New way of tall grass concealment at range

[ZomboWTF 527]

Hello,

this is something i suggested to the Arma3 devs a long time ago, and i think i posted something on the old DayZ feedback tracker  when you could still make suggestions.

The way players are concealed at long range in tall grass is really lacking, they only partially sink into the ground, instead of really being concealed as if the grass would be there, players are way more concealed when getting closer to them (where grass renders) than at long range, this goes completely against realism and the authenticity of concealment.

I don't know what would be more realiseable or practical, but there are some things that come to mind which may be better for concealment at range than simply sinking players into the ground or raising the ground level around a player:

 

For the examples, lets say player A is hiding at long range in the grass, player B is looking at him

 

1) Render the grass surrounding player A invisibly for player B and add it as a see-through layer:

The grass at range around player A would be rendered for player B, at a fixed radius (2 meters or more) around player A, however, for player B, the rendered grass is not visible, but is added onto player A as an "overlay" which turns parts of player A invisible which are covered by grass from the view of player B

 

2) Make a player at range opaque to a certain degree

Simple, the more grass around a player, the more see-through the whole player model becomes, but only when the player is not moving and beyond grass render range

 

3) Increase texture fidelity at long range

make textures more grainy, higher fidelity and detailed (see respone from icrush below for effect) this is by far the easiest solution, however it would be needed to force the high fidelity of far-away textures in order to make people not turn down their terrain texture settings in order to have an advantage in spotting

 

if anyone has some other ideas to add, feel free to comment

Edited June 1, 2017 by ZomboWTF

[icrush 18]

 

To me this is a top 5 priority in the future. I agree theres GOT to be a way to improve hiding in grass when far away but im not sure that rendering a invisible grass that coats a player is the right way, it may be the most performance friendly wise, but i don`t think its very intuitive and could aswell be a it of an immersion breaker. 

I`d be all in for increased grass rendering distance or some alternative that really shows on the screen, but isnt that too performance consuming? Maybe rendering details when scoping?

They could make the ground textures far better when mid-far from it, making it easier to blend with the terrain, even without grass.  (arma 3 example: https://forums.bistudio.com/forums/topic/141790-midrange-terrain-texture-replacement/ What do you think of it? here are some gifs and two video comparisions of this mod:

 http://i.cubeupload.com/FfXCul.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/TKtDsV.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/x86fj1.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/SULXAb.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/jlLGtF.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/xMvqVN.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/mtRO7A.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/7oZKWQ.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/x0AeC6.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/vFn8FZ.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/Rz84N0.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/RmtFQ6.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/yTrXEo.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/1egPQ0.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/EiZWUW.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/jaijy7.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/N1hE3f.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/qkR7s1.gif

trying to spot players on the terrain: https://youtu.be/Rt8zFQZS_8g trying to spot a car in the terrain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWzaWojnrR0 

Found this on reddit regarding this issue "It's a simple problem of Bohemia having only 2 sets of textures, one for "you're standing right here" and one for "everything else". A better solution would be to have 3-4 sets of textures that stream in and out at a few different distances, but that apparently decided against that for whatever reason. It's a shame.The textures look fine from far away, but get blurry as you get closer because they are the exact same texture getting closer instead of streaming in a higher resolution version."

The thing is that lying in a treeline 500m away and be instantly spotted is more of a immersion breaker than anything. Are the devs planning to do anything about it?

edit1: thinking better, i don`t really know how would it feel  with transparency/opacity set to players in the distant grass, i guess i need some images to think about it.

edit2: this game can render grass all the way up to the horizon https://youtu.be/dTetpr1emas?t=52 maybe, we should take a look at how it works?

Edited May 31, 2017 by icrush
new tought

[ZomboWTF 527]

On 5/31/2017 at 1:18 PM, icrush said:

 

To me this is a top 5 priority in the future. I agree theres GOT to be a way to improve hiding in grass when far away but im not sure that rendering a invisible grass that coats a player is the right way, it may be the most performance friendly wise, but i don`t think its very intuitive and could aswell be a it of an immersion breaker. 

