Opinions on culldistances

[dorn956 43]

What do you think can be done about the issue of cull-distances revealing players hiding in tall-grass / bushes at a distance?

For those who are unaware, in the game development world, a cull-distance is generally referring to the distances at which certain meshes (mainly non-interactive objects) spawn. There is usually an invisible ring around the player that when said meshes, most of the time the foliage like grass and weeds, are to render / de-render from the players view port. 

There are generally two types of cull-distances to my understanding:

Type A: General Cull-distance [GCD] - used to cull all foliage at x distance

Type B: Cheap Cull-distance [CCD] - used to cull foliage further than the general cull-distance radius. 

(Cheap cull-distance is the best term I can think of since I'm not sure the actual one -- it means that foliage that exceeds the GCD Range but not the CCD range will render as "cheap" or low-quality models. The texture quality will be less, and the polygon count will be less. This is because it is at a distance the player cannot even see the quality that there would be no point in rendering it, thus adding unneeded strain on the client.)

The reason cull-distance is existent is simply because if all the grass in the world rendered or grass at extreme range rendered, players would experience severe - if not game-crashing - lag. The issue stands currently that the distances are mandatory for gameplay optimization and to avoid lag and crashing, however it disallows the use of the foliage at a distance to conceal player characters from sight. 

 

E.G. if you are laying in a field of tall grass at the same elevation as another player, it would be nearly impossible to be spotted. However, if this player that is scouting is outside the cull-distance, they will see a character laying in a field of green texture (which is just the landscape material). There will not be any actual grass to conceal that character laying down until the scouting player gets within the cull-distance.

 

 

So now I ask, what do we think can be done about this issue? Will it forever remain impossible to hide behind a simple shrub or in some tall grass at a distance?

There is even a CCD for larger-scaled foliage such as pine trees and other large topiary. It makes it almost a 2d model at a distance, which means at a certain angle the player can be seen, and at other angles he/she is completely concealed.

 

This is a real headscratcher! Taking it out is obviously not an option, so now what?

[DannyDog 532]

As it stands I believe only grass and certain bushes are not rendered past player render distance. Player's will begin to disappear before object view distance does.

As shown here:

So the issue is more about grass itself and being able to spot people proning in grass when grass isn't even rendered.

Arma 3 has a system where player models "sink" into the ground when they are proning to simulate occlusion of grass (as if it was there).

Here it is in action on old dayz versions, not sure if it still exists ingame. (Don't believe it does)

https://imgur.com/a/YEf6M

Here's another possible solution.

https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/140105-rendering-grass-at-long-distances-my-thoughts-about-it/

Lots of ideas and discussions about this from the past but its great to bring it up again.

Edited January 10, 2018 by DannyDog

[Vattenlarv 81]

Kind of off-topic: 

I have been thinking about this stuff a bit. However, I am by no means a game developer, nor do I have sufficient knowledge about anything really to back up a suggestion. Also, this loosely thought out "idea" of mine is not applicable on DayZ anyways, so yeah.

I am thinking about level design. How a map, regardless of its scenery, never allows you to see further than e.g. 300 meters. Dense tree-lines, cliff faces, city skylines etc always obscures your vision at a maximum of 300 meters. Carefully thought out level design, that does not feel unnatural in any way, but just extremely well put together. So view distance would never be more than 300 meters. Wouldn't a new powerful game engine (and cpu) be able to deal with a ton of detail, foliage and environmental effects that did not have to de-render, other than beyond the player's line of sight? 

Ok, long distance sniping would be out of the picture, but I would prefer to not have to think about a game's graphical limitations when hiding in what I intuitively consider to be "cover". 

I kind of find the vast wastelands of sandbox games, that does not feel alive due to lack of detail and repetativeness in the environment, to be a bit of a downer. To give a player a real sense of scale could be done by making 100 m² of a map highly detailed and interesting, and then add another 99 of equally interesting areas (to make a 1 km² map, if my math is not failing me) to create a far more interesting world than a, 10 times that size, "dead" wasteland. Add foliage that does not de-render, and hiding in a 1 km² world with 80 players would not be more difficult than in Chernarus. 

