parallax occlusion mapping to distance

[POTS 0]

What do guys think the performance drop would be for adding parallax occlusion to the grass texture at a distance? (not your entire viewdistance!.

Just wondering, I still think it needs to be fixed. The difference between the upclose graphics and mid-distance graphics are to extreme.

[Maddmatt 1]

Probably not a huge impact. But would it look good? I don't know.

[SaBrE_UK 0]

Yeah I was thinking this just yesterday. I think the far and near distance look great, but the mid distance looks highly lacking. With low-res textures and without grass and shadows, it looks bare.

[suma 8]

Performance impact of parallax occlusion mapping (technically more correct: ray casting) is very heavy once the viewing angle is very shallow (the viewing direction aligned with the surface tangent). This is because with shallow angle you need to sample too many samples to find which part of the map are you intersecting. Because of this, parallax occlusion mapping is not a practical solution beyond a certain (quite close) distance.

[POTS 0]

Performance impact of parallax occlusion mapping (technically more correct: ray casting) is very heavy once the viewing angle is very shallow (the viewing direction aligned with the surface tangent). This is because with shallow angle you need to sample too many samples to find which part of the map are you intersecting. Because of this, parallax occlusion mapping is not a practical solution beyond a certain (quite close) distance.

What if you lower it's resolution? Will it lessen the consumption when it's at the angle? I'm wondering about this because it should lessen the overall samples right?

[dentist guba 0]

i dont think parralax is really meant for this, even in stalker some walls look weird with deep parralax grass might be too tall to do with it.

[SaBrE_UK 0]

Nice to hear your thoughts behind this Suma.

We need voxels a la Delta Force! Although I obviously don't know the limitations behind them.

[EricM 0]

On a side note steep parallax mapping is a variant of classical parallax mapping that can produce nice effects, including fur and grass :

http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/games/SteepParallax/index.html

But it probably bears the same limitations.

[dentist guba 0]

that steep parralax looks good, i think it's probably something to consider for arma 3 as it is a bit too much for current graphics cards apparently.

[dentist guba 0]

voxels for terrain would definately be good, just been looking at some things like caves and overhangs which can be created with voxel terrain.