about swaying grass - hope you can turn it off

[jantenner]

as i heard about that swaying vegetation kind of thing, i thought: oh no not again
all swaying plant stuff i have seen in games so far looked incredibly stupid (to me;) as if you on some weird drugs, which make all the plants do a bellydance. looked nothing like: oh theres wind there.
so the current swaying stuff thing in modern games is just deplaced, as it looks always very unnatural. so better skip it, untill you really have enough processing power to simulate the effects of wind on 1 million tiny plant things.

[stakex]

Since you haven't seen what it looks like, its a bit too early to say skip it. Besides, if every game skips it, it will never improve to the point where it looks good. There are some games where it does look pretty good... not great, but not bad none the less.

As far as being able to turn it off, Id assume there will be some way to turn it off. Be it a mod, or an option.

[D.murphy man]

Only thing i dont like about grass in most games is that if you lay down you cannot see threw the grass, yet the guy some distance away can see you (since in most games grass only appears with in a certain distance of the player) meaning you get your head blowen off and not being able to return fire. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/confused_o.gif

[xnodunitx]

I'm just using OFP:E as an example because thats what it seems most like. in which case- The grass doesn't really sway but bends and slightly sways but not much,and I'v noticed it only does this when the weather is not so clear,I'm doing experiments right now,blowing up a gas station and I have noticed that between the diverse weather it moves more and goes less into the air as the weather gets worse and worse. I'v also noticed the grass seems to do the same thing,and no it doesn't appear too far away but I'd say around midarea,and because of OFP:E's distance they might or might not see you. so far I'v seen most grass straight or just barely sway on sunnyish weather,bends alot when a helicopters nearby but thats given http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/tounge2.gif, I'd not worry about it too much as chances are I figure people would keep to the clearer sunnier weather,for one it has all the lighting effects and stormy weather has next to none,but over sometime like the grass,nah,I wouldn't worry too much,think about it,stiff grass while smoke is blowing in the wind would look out of place wouldn't it?

[alacasam]

talk for yourself D.murphy man, o while being there they could make the game work on a p3 333 and remove dynamic lightning and reduce the view distance to 12 meters...lol ... this game will have a lot of great ameliorations .people should stop whining. Lets go bis im behind you http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/yay.gif  http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/yay.gif

[redface]

picture is a bit blurry because taken from Invasion 44 movie

but this is the standard the grass should reach in ArmA

http://www.inv44.com/screens/2005_December/I443.jpg

more dense and more in tune with the underlying soil when compared with Arma (http://www.bistudio.com/games/aa/ArmA_Progress_03.jpg) grass

I don&#39;t really like the grass in OFP:E <span style='font-size:1pt;line-height:100%'>looks like "pubic hair" to me</span>

[xnodunitx]

The grass in OFP:E looks more like grass,what I see in the I44 picture looks more like weeds,remember that grass is relativly very very short.

[Antichrist]

But we sort of need both grass and weeds, and wheat fields, and meadows etc. So BIS can&#39;t really get away with just grass.

[Leone]

The grass in OFP:E looks more like grass,what I see in the I44 picture looks more like weeds,remember that grass is relativly very very short.
They forgot to mow the jungle http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif

[Heatseeker]

as i heard about that swaying vegetation kind of thing, i thought: oh no not again
all swaying plant stuff i have seen in games so far looked incredibly stupid (to me;) as if you on some weird drugs, which make all the plants do a bellydance. looked nothing like: oh theres wind there.
so the current swaying stuff thing in modern games is just deplaced, as it looks always very unnatural. so better skip it, untill you really have enough processing power to simulate the effects of wind on 1 million tiny plant things.
I disagree 100%, the waving flora in Vietcong was brilliant and really made the environments feel alive and not so static, even the waving trees in GR werent too bad at the time, i think having dust and flora reacting to the rotors of a helicopter will be quite a spectacular sight, im imagining helicopter insertions/extractions in the new Aras game already http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif .

I dont xbox but from what i&#39;ve seen from Placebo&#39;s ground atack cobra movie it looked very well done in OPF:E, definetly better than having static trees, its a feature i never thought would be possible to implement in a game has big and demanding has OPF so 2 thumbs up for BIS http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/thumbs-up.gif .

[Shataan]

I want all the eyecandy goodies. I love the added immersion.

[LoTekK]

I think the best thing about moving foliage, shrubbery and grass, is the simple fact that you can no longer rely on the "shoot anything that moves" principle. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif

[Longjocks]

Practise make progress. The more people experiment and implement this stuff, the better it will get.

