripts, description of function is in the code, just open it in Notepad.

I hope you have tolerant neigbours. You still have to make some nice surface mask and match it to map objects...

[shinRaiden 0]

Don't even get me started on the subject of splines. I've been pestering this one over the last several years, and it's a pretty critical/blocking requirement, imho, for the reasons listed below. Each time I raise it, the answer back is "Won't work in the context of 50m clipping/collision". I never said I wanted it in that context, and a wide range of applications such as Train and Flight sims proves that it can be done reasonably. In all fairness, I'm not a programmer, but can't it be done in a different context, outside that of 'normal' objects?

* This massively reduces the object count related problems in visitor.

* This allows for useful road networks.

* Vector networks used for spline-based roads could be provided directly to the AI for sensible on-road travel.

http://wscg.zcu.cz/wscg2005/Papers_2005/Full/C61-full.pdf

[fasad 1]

Here in Australia at least, roads are (or at least should be) either straight, a spiral (increasing or decreasing radius) straight/curve interface, or a constant radius curve. I suspect splines would allow the creation of many, many unrealistic curves that would never get built in reality, for safety reasons.

I'd like a shorter length curve segments of different radii, and more interesting road connection pieces allowing angled junctions, merges, etc. I image all these pieces could easily be created by the community if it felt the need.

[shinRaiden 0]

I should probably clarify my comments a bit. The lower resolutions showing in the preceding linked doc would be more than sufficient in terms of required fidelity, so according to that model arguably premodeled roads may be more efficient. However, that may be compensated if the fidelity of the shader is reduced to a comparable level.

The major point of all this though that you gain significant benefits in development and AI behavior, as well as a reduction in distribution loads of unique road tiles.

[opteryx 1562]

From a pure aesthetical point of view disregarding any AI pathfinding etc. I think if implemented correctly, splines would most certainly be beneficent for creating far more detail road structures than that of what is possible now. Splines are far more manipulative than any anchored point objects, however the final result of a product utilizing splines is dependent on how the software allows you to manipulate them, and the competence of the user.

I can only hope ArmA2 hasn't reached a development state where's it's no longer feasible to implement.

[Edge 2]

The truth is that making splines editor on its own is not a big deal, but implementing something like that into existing engine is not that easy. I am well aware of capabilities of splines and well acquainted with disadvantages of current system, and there are different things being worked on. However, there is no point in discussing them other than purely academic; roads system in Arma/Visitor3PE will not be changed.

Shin, thanks for the paper. We have tons of papers like that, for spline representation of roads is vastly popular in various visualisations (e.g. Terrex stuff used by many specialized military sims), but as I say, "context" of performing such stuff in engine is extremely broad.

Quote[/b] ]...I begin to experience bugs where's I am missing either some individual road objects along the path, they get malplaced and even sometimes I loose entire branches of a network. This is highly anticlimactic...

Opteryx, please can you name the P3Ds with which this happens? Feel free to contact me by PM, maybe crippled model was released or you only set something in network wrong.

[Vartz 0]

am i missing something or are there no 90 degree turns that can be used?

[kubi 0]

... roads system in Arma/Visitor3PE will not be changed.

Ohh, that means that road placer window will remain a modal dialog, and we wont see the road "growing" when we place down a road element?

IMHO, road placement is an easy job, but I have to see it right at the moment I place the element. Without that it is almost impossible...

[opteryx 1562]

However, there is no point in discussing them other than purely academic; roads system in Arma/Visitor3PE will not be changed.

Well of course, you'd be crazy to change something this fundamental in the ArmA engine now!

Was thinking I'd be nice for BIS to at least consider it with ArmA 2

Opteryx, please can you name the P3Ds with which this happens? Feel free to contact me by PM, maybe crippled model was released or you only set something in network wrong.

Sent you a PM

am i missing something or are there no 90 degree turns that can be used?

There's only one road type I think which has a 90 degree turn, it's the three lane road. Only other way would be to add enough curves until the road's direction is angled at 90 degrees.

[Edge 2]

90° turn - I would try to make a model first, define it as special part or as (really weird) crossroad (only A+C or B+C would be properly modelled) and try it in game. It may work...

Opteryx, thanks for your PM.

[Allie 0]

I have to say that i didnt find any real problem with the road tool thingy, i was able to overlay the road almost perfect over the sat road.

Sure 100% is hard but with a bit of trail and error its not bad.

Used the "sil" parts for it, even a quite tight U turn is possible with the Radius 25m ones.

Placing them in visitor is not hard, just drag the popup windows away and you can see your road grow, have to press apply tho.

Other roads i used the dirt parts.

One thing tho, here we go again, srry

I was able to define Dust and roughness for the "ces" parts, but NOT the "sil" parts, even, the "sil" parts dont have any sound setting at all, i hear the sand from the texture under them?

Anybody any idea ??

Thanks,

Allie

[Vartz 0]

i know im doing something wrong but i just figure it out... for some reason when i place the road in V3 its there... but when i save the mission and convert it to a pbo and then load the island in the editor then the road is not there :S

ok i found that the objects are there because i can see the IDs of the road but the textures are not showing up..

[Allie 0]

What parts u using ?

[opteryx 1562]

i know im doing something wrong but i just figure it out... for some reason when i place the road in V3 its there... but when i save the mission and convert it to a pbo and then load the island in the editor then the road is not there :S

ok i found that the objects are there because i can see the IDs of the road but the textures are not showing up..

Some roads have no map icon, these are not finished. You can identify them by checking if they have a specular/normal map, if they do not have that, they are most likely not usable.

[Synide 0]

what p3d's were you having trouble with?

i'd like to see these problems first hand...

[Vartz 0]

i was using the "Sil" type.

[Allie 0]

I'm using SIL parts, no problems, except that i cant define any sound to that road.

But again it is showing ingame for me, so maybe you still have some Paths not defined right ?

dunno then

Later,

Alphons

[Allie 0]

ROADS !!!

Ok found out that the SIL* parts even on Sarhani itself DONT work, no road sound and dust and roughness from textures underneith road.

So its not i am doing things wrong then !!!!

Sil road parts are fckd !!!

Hope to have some time during the week to try and explain how to define custome settings on textures and objects.

Later,

Allie

[Jeppen 0]

Hi,

what is the meaning with making new keypoints (blue sections) instead of keeping everything normal (black sections)?

(when seen inside V3)

Has it anything to do with AI path finding or so?

[Allie 0]

As far as i know, the keypoint does not have to do anything with roads.

It defines for example a city name or some other named point on map.

Later,

Allie