I`d be all in for increased grass rendering distance or some alternative that really shows on the screen, but isnt that too performance consuming? Maybe rendering details when scoping?

They could make the ground textures far better when mid-far from it, making it easier to blend with the terrain, even without grass.  (arma 3 example: https://forums.bistudio.com/forums/topic/141790-midrange-terrain-texture-replacement/ What do you think of it? here are some gifs and two video comparisions of this mod:

 http://i.cubeupload.com/FfXCul.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/TKtDsV.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/x86fj1.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/SULXAb.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/jlLGtF.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/xMvqVN.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/mtRO7A.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/7oZKWQ.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/x0AeC6.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/vFn8FZ.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/Rz84N0.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/RmtFQ6.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/yTrXEo.jpg http://i.cubeupload.com/1egPQ0.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/EiZWUW.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/jaijy7.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/N1hE3f.gif http://i.cubeupload.com/qkR7s1.gif

trying to spot players on the terrain: https://youtu.be/Rt8zFQZS_8g trying to spot a car in the terrain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWzaWojnrR0 

Found this on reddit regarding this issue "It's a simple problem of Bohemia having only 2 sets of textures, one for "you're standing right here" and one for "everything else". A better solution would be to have 3-4 sets of textures that stream in and out at a few different distances, but that apparently decided against that for whatever reason. It's a shame.The textures look fine from far away, but get blurry as you get closer because they are the exact same texture getting closer instead of streaming in a higher resolution version."

The thing is that lying in a treeline 500m away and be instantly spotted is more of a immersion breaker than anything. Are the devs planning to do anything about it?

edit1: thinking better, i don`t really know how would it feel  with transparency/opacity set to players in the distant grass, i guess i need some images to think about it.

edit2: this game can render grass all the way up to the horizon https://youtu.be/dTetpr1emas?t=52 maybe, we should take a look at how it works?

good ideas, the textures have more impact than i thought when reading it, would be a really much simpler solution than changing a whole game mechanic

[BeefBacon 1185]

On 2017-5-31 at 10:15 AM, ZomboWTF said:

1) Render the grass surrounding player A invisibly for player B and add it as a see-through layer:

The grass at range around player A would be rendered for player B, at a fixed radius (2 meters or more) around player A, however, for player B, the rendered grass is not visible, but is added onto player A as an "overlay" which turns parts of player A invisible which are covered by grass from the view of player B

This. Exactly that. I'm almost certain I've suggested it in the past - but that is exactly what I would like to see. It has the added benefit of players in the distance not being followed by a strange patch of grass, because the grass itself is invisible and only, effectively, serves as an alpha channel.

I'm not sure if players sinking into the ground is supposed to simulate grass, or if it's a terrain LOD thing, where terrain loses definition at a distance and raises above where the "actual" terrain is. If it's the former then I'm certain a better solution can be found. If it's the latter then that's fine, I suppose.

Perhaps certain items should also have this grass layer, since they'll stick out like a sore thumb at a distance.

[Vattenlarv 81]

I agree that this is the biggest immersion breaker, except for the lack of a realistic stamina and weight system.

I don't know much about programming or what would have the least of a negative impact on performance, so I will just throw it out there;

What if, since we now have whole new animation system for wind, to simulate grass blowing in the wind at distances where grass no longer renders, the ground texture would shimmer in bigger and smaller waves depending on wind direction. This combined with the "opacity" idea could blend pretty well and not break immersion too much. 

For an example;

 

[MrAerospace 87]

That video makes the grass look like a liquid. At a short distance, individual stems blend into a surface, which shows a distinct wave motion. Instead of all those ideas like sinking the player model down into the map, or that alpha layer stuff, what if grass was rendered as a surface layer similar to how water is?

I mean, it'd be more opaque, be less reflective of light and have different colours, (depending on the types of grasses or crops you're emulating), as well as needing to follow the map contour instead of a horizontal layer, but apart from those few design criteria, I honestly don't see how there's that much difference between how water and grass would be depicted at even a medium distance. I mean, what'd be the difference between a player wading through 1m of water, or 1m of grass? The player walks along the map contour, and the lower half is masked by the water surface.