[Espectro]

I allways found moving grass very erotic

http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif

[Longjocks]

Why is it that I only moments ago post the word &#39;erotic&#39; in another forum, then refresh this page to see you&#39;ve done the same? Stop following me, you mad bovine&#33;

[Espectro]

lol... you little fox - And stay ontopic, m8&#33; Talking about all the pr0n sites you visit isnt allowed here you darn fox... uhm, that didnt sound right :/

Now, ontopic.

What I look forward till the most, is having a moving scenario, instead of the static one we have now (where you just shoot anything that moves)

[Jtec]

Only thing i dont like about grass in most games is that if you lay down you cannot see threw the grass, yet the guy some distance away can see you (since in most games grass only appears with in a certain distance of the player) meaning you get your head blowen off and not being able to return fire. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/confused_o.gif
That was a major prob in Joint ops. I really hope that AA doesnt have that sort of grass that does that as its highly frustrating, because you think you are well hidden then you get shot because you arnt hidden from a distance due to the grass not being drawn at certain distances.

[Shataan]

"Only thing i dont like about grass in most games is that if you lay down you cannot see threw the grass, yet the guy some distance away can see you (since in most games grass only appears with in a certain distance of the player)"

  That is the whole problem with THIS new Novalogic. Delta Force 2s voxel grass may have been fugly, but it was EFFECTIVE visual concealment.   Instead of going all goo goo over how their new grass LOOKS nice in Joint Ops, they SHOULD have been thinking of "well really, how effective is this grass at distance visuals concealment?"    It was effective alright. Blinded anyone who lays down in it, but everyone else and their dog from distances could see your whole body just laying there waiting for someone to cap yo azz.

NL=dumbazzes.  

On topic

I hope someday a developer figures out how to make an engine that renders grass at distances as well as the old voxel engines did.  Grass in DF 2 was what I called the Great Equalizer. Even a nOOb who was not so good with his weaps could still survive in the field effectively, if he used terrain masking and the grass for vis concealment.    In that game Nova did not have to dumbazz down their weap balancing so the nOObs could survive.

[Heatseeker]

Thats where Operation Flashpoint stands out, you dont need to hide in the grass with all those shrubs, bushes, trees and stuff around, soldiers wont just hide in the grass either, in OPF one can hide behind a bush or a tree and it actually works, if the grass is big enough for you to hide in there you will problably find snakes there too http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif . OPF environments render amazing amounts of objects and decorations, all wich can be used to conceal or cover the players, Novalogic&#39;s grass was a good workaround because their games couldnt handle a realistic amount of world detail and it also worked well because of the bad graphics and low resolution http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif . Grass is just eye candy, not important regarding gameplay imo..

[Scrub]

I wonder if the &#39;config&#39; or model, or whatever for grass will be area or texture selectable.. for that matter, I wonder if you can make a grass &#39;mod&#39; for those wheat fields someone mentioned?

[D.murphy man]

Thats where Operation Flashpoint stands out, you dont need to hide in the grass with all those shrubs, bushes, trees and stuff around, soldiers wont just hide in the grass either, in OPF one can hide behind a bush or a tree and it actually works, if the grass is big enough for you to hide in there you will problably find snakes there too http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif . OPF environments render amazing amounts of objects and decorations, all wich can be used to conceal or cover the players, Novalogic&#39;s grass was a good workaround because their games couldnt handle a realistic amount of world detail and it also worked well because of the bad graphics and low resolution http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif . Grass is just eye candy, not important regarding gameplay imo..
True, you can hide behind bushes, trees, and other things but when you (if your laying down) try to peek out from behind the bush you&#39;ll get grass in your face, which you cannot see pass. Yet the guy a few miles away your trying to aim at can see your little head peferctly peeking around the bushes, and also your head bobing up and down as you kneel or get up to try and see over the grass thats unseeble to the guy your aiming at will give you away. Thus adding to frustration. If the ability to turn grass off is there in armed assualt, and they use the same draw distance streaming thingy that most games use for grass i will certainly be switching it off...especially with multiplayer games. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/whistle.gif

[Heatseeker]

True, you can hide behind bushes, trees, and other things but when you (if your laying down) try to peek out from behind the bush you&#39;ll get grass in your face, which you cannot see pass. Yet the guy a few miles away your trying to aim at can see your little head peferctly peeking around the bushes, and also your head bobing up and down as you kneel or get up to try and see over the grass thats unseeble to the guy your aiming at will give you away.
I dont really see why OPF/Aras would even need grass, maybe some tall grassy bush type thingy&#39;s here and there but other than that it&#39;ll be just a waste of resources. I think grassy terrain looks better than flat one but if the rendering limitation is this problematic maybe they should dump it or make limited use of it http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif .

