Visual cover in grass over distance.

Since the grass does not render very far out and provides infantry with no visual concealment over distance, would it be possible to add a semi-trasparant grass texture with no collision mesh that would be at the same hight above the ground as the grass?

This would replace grass at the point where the grass stops redering and continue outwards till the end of whatever your viewdistance is.

Is this a possible solution for the grass problem? I have no idea.

Discuss!

That would look really weird, having a 2D texture floating across ground.

I still think the best to do, is to make models be more and more transparent (in the height of the grass) the longer they are away from the player.

Quote[/b] ]That would look really weird, having a 2D texture floating across ground.

Maybe, I have no idea how it would look.

Quote[/b] ]still think the best to do, is to make models be more and more transparent (in the height of the grass) the longer they are away from the player.

Yeah I've also been thinking about that, not a bad solution at all.

I still think the best to do, is to make models be more and more transparent (in the height of the grass) the longer they are away from the player.

Not good enough, you will find yourself being shot at and wont see the grass but wont see the shooter(s) either, that would be like being atacked by a cloaked predator, its also likely to be abused in MP and people will come here complaining they are being shot at by invisible a.i. soldiers .

The best solution i can see is making the grass short enough so that it doesnt obstruct the players LOS. The way its done in the demo is a step in the wright direction imo.

More simple, fair and reliable imo .

I still think the best to do, is to make models be more and more transparent (in the height of the grass) the longer they are away from the player.

Not good enough, you will find yourself being shot at and wont see the grass but wont see the shooter(s) either, that would be like being atacked by a cloaked predator, its also likely to be abused in MP and people will come here complaining they are being shot at by invisible a.i. soldiers .

The best solution i can see is making the grass short enough so that it doesnt obstruct the players LOS. The way its done in the demo is a step in the wright direction imo.

More simple, fair and reliable imo .

Maybe make them partly invisible, and combine it with grass laying down close to players when prone?

what about sinking the models into the ground a bit where sufficiently high grass exists? not the perfect solution i know... just curious in how that would look and work.

come to think of it - there may be a problem with hit detection etc. when a model is patially submerged in the terrain though. that would need a workaround, too.

Quote[/b] ]what about sinking the models into the ground a bit where sufficiently high grass exists? not the perfect solution i know... just curious in how that would look and work.

come to think of it - there may be a problem with hit detection etc. when a model is patially submerged in the terrain though. that would need a workaround, too.

That's kinda what I was thinking, only it would work the other way around, so instead of sinking models in the ground, the ground would be heightened submerging them when prone without getting "problems with hit detection".

Not good enough, you will find yourself being shot at and wont see the grass but wont see the shooter(s) either [...]

It is good enough and it's also quite realistic. Why do you

think real soldiers wear green and practise camouflage and

concealment!? Infantrymen who know their job and who are

lying doggo are invisible from even a few metres away

(believe me! ). You'd see muzzle flashes at the very least and

it would have to be arranged such that units would become

more visible when they moved. The visibility of the enemy is

one of the things that spoils the game for me.

Edit: typos

A partial solution (which I posted for ideas in OFP2 forum) was to:

add lots of patches/tuffs of long grass (approx 30-60 cm high and about the same diameter) which the player can hide behind and that the player can recognise is permanent and won't disappear over a distance. Similar to having scattered bushes. The player can then move from patch to patch, just like you would for bushes.

It's only a partial solution, but it fixes the problem of being able to easily spot an enemy lying prone on a hill because of the lack of coverage and the blandness of the ground's surroundings.

They should make nearby grass transparent.

Transparency will be very hard to get right. You can't make prone, grass or tall grass trigger transparency.

A focused eye can spot shapes and should continue to be able to do so. You'll have to lower transparency of objects when you're looking in their direction and even more when you're using binocular/scope.

And then there's the render engine...

Polygons/textures rendered behind one another all have to be rendered even when you add transparency. This means that every layer of polygons will shield what you're really trying to make it blend with; grass/ground. What you will end up with is darkened pixels and you'll need massive transparency for those to disappear. Thus a prone soldier looking at you with his feet behind him will be less transparent than one facing 90 degrees away. It will be hell to balance.