A lot of different buildings with different interior, southern European type cities with narrow cobblestone streets and labyrinth-like "paths" between buildings made out of planks and scaffolding, unique ruins and ancient tunnel systems, dense forests with small creeks and oasis like glades, rock faces with caves / cave systems... your mom's bedroom... you know, whateva'

Not shitting on DayZ or anything, just thinking out loud. 

Edited January 10, 2018 by Vattenlarv

[cirkular 178]

On 1/10/2018 at 7:22 PM, Vattenlarv said:

Ok, long distance sniping would be out of the picture, but I would prefer to not have to think about a game's graphical limitations when hiding in what I intuitively consider to be "cover". 

A lot of different buildings with different interior, southern European type cities with narrow cobblestone streets and labyrinth-like "paths" between buildings made out of planks and scaffolding, unique ruins and ancient tunnel systems, dense forests with small creeks and oasis like glades, rock faces with caves / cave systems... your mom's bedroom... you know, whateva'

This is exactly what bothers most if not all of us, I think. With all the scopes and binoculars available I think it's one of finer necessities to be dealt with. For me, the first Crysis had that great foliage landscape and some sneaky NPCs way back then. Imagine what would it be if you couldn't get a lock on them in your visor. I think that if it stays like this, and if Dayz engine goes for very low LOD foliage and terrain at a certain distance, then it should also go for very low LOD player silhouettes. And I mean, adding some kind of blur or transparency/opacity effect so it would seem to blend in with the terrain much more. So if a player is making an ambush or is in cover, you would barely be able to differentiate. Just look at that difference in rendering the terrain vs player silhouettes in that example. I'm only guessing that it's the easiest option with some tweaking over time. But it should be hard coded into the engine of course, not to be fiddled with like with view distance settings in the cfg files etc.

 

On 1/10/2018 at 7:22 PM, Vattenlarv said:

I kind of find the vast wastelands of sandbox games, that does not feel alive due to lack of detail and repetativeness in the environment, to be a bit of a downer. To give a player a real sense of scale could be done by making 100 m² of a map highly detailed and interesting, and then add another 99 of equally interesting areas (to make a 1 km² map, if my math is not failing me) to create a far more interesting world than a, 10 times that size, "dead" wasteland. Add foliage that does not de-render, and hiding in a 1 km² world with 80 players would not be more difficult than in Chernarus. 

A lot of different buildings with different interior, southern European type cities with narrow cobblestone streets and labyrinth-like "paths" between buildings made out of planks and scaffolding, unique ruins and ancient tunnel systems, dense forests with small creeks and oasis like glades, rock faces with caves / cave systems... your mom's bedroom... you know, whateva'

Not shitting on DayZ or anything, just thinking out loud. 

I know what you mean, but I think those numbers are not what you meant :) because one square kilometer would be 1000 x 1000 meters or 1 x 1 km, which would make the area something like the size of Chernogorsk main town, without those tall buildings areas of Chapaevsk, Novoselky and Dubky. Anyway, I like this map size as it is for this setting. Currently it's about 220 square km.

Here is a piece of Chernarus map, with one square on the map being one square kilometer:

[sneakydude 480]

Dont you mean 10sq KM X 10sq KM?

 

[St. Jimmy 1631]

10 hours ago, sneakydude said:

Dont you mean 10sq KM X 10sq KM?

 

100km⁴ . What's that?

[sneakydude 480]

9 hours ago, St. Jimmy said:

100km⁴ . What's that?

Naw meant isnt each square 10km sq not 100sq.

[Mantasisg 172]

lol⁴

So what could be done about those distances ? I don't think that we have any business about that, as we are not Devs.

Obviously the performance will have to be sacrificed , and the distances increased. Thankfully weeds are mostly in places away from towns, but I suppose it could be an issue with weed fields which are close to towns. Only developers know how much further the game can be optimised. So perhaps we will see 150players, and properly serving foliage. Or perhaps we will not. 

So what can we do ? Nothing really, just wait and hope, like all those years we did. Unless you have some serious knowledge in game developing, so perhaps you'd have some other ideas.

