Schmalfelden, Germany Map

[mr.g-c 6]

Ok, i took a look at this map and it feels really like Germany to me... Especially in those awesome woods... man these locations are so great for some real wood-battles you can never do on Sahrani....

Short picture series:

I started a trip with my bike and landed in the middle of the woods...

and totally lost without any idea where to get out, i found myself being in the middle of nowhere with a broken wheel

So i decided to sit down for a short lunch and to take a look over this great modeled area

Then i continued my way to through the dense woods

And finally found a way out... damn, there are great near wood-paths

Picture continue And here.. Here also.... And here.....

Suggestions, Complains:

1. Performance is worse than i ever expected (sometimes below 10FPS)

2. Therefor replace the grass you used with the Arma-Grass from North-Sahrani BI used after beta 1.09 (should give a few extra Frames)

3. Darken the distant textures like previously suggested by someone else

4. Add a few of those hay-rolls on those large fields...

5. Add some traffic-signs

Other than that -a SIMPLY AMAZING map.

Best Regards, Christian

[Daniel 0]

Glad you released this today, just finalising some addons for our unit.  

Good to hear you looking into the trees too, I always considered my PC as pretty good at running ArmA but even I get a bit of slow down flying over forests.

But yeah, definately one of the best maps out now, much appreciated!

[mrcash2009 0]

Since it was added in the other thread ive been waiting patiently for this to arrive.

This is one map that ive had my eye firmly on since it was announced, "something" about it that is going to make this a very original sought after map indeed.

Great work ... long distance firefights, sniping, tank battles .... are just oozing to be played out on this gem!

[mrcash2009 0]

I just played it with a merged small mission from Rhamadi ... and ... it was slideshow time

I have a decent rig and FPS is great an all maps, but I have a "pre 1.09" north sahrani feeling with this map currently.

Not sure what needs to be worked on, will play a little more though.

[icebreakr 3159]

Congrats Nicholas for all the hard work you've done! My guys enjoyed your early beta and it proved to be much like our country Slovenia - of course we kept it as a well kept secret and hopefully we provided you with a couple of ideas

Again, lovely stuff - it just is an amazing work that we not can enjoy fully.

[-IC-Wedge 0]

Great work mate, Good to see you releasing the work you have been slaving over...

Regards

Wedge

A fellow Terrain Editor :-)

[ArmaVidz 0]

Congrats on the release Nicholas Bell!!! I am hoping my system is peppy enough to run this as is! Bring on the trees(hopefully)!!!

Has anyone tried running it with lowplants + durg vegetation fix? If the trees are mostly default arma....:)

Can't wait till I'm off work to check this out.

[themaster303 22]

yes i was out since the 80´s in a forest. but today the saure regen lighten our woods so i think half of it is cool.

i mean the density of course

so...

and good by in schwäbisch ... adele

[Henk 0]

Wow, that's just lovely. I have been dreaming of a map like this since the OFP days. It looks very much like southern Sweden which is what I wanted to be ported into ArmA.

Great job!

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Fantastic work, i love it!

Feels very german!

MfG Lee

[[GLT] Legislator 66]

Wow that's a really good map

But I agree .. the performance is really bad in this beta 20 to 30 fps at 4 km viewdistance. That's not good with:

E6750 @ 3,4 Ghz

2 GB 1066 Ram

Asus 8800 GTX 768 MB

Maybe you can add some of Simbas Buildings there? I'm not speaking of the big houses but of smaller objects.

[ArmaVidz 0]

This map is utterly gorgeous! Used Durgs Vegetation + Keygetys LowPlants with it(untested whether it makes a difference or not)

Frame Rate wasn't too bad with 20 units on the map AND running FRAPS. Down to 15FPS in some areas / 3500 View Distance / Under the camera = 25FPS while running FRAPS / No Tweaking to Settings at All!

I really like the trees the way they are, but of course, if it were possible to thin the density, without degrading the "look" of the terrain it would be great. The large internal areas of the forests where there are masses of downed trees and dense bush are just fantastic. You really did a great job on this one.

[gsleighter 0]

I was looking forward to this one for a long time, so this kind of sucks. The dense forests are nice, but they reduce Arma to an unplayable mess, I'd much rather see less dense and realistic forests that I'm able to play in. Also, maybe you could use the OFP Resistance vegetation models? They are much lower poly, and you could use much more without worrying so much about the load on users' PC's. Maybe freeing up enough overhead to flesh out the forest edges some. Some areas of this map are absolutely genius, especially the tree and hedge rows across the farmland.

Also, the sat map seems very bright, even washed out. I was looking forward to the quarry, but it's almost white on the sat map.

I'm still looking forward to an updated version.

[bigstone 48]

Awesome!!!

[sektor 2]

It looks very realistic, i like it. Keep up the good work.

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Thanks for this map, I'm a huge fan of non-fictious playgrounds, and a decent tank map was lacking in Arma so far.

[PSYCHOSIM 0]

This map is fantastic!

Great work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Placebo 29]

blackgrain remove image tags when quoting please

[Nicholas Bell 0]

I’m glad many of you are enjoying the map. Thank you for your kind words. And thanks for posting those beautiful images.

All the objects (plants and buildings) on the map are “vanilla†ArmA. The only "new" things are three textures made from modified existing textures. These are the "lawn" texture with very short grass and no flowers, a modified travajih with no rocks or flowers and higher dry grass to represent wheat fields, and a modified trava with no rocks or flowers, and only one type of clutter grass.