Feel free to prove me wrong though.

Ok another compromise, not sure if it's even possible or effective.

If viewed from a distance, only draw grass in random patches AND where a player is if laying in grass in stead of the whole grass field. Locations of random patches are generated at map load or even better, each time grass comes within a certain view distance of a player.

- Only drawing random patches of grass over distance will reduce GPU load compared to drawing all grass.

- A player laying in the grass will be concealed.

- If you see a patch of grass in the distance it might conceal a soldier (enemy or friendly), but at least it is not as easy to spot as the soldier not being concealed at all.

Relevant questions might be:

- Is this even possible?

- What density of patches would be required for people not to immidiately suspect soldiers in it and would that density still sufficiently reduce GPU load?

- How noticable over distance will a sudden appearance of a patch of grass be when some crawles into that area of a grass field (which as a whole is not visible over distance)?

Looks really good in Joint Operations.

They just draw the parts of the body that are over the height of the grass.

I might be going out on a limb here...but how about texturing the soldiers with camouflage that resembled the ground

I mean... isn't that the point of camouflage? to look like the background?

Exatly what i'm thinking too (and i don't have sligthest clue how it would look like in-game ) Same texture used in soldier than with ground... can it be that hard? Chameleon-effect should we call it? ... Maybe player and AI has cone-of-sight which decreases chameleon effect: so in center of their view area (forexample player's monitor) chameleon effect is more visible than in edges. But balancing takes time, expacely with all kinds of optics etc...

Oh and something that tells AI than it can't shoot accurately something which is lying in tall grass.

Like the soldier camouflage in BF2142 which always appears black in the distance.

Even though I do not have the game yet, I have given the issue some thought. I don't believe BIS is going to fix the grass issues very fast because there might be engine limitations. Therefore we need modders to fix the problem.

There are currently 2 problems with grass:

1. the AI can see through it like it does not exist.

2. Grass does not conceal enemies at a distance.

My ideas on 1:

- first we need some script to determine whether the player is surrounded by grass. If true there should be other factors, like being prone or not, moving or not, firing or not that together determine a value that represents the likelyhood that the AI should see the player (or other object that the script is run for).

- This value should be returned regularly and be put into a list of values (array) that is used to calculate the objects' 'stealth rating' over time. This time factor is important because if a soldier has fired and is thus detected but does not fire for some time should not get a high stealth rating the next moment his 'stealth value' is calculated.

- The stealth value could be used to simulate the effects of stealthy or unstealthy behaviour in different ways. For example:

- very high stealth rating: the soldier receives the 'setcaptive true' label.

- medium stealth rating: the soldier receives the 'setcaptive true' label but in addition a number of invisible empty targets are spawned around the player for the enemy to engage, simulating suppressive fire. (they know you are there somewhere)

- low stealth rating: the script changes nothing; normal ArmA values are used.

My ideas on 2: The same approach as with one is used but this time there has to be a visual representation of the 'stealth' value. That's the tricky part, as the discussion in the thread shows. I don't know whether the following ideas have already be posted be someone else, but here a my 2 cents:

- use a spawing system and multiple models with various grades of transparancy to delete a soldier when he receives a different stealth rating and replace him with a model with more transparancy. This might not work though since respawned troops could act goofy and the respawning process might look awkward. This will also look weird in MP, you could be looking at a transparant 'you' when viewing your guy in 3d. Does anyone know if characterswitching works for AI btw?

- place a viewdistorting 'box' around the stealthy character. But this would probably look horrid and might not work since it might actually give away someones position rather than conceal him. But its worth experimenting with this option since it is the easiest to implement and would create little lag.

- someone in this thread suggested randomly places grass. This could work but would require islands with pre-placed, low poly grass. I don't know how much that will lag, and how good it will look in ArmA. You can't have a follow-you-around grass-script in MP since it would lag like hell and would give away someones position.

couldn't you keep the same, high detail grass in the area around the player, then grass similar to OFP (patches made of multiple blades put next to each other for continuous coverage) going as far out as the furthest distance you can see things which would be concealed by the grass.

couldn't you keep the same, high detail grass in the area around the player, then grass similar to OFP (patches made of multiple blades put next to each other for continuous coverage) going as far out as the furthest distance you can see things which would be concealed by the grass.