But if we play back seat devs:

Perhaps the game could LOD the player model (when out of grass rendering distance) in such way that it would seem camouflaged when he would lay down in areas with tall grass. Maybe some kind of magic like that. Maybe the player model could go partly sink in the terrain surface and/or become partly transparent/ or maybe partly reflective to easily seem camouflaged. It shouldn't look bad as it would happen in far distance. It get a bit tricky with scopes and binoculars. I guess with scopes and binoculars different rendering mode should be used, to actually make foliage work, different step of lodding in relation with amount of zoom. 

Suddenly it all looks quite complex and you understand how stuff could be difficult to virtualise. These things should come in early visions, or early stages of developing IMO. So devs should have thought about such things years and years ago. And maybe they did. But we have what we have.

Though I don't remember if grass rendering distances always were like that, or became an issue in certain point.

Another point - people playing with low world details - the problem is how to dial out the advantages of that, such as grass LOD'ing decreased, or even not being rendered at all. Honestly, I don't remember last time when I played DayZ with low settings, as well as I don't remember when I played DayZ in the first place. Since it became majorly unexciting because gameplay design and such little technical issues.

Edited January 16, 2018 by Mantasisg

[Mantasisg 172]

On 1/10/2018 at 10:10 AM, DannyDog said:

Here's another possible solution.

https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/140105-rendering-grass-at-long-distances-my-thoughts-about-it/

 

This seems like the right direction. Though the soldier is not a 2D cardboard object, unfortunately. Also the background is not always a hill, or even the grass, for example if background would be sky in horizon, or water, or building building or......  it would still stand out. But it should be better. But sometimes it would look weird when moving, so the engine should know when the player should be camouflaged, or when he shouldn't, and that would be difficult I suppose.

It could be some kind of ring around player laying down, enabling thick grass to be rendered. Because Mip Maps would make thin bladed grass useless anyway.

I suppose most simple solutions would be working with player models partial transparency in huge distances. But it should need better solution than simply making player transparent bellow the waist. Perhaps engine could work by detecting surroundings of player in distance, which are obviously detected because they are rendered to him. And create some kind of blending in cone around him with special rendering. if it would be too large though, it would be giving the position out though, too small also wouldn't work once spotted I guess.... 

There are reasons why nothing works.

 

[Vattenlarv 81]

Just to clear this up. I did mean 100 x 100 m², which is exactly one 1 km².

E.g. in Stockholm, which is one of the less dense major capital cities in the world, the population density is some 5000 people per 1 km² (this is on average, not in the inner city).

So my "idea" was a highly detailed map of 1 km² (220 times smaller than Chernarus in DayZ), 80 players, never able to see more than 300 m.

This is Södermalm in Stockholm, Sweden. The red quadrant is 1 km². Throw 300 players in there, with somewhat realistic accessibility to buildings, allies, cellars, attics, construction sites and so on, and you would have a harder time finding anyone than you currently have in DayZ.

I am not saying Södermalm in Stockholm would be a good setting for a game. My point is that 1 km² of "realistic" environment could be a much grander setting than a 220 km² dead wasteland, if done right. 

 

Naples, Italy: 

Just do this to your own home town and realize how enormous 1 km² of a highly detailed, and brilliantly put together, map would be for 80+ players to muck around in. 

Hell, make it 2 km² if 1 km² is not enough. Still 110 times smaller than Chernarus. Get my drift?

 

Still off-topic, I know.

[cirkular 178]

Well, you know... okay. It's not that much off topic. You're basically suggesting that the map should be greatly reduced but highly detailed so we won't have that culling distance problem and more fidelity. Maybe something like The Division.

I was never that good at math, but basically when you call something a square it means it has sides of a certain and equal lenght. So I checked the internets:

[Vattenlarv 81]

8 hours ago, cirkular said:

Well, you know... okay. It's not that much off topic. You're basically suggesting that the map should be greatly reduced but highly detailed so we won't have that culling distance problem and more fidelity. Maybe something like The Division.

I was never that good at math, but basically when you call something a square it means it has sides of a certain and equal lenght. So I checked the internets:

If you take an area of 100 m², and add another 99 areas of the same size, the total area would be 1 km². Trust me. I am not very pedagogical, but the math is correct, haha. 

