Weird LOD issues, terrain detail depending

As i gave the island to a few guys to test my terrain i got reports of weird lod issues.

Above i have 3 pictures where i slowly buildup the terrain details from lowest to heigh. The LOD issues disappear when it goes up. YOu guys have any idea what i can do about it except making i gues less complex terrain?

Your Textur Layer size is to small compare to your terrain cells.

Reduce the terrain cell size (meters) and/or increase your Textur Layer size.

Spot on Ace! I increased the texture layer size from 20 to 40. Problem is no longer there on low settings.

As i realy wanted to understand this issue i pushed it a bit futher. Just to see what it could offer. Nowhere i claim that this will my direction. Just sharing my findings here.

As texture generators make it quite easy to push out heigh detail sat maps i generated a 20480x20480 texture mape for this 5.1x5.1 km island.

I used the following settings:

terrain grid size : 512x512

Terrain cell size : 10

Terrain size in meter is then indeed 5120x5120

The satellite was given the following:

20480 image size and for that giving a image resolution of 0.250 m/pixel.

Segment size was increased to 2048 giving a satellite grid of 48. Then the base texture layer was given 40x40.

Took ages for visitor to finish but the results were (speaking of detail here) very nice. Also on low terrain detail settings there were no lod issues. After binning the map it was still 350 mb.

Now my question here is: does this way to go give serious problems, performance wise.

I also tried a couple of other variants but getting bigger detail in seems only possible by raising the segment size of the sat map. YOu guys can point me out a reason not to do that? Except then from getting over insane huge files in mb.

My guess is the problem would then fall onto loading times for multiplayer. So far as editing goes it will just slow you down and take up unnecessary disk space. It is generally a good idea not to make your satellite image larger then the given size of your terrain grid size. (keeping it in 1024x1024 grid size with 10240x10240 satellite image size for example)

But, it is all up to the editor of the island and his opinion on disk space. My knowledge on the performance side is a little weak to say the least.

My guess is the problem would then fall onto loading times for multiplayer. So far as editing goes it will just slow you down and take up unnecessary disk space. It is generally a good idea not to make your satellite image larger then the given size of your terrain grid size. (keeping it in 1024x1024 grid size with 10240x10240 satellite image size for example)

But, it is all up to the editor of the island and his opinion on disk space. My knowledge on the performance side is a little weak to say the least.

Yeah for editing itself i have at the moment my old texture still 5120. so far ingame it did not have any performance issues on the bigger one. But i have a beast of a machine. so i gues i can give it to somebody with a low end comp and check it out.

I am realy curious in this direction as this would give higher detail ingame. Overall that gives higher enjoyment i think. Ofcourse with a size 20 x 20 km this would go over insame.

Still i am thinking the atleast a 2 times larger file for this size islans gives already realy nice details and compromises a bit on file size. Not sure yet, as said, i am merely sharing experience here. So all experience from you guys is more then welcome.

Now my question here is: does this way to go give serious problems, performance wise.

I also tried a couple of other variants but getting bigger detail in seems only possible by raising the segment size of the sat map. YOu guys can point me out a reason not to do that? Except then from getting over insane huge files in mb.

I guess the problem will be one of reduced performance due to view distance and terrain detail settings. 5kmx5km is not a huge map, and so a view distance of say 2000 will show rather more of the total map than a larger map. (Rather obviously ;))

So if you're standing in the middle of such a map, you can expect to see almost all of it by turning around too quickly.

I might suggest building a low end PC just to test this sort of thing out. A man who has a kick-ass system surely has enough bits lying about to construct such a machine ;)

I guess the problem will be one of reduced performance due to view distance and terrain detail settings. 5kmx5km is not a huge map, and so a view distance of say 2000 will show rather more of the total map than a larger map. (Rather obviously ;))

Well it will never show more then is possible on a bigger map. But i get the idea, heigher demand with same view distance -> performance crap.

So if you're standing in the middle of such a map, you can expect to see almost all of it by turning around too quickly.

Its got also vertical so its not that much of a prob so far.

I might suggest building a low end PC just to test this sort of thing out. A man who has a kick-ass system surely has enough bits lying about to construct such a machine ;)

hehe yeah i got parts of pc all over but building a low end pc no no sir:p

I been reading in a 16384 sat map and gave that to people. Its 250 mb after binning. We tested some MP games on it, including JIP. Even the low ends had no performance problems, so i am going for this direction atm. We tried it out in a forrested part of the map, usualy one of the biggest fps eaters. But time will tell, if its problematic its not that hard to just simple read in a lower quality sat map :D

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Hey guys,

Well the lod issues are indeed gone but i still have some weird stuff going on in the map.

I have a road going realy nice down hill (its a mountain) and that looks smooth. However when i go to a distance and put it on lowest terrain settings it looks like a road to hell. I mean spiky up and spiky down. There are no visible lod issues.

Currently using a terrain of 512 (png file) x 10 and a 40x40 texture setting, using a sat map of 5120x5120. That (i think) is pretty common practise.

Is the above behavior happening on more islands?

Also far on teh south it looks like one of the by visitor created segments of the satmap is not in place or simple looks incredible blue. Maybe that is a related issue. I know pics say more then words but i am at work atm. Anyway, my above situation might ring a bell to some people.

when i raise the texture layer size over 25 to make the lod issues disappear, my arma crashes after some walking around on my map. did anyone else experience that?

Get on skype with me bad benson, we talk it through ok.