Regarding the problem with low frame rates, as I explained in the readme, the best coarse of action is to reduce the visibility range and avoid looking toward the forests on the west and northwest sides of the map.

A few observations:

I ran some tests placing myself north of Speckheim facing the north. The entire horizon was forest. The base frame rate was 30 FPS. (with a visibility range of 4 km)

I then deleted everything on the map south of Schmalfelden, cutting the total number of on-map objects by over half (still over 100,000 objects). The FPS in the test scenario remained 30.

I then deleted “just†20,000 trees in the forests in the north – a clear cut of everything, but far behind the treeline so that I could not see the area of the removed trees. The FPS in this case jumped 50% to 45 FPS. Decreasing the number of objects in the FOV/visible range improved the FPS.

The frame rate is impacted because the graphics engine is rendering all objects in the players field of view out to the visibility range, whether the objects are actually in sight or not. This is confirmed by the fact that looking directly at your feet or up in the sky will make the FPS jump way up. Likewise, zooming in (decreasing the FOV) increases the frame rate because fewer objects have to be rendered. Getting closer to a forest however decreases FPS because although the number of objects needing to be rendered is less, they are rendering in greater detail. Lowering the graphic settings will help close up, but have little or no effect when objects are far away.

For whatever reason, bushes really hit the FPS hard when they are rendered close up. I have also tested converting entire forests to 1 tree type and it does little or nothing. It may help more with video cards with less memory (I am using a GeForce 8800 Ultra with 768 MB).

Units (men & vehicles) impact FPS no matter where they are located on the map as the AI and their actions eat CPU cycles. Obviously the more units the greater demand on the CPU.

Bottom line is that this map is never going to have terrific frame rates. There are simply too many objects required to make it look reasonably realistic. I guess I could convert it to desert terrain and the FPS would improve.

I am however continuing to thin out the forests with the knowledge that it will help the frame rate problem. I just don’t know how much. If necessary I may produce a separate “low res†version with drastic reduction in the number of trees.

Thanks for those who are submitting reports with errors they are finding. While I could upload a new version every day, I think I will wait a few days before posting the next update. I will offer a desaturated version of the satellite image for your opinion. Because I am partially color blind, I have to rely on your input on this.

[mr burns 132]

Bottom line is that this map is never going to have terrific frame rates. There are simply too many objects required to make it look reasonably realistic. I guess I could convert it to desert terrain and the FPS would improve.

How about using the old OFP forest clutters like Sgt.Ace did with his Everon island fpr ArmA?

[mrcash2009 0]

Hi nicholas,

Cool no worries, what you explained is the typical bush issue with Arma. I wasn't expecting it to be smooth running with trees, I just thought that there are so many areas without them that it wouldnt be as it was.

I have 8800 GTS 768MB & only have view distance of 2900.

PS - this map is sweet so its not all cups half empty

As regards making a low res map, is there a tree model in the stock ones that can be used and tested that might have less poly/fps hit? Rather then removing more? Just a thought.

Maybe check the forest in the other user maps, use upright pines with less vegetation than the trees so far. It might not be exactly to the maps realism, but it would still mean forest in the right places.

Gardinasis Island .. <<< --- this (if i have the name right) has much larger forest area than your map and fps is sweet, plus some nice low and high terrain for good firefights. If you took a leaf (excuse the pun) out of this maps forest and incorporated it into the forest areas of your map .... mate, you will have a killer on yer hands, with performance to boot!

[Maddmatt 1]

To get better FPS while in the forests, you could use some tree models from OFP. They have less detail and no shaders so they have a much smaller FPS impact when up close.

The ones from OFP: Resistance or an OFP addon with better trees could still look good.

Not the ones from the original OFP: CWC though, they look bad.

Also, instead of using the dark green North Sahrani grass from 1.08, use the new grass that was added since the 1.09 patch to help FPS in some places.

[Undeceived 392]

Hi Nicholas

Thank you very much for this map! It's wonderful!! Great work!

Just a question, is it planned for some other version to implement typical german reflector posts and some guardrails at the roads?

Thx for this release, can't believe my eyes, the game feels so realistic suddenly...  

[sander 14]

Thanks for this great map, a flat landscape like this is perfect for a Western European setting.

Regards,

Sander

[mr.g-c 6]

To get better FPS while in the forests, you could use some tree models from OFP. They have less detail and no shaders so they have a much smaller FPS impact when up close.

The ones from OFP: Resistance or an OFP addon with better trees could still look good.

Not the ones from the original OFP: CWC though, they look bad.

Also, instead of using the dark green North Sahrani grass from 1.08, use the new grass that was added since the 1.09 patch to help FPS in some places.

Right, how about them?

They were from Burns AEC Island pack for OFP, as far as i'm aware of... Shaderless and with still cool optics i think.

Also as i've writte before, please replace your pre 1.09 Grass with the 1.09 Grass BI is suing in North Sahrani

Quote[/b] ]Gardinasis Island .. <<< --- this (if i have the name right) has much larger forest area than your map and fps is sweet, plus some nice low and high terrain for good firefights. If you took a leaf (excuse the pun) out of this maps forest and incorporated it into the forest areas of your map .... mate, you will have a killer on yer hands, with performance to boot!

Didn't sound bad either...

Hi, i have a link for you which might be interesting:

http://ofpc.de/berghoff/ofpnature.html#NP2

Its BergHoff's Nature packs which are looking very great.

Best Regards, Christian