Edit; And yes, that is what I am saying. But I understand that it is not something that will ever happen with DayZ.

For some reason I am thinking about the final mission in either Mafia or Mafia II when you make your way from building to building using scaffolding, planks, roof tops etc. Not like in Assassin's Creed, but the level design would make these places accessible. A 1 km² sandbox map, with detailed and very accessible buildings, alleyways, yards, cellars, attics, rooftops, tunnel systems, dense patches of forest and so on, and maybe the possibility to strategically block or alter these access points, would be an epic setting for a sandbox survival game. The sense of scale would be defined by the map's detail and accessibility, not by "horizontal size". A 1 km² map with most of this area covered in multi-story buildings, subterranean levels, that all intertwine and is highly accessible through clever level design (not by some lazy climb mechanic that was dated 5 years ago), would be a lot "bigger" than 1 km² in DayZ. 

Edited January 21, 2018 by Vattenlarv

[pilgrim* 3514]

A room 3m x  5m has a surface area of 15 square meters - a landing ground 1km x 1km has a surface area of 1 square kilometer  - Also an enclosure of 100m x 100m = 1000 square meters of surface area, and  a strip 50m by 200m has a surface area of 1000 square meters. A square of 1 km per side encloses 1 square kilometer and also contains 1000000 square meters of surface area.

So guys, what's the problem? A square with sides of 700 m x 700m contains roughly half a square kilometer of ground, right?

- heh

[cirkular 178]

1 hour ago, Vattenlarv said:

If you take an area of 100 m², and add another 99 areas of the same size, the total area would be 1 km². Trust me. I am not very pedagogical, but the math is correct, haha. 

Edit; And yes, that is what I am saying. But I understand that it is not something that will ever happen with DayZ.

For some reason I am thinking about the final mission in either Mafia or Mafia II when you make your way from building to building using scaffolding, planks, roof tops etc. Not like in Assassin's Creed, but the level design would make these places accessible. A 1 km² sandbox map, with detailed and very accessible buildings, alleyways, yards, cellars, attics, rooftops, tunnel systems, dense patches of forest and so on, and maybe the possibility to strategically block or alter these access points, would be an epic setting for a sandbox survival game. The sense of scale would be defined by the map's detail and accessibility, not by "horizontal size". A 1 km² map with most of this area covered in multi-story buildings, subterranean levels, that all intertwine and is highly accessible through clever level design (not by some lazy climb mechanic that was dated 5 years ago), would be a lot "bigger" than 1 km² in DayZ. 

Yes, THAT is correct :) Sorry to bother everyone for bringing this up. Anyway, I understood in the first place what you meant with this suggestion. Who knows, maybe someone is already working on similar or will make a map like that when modding becomes possible. I guess it would take about the same amount of time to make as was with Chernarus haha

Edit: Outdated climbing mechanic! What I wanted to add is, hopefully we'll get a good climbing mechanic developed for .63 and beyond. It was something I found missing so many times in Dayz.

24 minutes ago, pilgrim* said:

A room 3m x  5m has a surface area of 15 square meters - a landing ground 1km x 1km has a surface area of 1 square kilometer  - Also an enclosure of 100m x 100m = 1000 square meters of surface area, and  a strip 50m by 200m has a surface area of 1000 square meters. A square of 1 km per side encloses 1 square kilometer and also contains 1000000 square meters of surface area.

So guys, what's the problem? A square with sides of 700 m x 700m contains roughly half a square kilometer of ground, right?

- heh

Yes and no :D 100 x 100 = 10.000 and 50 x 200 = 10.000 too. Just multiply the numbers on each side to get the surface in square units. 

Edited January 21, 2018 by cirkular

[cirkular 178]

In fact this distant terrain rendering issue is common in gaming. I remember this one a few years back with Skyrim and there was a cfg file modification, which when used would get you more terrain rendered but at a performance and stability cost:

 

Edit: I'm 99% sure it'd have to be some kind of a trick since it seems that current technology just can't cope with it yet. 

Edited January 21, 2018 by cirkular

[Mantasisg 172]

Do you guys realize that what matters the most is not the overall size, but the amount of drawing calls for GPU at any given moment ? 

