Maximum island size

[SCAR]

I Imagine this has been answered before...

What are the maximum island dimensions in Arma? 25x25km?

[gsleighter]

I think it's more dependent on what the max texture size your computer can handle is. I've got a project laying around that I lost the motivation for because I tried to make a 10 by 10 km map with 1.5 meters per pixel sat mask, and got frustrated by photoshop crashing, and VERY slow going, copy and pasting from google earth to build the texture, and then aligning the texture to the heightmap, getting mountain ridges and draws to match the sat map. Pain in the butt. Otherwise, Arma streams the map data in real time, so if you built a map that was 100 km or more across, you could fly (or drive) across the entire thing.

I suppose you could just use a repeating texture to cover the whole thing, but I think unless you're importing a WRPtool island, you still need to create the mask with the repeating texture, and building very large sat masks crashes photoshop for me.

[ProwlerWolf]

I try and use a max of 10240x10240 texture size. 20480 x 20480 I have done on a full size version of kandahar but after importing the sat and mask the total filesize of the pbo turned out to be roughly 670 MB which takes about 5 minutes to load in arma.

[Rocket]

The area of Sahrani is 400km square, I'm currently running a map with an area of 12,099km square. It has a heightmap res of 30m. I too tired importing large scale textures, but it was a real drama. Because my map is a snow map, I can get away with a very low res satellite and mask texture. It would appear too me, the limitation is more on sat/mask map size, than the physical map size itself.

[Thrash]

First post . A few of us from OGN are making Australia. It's over 1,600sqkm. We're using a 2048 height map x 20 (making it 40km x 40km). Originally we tried for 4096 x 10 but there was a problem when placing objects in visitor, it will only allow for half the map to be worked on, you cant place objects on the other half, so we went to 2480x20. It's coming along pretty good. I'd say it would have about 200km of roads once finished. The satmap is (only) 20480x20480 because none of out computers can run any bigger. The layered photoshop file of the sat is around 8GB.

Edit: ^^ above post... how big is your height map if the island is 12,099kmsq?? something like 3650x3650?

[Snake Man]

I have made 204 x 204km terrain, its not fully working as there is some bugs that cause RPT go nuts. But for example my 51km x 51km desert terrain runs absolutely smooth for hours, no problems.

These above of course are the 4WVR oldschool method, not the satellite texture layer thing.

You've seen the PMC WRP Demo islands?

[bravo 6]

Snake man, I was looking to the map images in game and the terrain detail from the air and ground are far from the best..

Is it because you didn't use an real live Sat_lco?
It helps alot to give and add more atmosphere to the map.



To make maps with those size people need better computers, due the fact that was mentioned above (Sat and Mak images)

For me 10240x10240 pixel size takes +- 25 mins to save an image, sadly.

[Rocket]

^^ above post... how big is your height map if the island is 12,099kmsq?? something like 3650x3650?

I didn't use a heightmap for the import of terrain data, I used a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of an island in the arctic. I have experiemented with different resolutions, and I found that 30m resolution worked the best for me.

These DEMs were imported into MicroDEM, reinterpolated to UTM, and then exported as an XYZ. I then opened it in Visitor 3. Once I had the workflow, everything was a synch. I exported the terrain image a few times, and it created a pretty big image, but I only had to do that to clean up my terrain a bit by hand. I did all my imports on a dedicated "renderbox" at my work (I work at a gamedev company ) so I'm not sure how such a process would work on lowerspec computers.

I have found that 12,099sqkm is problematic from a gameplay perspective, so I am presently cutting it down to a level where it doesnt take hours just to get any where.

Edit: On a side note, if anyone wants any help importing DEMs, please feel free to PM me.

[bravo 6]

oh man this is incredible! It means we can create real and fully dimensional maps from now on based on real life data, not just image but 3r aswell!



edit:


edit2: A real Iraqi DEM.


1024x768

Note: 20480x20480 in selected in map

[Rocket]

Awesome work, I do believe imports from DEMs are the way to go. Notice though the contours get a bit crazy sometimes on import, I exported my DEMs out to photoshop and run some filters over them (such as surface blur) to try and even out the terrain, you can use the errosion feature in Visitor 3 (F2 I think to enter vertex edit mode, then control + A to select all vertexes).

When modelling terrain objects such as rocks or custom buildings etc... from this DEM data, I exported my map as a PNG from Visitor, and then imported it into 3DS Max as a heightmap (using the displace modifier) which then gave me the 3D terrain to design things off. Very handy!