Yea, then you'd just have to shoot at the patches of detailed grass... and with ArmA's view distances, having grass at any level of detail as far as you can see will likely kill the game's performance.

Quote[/b] ]- The stealth value could be used to simulate the effects of stealthy or unstealthy behaviour in different ways. For example:

- very high stealth rating: the soldier receives the 'setcaptive true' label.

- medium stealth rating: the soldier receives the 'setcaptive true' label but in addition a number of invisible empty targets are spawned around the player for the enemy to engage, simulating suppressive fire. (they know you are there somewhere)

- low stealth rating: the script changes nothing; normal ArmA values are used.

Or Bis should introduce a new command "setknowsabout" to set any knowsabout value we want.

Setcaptive is too drastic imo.

Quote[/b] ]Or Bis should introduce a new command "setknowsabout" to set any knowsabout value we want.

Setcaptive is too drastic imo.

True, a setknowsabout value would be ideal. But I tried to find solutions using the tools that we have, not the tools that we should have.

couldn't you keep the same, high detail grass in the area around the player, then grass similar to OFP (patches made of multiple blades put next to each other for continuous coverage) going as far out as the furthest distance you can see things which would be concealed by the grass.

Yea, then you'd just have to shoot at the patches of detailed grass... and with ArmA's view distances, having grass at any level of detail as far as you can see will likely kill the game's performance.

Well at least you're not as visible as no grass at all, especially with random patches of detailed grass with no player in it, I don't expect people shooting at it. But indeed, probably to demanding graphics wise. Furthermore you have the problem of the grass moving along with the player, which would probably attract attention.

Quote[/b] ]quote(KyleSarnik @ Feb. 12 2007,21:18)

(dentist guba @ Feb. 12 2007,11:38)

couldn't you keep the same, high detail grass in the area around the player, then grass similar to OFP (patches made of multiple blades put next to each other for continuous coverage) going as far out as the furthest distance you can see things which would be concealed by the grass.

Yea, then you'd just have to shoot at the patches of detailed grass... and with ArmA's view distances, having grass at any level of detail as far as you can see will likely kill the game's performance.

Well at least you're not as visible as no grass at all, especially with random patches of detailed grass with no player in it, I don't expect people shooting at it. But indeed, probably to demanding graphics wise. Furthermore you have the problem of the grass moving along with the player, which would probably attract attention.

What i meant was that the high detailed grass would only be seen by each player individually around their own character, then lower detail grass covering the rest of the area including the areas around other players. as for the draw distance i meant the grass should only go as far as you see ,for example, a guy laying down with the naked eye. you would have to make some special code for stuff like sniper scopes which would make the game only render the grass in your vision.

[PS] sorry about quote, not sure how to put them in separate boxes yet.

What i meant was that the high detailed grass would only be seen by each player individually around their own character, then lower detail grass covering the rest of the area including the areas around other players. as for the draw distance i meant the grass should only go as far as you see ,for example, a guy laying down with the naked eye. you would have to make some special code for stuff like sniper scopes which would make the game only render the grass in your vision.

Low detail or not, having that much grass would take it's toll on the performance, plus if it's low detail it won't be very good for concealing stuff, and you can't get much lower than the detail of the current grass anyway.

Quote[/b] ]Low detail or not, having that much grass would take it's toll on the performance, plus if it's low detail it won't be very good for concealing stuff, and you can't get much lower than the detail of the current grass anyway.

it is probably worth a try though because the game might be able to handle it and grass which ,say, renders for a few hundred meters would be good. as for the low detail not providing much cover look at the vietnam mod for OFP, the grass on that seemed to hide things pretty well. also, to lessen the effect on performance the "patches" of grass could be made even bigger than on OFP(maybe even something like 50m in radius).