And reducing the map size would increase players encounters dramatically regardless of how crazy accessible would be the buildings, or would there even be insane tunels and sewers systems all together with huge basements, accessible mines, or in other hand  amillion stories tall skyscrapers lol. 

Unless everyone would hide from each other and be camping to KOS all the time, like it is now. Very fun.

[Sqeezorz 839]

I think it does not matter how big a card is. The limit is our computers. The detail and size are relatively unimportant.

A cpu / gpu can handle a certain amount of polygons depending on its performance. this always refers to the "field of view" of the camera. The range of the view is therefore very important, especially because the buildings in DayZ are part of the map ... all walk-in buildings have open windows and put a lot of load on the cpu / gpu (which was also a problem for the devs in the review of Elektro and Cherno ... the balance of detail and performance, the computer always imports only areas of the map ... we never have the complete map in the memory. 

so smaller maps only have an impact on the players (interactions dense), requirements and performance of the system will be so much higher. (It may even be that the AI of animals and Zeds would be too hard for the server performance).

I think the DayZ engine are good handling big maps... its possible with small maps we become more or other problems, in view on tech to Engine because, the Engine is created/optimized for big maps/terrains.

that does not mean that it will not be possible, but without any adjustments and optimizations of the Tech for smaller maps, the disappointment will be great.

[Vattenlarv 81]

53 minutes ago, Mantasisg said:

Do you guys realize that what matters the most is not the overall size, but the amount of drawing calls for GPU at any given moment ? 

And reducing the map size would increase players encounters dramatically regardless of how crazy accessible would be the buildings, or would there even be insane tunels and sewers systems all together with huge basements, accessible mines, or in other hand  amillion stories tall skyscrapers lol. 

Unless everyone would hide from each other and be camping to KOS all the time, like it is now. Very fun.

Dude, c'mon... are you seriously suggesting that a 10 story building, with different interior in each apartment, furniture, some windows blown out / some half shot out / some whole, unique wholes in walls leading into other apartments, wholes in ceilings floors of some apartments with make-shift ladders providing access to a different floor without having to use the staircase, elevator stuck on one floor but you can access the service ladder in the elevator shaft, but maybe not reach all floors from that one ladder, and whatever else you could imagine would not provide more opportunities to hide, store loot or whatnot than one of these: 

 

Imagine those two buildings being completely unique, with only the general architecture in common. Shelling, weather, wear and tear, and people have opened up several entry points, and once you are inside there are 2-4 ways of accessing every individual floor, with each floor different from the other. The possibility to board up or block certain access points, forcing potential enemies into choke points unless they either blow up your blockade or waste a crowbar on it, making lots of noise giving away your position and activity. 

On level 8 you stumble across an apartment. It has obviously been a hold up for a larger group at some points. Most windows are covered up, and the ones that are not are enforced to provide cover for look-outs. In the living room there is a big whole in the wall, probably caused by shelling. There is a dodgy suspension bridge built between the two buildings, leading in to a room with a sturdy fire door, that can only be opened from the inside. An escape route! 

Use your imagination, mate. These two buildings could be super interesting, terrifying, important, just awesome. Now they are two generic buildings, that both look exactly the same, you can not differentiate one floor from the other, and there is nothing inside any rooms to obscure the vision for a potential sniper searching the building from a tree line a couple of hundred meters away. 

 

Gaaaah, the lack of imagination and creative thinking is so god damn frustrating sometimes. 

[pilgrim* 3514]

7 hours ago, cirkular said:

Yes and no :D 100 x 100 = 10.000 and 50 x 200 = 10.000 too. Just multiply the numbers on each side to get the surface in square units. 

- ah, Im BEGINNING to get the idea .. just multiply the numbers on both sides say square meters and avoid m².   A line 1km long is 1000m

A square of 1 km per side encloses 1 square kilometer and encloses 1000000 square meters of surface area. So guys, what's the problem? A square with sides of 700 m x 700m contains roughly half a square kilometer of ground, right?   .. oh dear .. lets go straight to radius (linear distance) from player ?