[Scrub]

In one of the delta forces (not sure which) to simulate ground cover, the units in the distance became transparent to some degree, making it hard to see. Saved processor power on rendering distant grass.  Worked well.

Well, BIS, I do have one suggestion to take or leave.  Would it be possible to use the alpha channel (or controlled transparency) so that the grass tapers off in the distance instead of *cutting* out abruptly?  Just looks odd IMHO. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/confused_o.gif   O.K. no more gripes. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/biggrin_o.gif

Edit: Please change the above to a question, as I can&#39;t prove that it DOES abruptly stop in any of the pics..  http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif  sorry, got the idea stuck in my head from here (http://www.bistudio.com/games/aa/ArmA_Progress_01.jpg)

BTW: doesn&#39;t the grass look a little see-thru? Wouldn&#39;t that keep everybody happy?

[jantenner]

hmm, some points are good. the multiplayer issue with grass used as concealment disappearing at distance is definately gamekilling and should be avoided at all cost.
and yes if nobody uses grass it will never improve.
btw i just checked out that new arma screenshots. looks like grass is used quite sparingly, not as possible concealment which seems good.

[Heatseeker]

In one of the delta forces (not sure which) to simulate ground cover, the units in the distance became transparent to some degree, making it hard to see. Saved processor power on rendering distant grass.  Worked well.
DF-BHD, hmm and no it didnt, it was very cheap like most of the game anyway http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/sad_o.gif .

[Phleep]

An alternative to rendering long range grass would be to possibly make soldiers and other objects semi transparent when viewed from a distance where the grass would have provided some concealment. Maybe it would depend on the angle also, i.e. from above they would be opaque but at a tangent to the ground they are lying prone on they would be invisible.


Other options:
- The "forest block" style sheet a foot above the terrain which would be semitransparent so that the soldier is still slightly visible;

- The soldier could be "sunk" into the terrain (or terrain raised) a small amount so only the parts above the grass show. Then BIS just needs to develop "fuzzy edged horizons" to simulate the grassiness.

[Hekezu]

An alternative to rendering long range grass would be to possibly make soldiers and other objects semi transparent when viewed from a distance where the grass would have provided some concealment. Maybe it would depend on the angle also, i.e. from above they would be opaque but at a tangent to the ground they are lying prone on they would be invisible.
Yes, that could work. But again it looks very stupid if you have potted the enemy and he is a ghost.

Another solution besides touching the ammount of unit&#39;s alpha could be mapping the unit with semi transparent terrain texture, or grass texture. The blending ratio could be 50% of unit&#39;s original textures and another 50% grass/terrain.
That would look better IMHO and make it more realistic to spot an unit. Ofcourse it still wouldn&#39;t be realistic enough but better than being able to shoot clearly visible units because they couldn&#39;t see you through their grass. And definitely better than seeing all the grass within 1km radius and playing with 5 frames per second. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif

Maybe snipers could have a different blending ratio, like 25 to 75? http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/whistle.gif

[philcommando]

While we worry about the game performance issues of grass...in real life, grass is a good form of concealment and is used practically in all aspects of soldier&#39;s movement from cover to cover. The purpose of a soldier&#39;s uniform is made so that it blends in with the ground when he prones....and in many real life situations, old soldiers will tell u grass saved many a soldier&#39;s life in the real world, with enemies just 2 metres or closer and not spotted. Not all theatres of war are deserts.

However, i would admit it would be a real challenge to simulate real grass in the 3d world without affecting performance, even with today&#39;s 4Gig and above processors..but one day it will be possible..just not today.

[Commando84]

i like the idea of moving grass and stuff http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/biggrin_o.gif makes it a harder for guys that have that super exellent vision and aim to spot you 600 m away and fire at you without their scope or ironcross http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/tounge2.gif because there could be tons of leaves and dust moving around making it harder to spot stuff at a far distance http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/biggrin_o.gif i think Armed assault is going to rock peoples socks off. i still meet people that never heard of ofp and i show them the islands , the engine , the addons , the editor and the possibilities and they usually go wow never seen that shit before http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/biggrin_o.gif I hope Arm A. will make the word go around better than for ofp http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif

[hipacross]

Quote[/b] ]
Quote[/b] ] (jantenner @<hidden> Dec. 05 2005,17:58)
as i heard about that swaying vegetation kind of thing, i thought: oh no not again
all swaying plant stuff i have seen in games so far looked incredibly stupid (to me;) as if you on some weird drugs, which make all the plants do a bellydance. looked nothing like: oh theres wind there.
so the current swaying stuff thing in modern games is just deplaced, as it looks always very unnatural. so better skip it, untill you really have enough processing power to simulate the effects of wind on 1 million tiny plant things.