[Vattenlarv 81]

13 hours ago, pilgrim* said:

- ah, Im BEGINNING to get the idea .. just multiply the numbers on both sides say square meters and avoid m².   A line 1km long is 1000m

A square of 1 km per side encloses 1 square kilometer and encloses 1000000 square meters of surface area. So guys, what's the problem? A square with sides of 700 m x 700m contains roughly half a square kilometer of ground, right?   .. oh dear .. lets go straight to radius (linear distance) from player ?

I do not think there is a problem, Pilgrim. I am pretty sure everybody understands, in their own way. 

[Mantasisg 172]

Then try to imagine the complexity of realisation the things which just went through your mind. Imagine how much effort all that unique stuff would require, then imagine how much more graphical resources it would consume, then ask yourself is it practical. Ask yourself why you can't use those appartments as your base just now ? Ask yourself why you are wishlisting impossible things, and if you really need them.... 

Come down mate, don't overestimate yourself. And don't be backseat developer. 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Mantasisg

[Vattenlarv 81]

25 minutes ago, Mantasisg said:

Then try to imagine the complexity of realisation the things which just went through your mind. Imagine how much effort all that unique stuff would require, then imagine how much more graphical resources it would consume, then ask yourself is it practical. Ask yourself why you can't use those appartments as your base just now ? Ask yourself why you are wishlisting impossible things, and if you really need them.... 

Didn't the devs quite recently explain how they had individually placed millions of trees around Chernarus, how they re-worked the entire engine, how they constantly make changes to the countless (in the hundreds of thousands if I am not mistaken) loot spawns to optimize game performance, how the struggle to create the best game ever and at the same time please an impatient community fucking sucks (with other words), just BWAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!

With your mindset, why even bother to post in a forum where people brainstorm and do just that, imagine what there favorite game could be like? It is not your job to make these changes. It is not you who set the limitations for what BI are capable of. You do not work there... or do you? *intensity intensifies* 

I have already stated a couple of times that this is somewhat off-topic, that it is non-applicable on DayZ, and that I was more or less just throwing my thoughts out there. You STILL had to take a passive aggressive dump on my thoughts with your "all-knowing understanding" of what game engines and cpu's are capable of. Dude, if you were Gabe Newell, Half-Life 2 would run on the Doom engine, and we would still have to buy physical copies of every single game we wanted to play. Just imagine that. 

 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Vattenlarv

[Mantasisg 172]

DUDE, are you looking for ways how to get offended now ? Because feels like that. I wasn't aggressive at all, just a man. 

Have you ever noticed how incredibly hard those trees are LOD'ed, the struggle for good performance is huge. Also those trees aren't placed on top of one another in multiple stories. 

I have played with lowish range laptop and before new graphics renderer was introduced. Those appartments were no go place because of extremely bad performance there, that clearly showed to me that that place is sensitive for performance. I think it is obvious that it shouldn't be expected to have more geometry and detail in near future.

My mindset is that if you post something, be ready to discuss it, it might be rather silly stuff you just have posted, thats how brainstorming works - it is not always "oh **** I'm such a genius" stuff. I bet you can't imagine that.

Too bad only good imagination doesn't work here, so you should develop more skills. Imagination is just a part of creativity...

 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Mantasisg

[Vattenlarv 81]

Brainstorming is definitely NOT negating a thought, that already has several disclaimers on it such as "non applicable" and "nor do I have sufficient knowledge about anything really to back up a suggestion", with passive aggressive remarks like "million stories tall skyscrapers lol". If there is something I despise it is putting words in other people's mouths to prove a point. Discuss what is actually being said, or your input is pointless. 

My mindset is that you do not take a shit in a fan, unless you are ready to have some shit thrown back at you. But hey, to each his own. 

 

[cirkular 178]

7 hours ago, Mantasisg said:

...

Yeah, man, Vattenlarv clearly said it's offtopic, and while it's a good idea generally, it's not likely it'd be considered by the devs purely because of the nature and the idea of Dayz open world. I suppose. I also said that it'd probably take the time to build it like it did for Chernarus :D Just in the future, don't read between the lines, don't *feel* the posts. Just give some logical responses to ideas, not just bring it down because it *might* be a performance hog, especially a game and an engine not fully optimized yet.