I disagree 100%, the waving flora in Vietcong was brilliant and really made the environments feel alive and not so static, even the waving trees in GR werent too bad at the time, i think having dust and flora reacting to the rotors of a helicopter will be quite a spectacular sight, im imagining helicopter insertions/extractions in the new Aras game already  .


i agree&#33;

the wind in veitcong was nice and i was impressed when i bought the very first GR, i thought the wind was beautiful and the sound was good too. So i don&#39;t know what your talking about when you complain about the wind in games

[Dwarden]

you know grass is great thing .... if it works correctly for affecting line of sight for all (not just You but also the person looking at you from far distance (ie hiding in grass)) ...

definitely implementation like Joint Ops should be NO go ...


also ... i would like to see things like plants / tree leafs reacting to touch/hit from units passing by ... but because i doubt such engine improvements will be in ArmAs ... i bet it will be in game3 (OFP2) ... for now only engine supporting this is next generation one from Crytek ...

[Marshal]

Ive played OFP:E and I didnt like the grass at all. It was one of the first things that I thought was odd about the game. Anyone play Soldner and seen what that looked like? Well, its pretty similar.

Fair enough, moving trees can add atmosphere and I would definitely add rustling sounds as you move through bushes (as in COD2), but why do we need moving grass? If you had wheat fields then that would be fine, but in all reality, how often do you see short grass blowing on a sunny day?

[Dwarden]

because there are huge meadows around i can tell You until wind completely calms ... you will see it ... but for game it&#39;s not so important ... like You said trees and bigger vegetation (bushes) are first ... grass is last ...

[PriMo_]

However, i would admit it would be a real challenge to simulate real grass in the 3d world without affecting performance, even with today&#39;s 4Gig and above processors..but one day it will be possible..just not today.
This is where the PPU comes in&#33; Please god implant it in OFP2&#33;

[Journeyman]

Ive played OFP:E and I didnt like the grass at all. It was one of the first things that I thought was odd about the game. Anyone play Soldner and seen what that looked like? Well, its pretty similar.

Fair enough, moving trees can add atmosphere and I would definitely add rustling sounds as you move through bushes (as in COD2), but why do we need moving grass? If you had wheat fields then that would be fine, but in all reality, how often do you see short grass blowing on a sunny day?
Hmm&#33; Did the moving grass in OFPE cause any performance problems though. Or was it well optimised and the only thing wrong with it is that U didn&#39;t like it?

Grass does move in the wind if it is meadow grass that is not grazed by animals. Did U see any sheep or cows grazing the grass whilst playing OFPE?&#33;  http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/rofl.gif

Like I&#39;ve said in another thread, with a bit of luck BIS will make the animated grass optional in the graphics menu if they think it has the potential for causing a performance hit on lower spec systems.

However, I think that your gripe is more of a visual one. I&#39;ve not played OFPE so I can&#39;t comment much on its visual accuracy. I&#39;ve seen the videos however, and I can say that the grass makes the terrain look a hundred times more realistic than those baren landscapes of OFP&#33;  http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/xmas_o.gif

[GGX_Lennon]

-The grass must be visible on the hole viewdistance.. not only around 100m...
-Better make it non-animated IF NEEDED for the cause of performance

btw... I hope it wont be possilbe to switch grass off..
If yes, the work was for nothing (mp-combats)

[Scrub]

Thinking there needs to be a hybrid method to implement what everyone&#39;s looking for to offset performance issues.

1st- It&#39;s doubtful you&#39;ll get grass in full view past 100-150m on mid-range 2006 hardware without taking a hit.
Edit: I believe I&#39;m completely wrong. And happy about that fact.

Possible solution: Use grass as the only graphical cover inside the radius that it exists, no other special effects.. Past that, if the character trying to hide is concealed (locally derived from their comp, variable value on yours)  Fade them into the (hopefully better textured) background, and have (here&#39;s a perf hit if I ever saw one, but gotta say) the ground textures with a grass alpha mask on it, possibly moving?

2nd- When zooming past the grassed in location, the same applies to the focal plane of the FOV you are at. Past the &#39;grass radus&#39; of the focal plane fade them with mask.  That way if you zoom way in on someone, and their in cover, you&#39;ll see the cover and have to pick them out of that, but if it&#39;s past the point where you can&#39;t see individual blades of grass, then only larger foliage really matters for rendering.

Just some thoughts.

Oh yea, and a switch in the options panel that has &#39;OFF&#39; somewhere on it.