Forests in BoB2

[stickman]

Here is my old-time, usual frame rate test, where I see how many AUTOGEN forest trees that I can plant on a forest texture.
Tangmere Landing. Low level. A lot of forest here!
Yellow line is the flight path, trying to view as many forest trees as possible, stressing the frame rates.
If I can maintain the (LIMITED to 33 fps rate, that I usually use) then I am very happy!



Start. The forest just north of Westhampnet airfield.



Flying west along the high ridge:



End of the forested ridge, and end of fps test.
33 fps all the way!



Note! I am using #62 oak trees AUTOGENed as forest edge trees, plus using AOUTOGEN Tree-lines.
Plus a lot of #1192 beech trees in forest.
Trying all kind of mixing things into the stew pot.

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There may be no "Holy Grail" for making BoBII forests look perfect. The Holy Grail does not exist!
However.. we can can cook up some recipes that taste very good, and do not give us heart burn.
With your new object, and textures, this is tasting much better. Some nice Indian spice.

[vramesh]

Dear Stickman,

Sorry that I have not answered for many days.

No problem! Thankyou for the testing and the feedback.

My grand-son is now walking around very well, running up and down the hall, getting into things, and needs watching!

Nice to hear that he keeps his grandpa busy! I can understand and can relate to it very well. My niece (13 months old) manages to find and crawl into (apparently, previously un-noticed) crevices, nooks and crannies in our home. She needs constant supervision. My son (7 months old), he's just discovered a new way of locomotion. He keeps rolling around vigorously in the bed until he finds something to leverage on (i.e. anyone who's near him in bed, sometimes just a pillow is sufficient) to stand up and then...just dive face forward with reckless abandon! Rinse, repeat. Hmm... I guess he'd be a very good Fw190 driver I suppose. Argh, too much flight-simming!

If my son and niece are both in close proximity, there is a fierce competition for attention which is usually followed by a screaming match in baby language until we go in and break it up .It's all good. We all enjoy it all while we can.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

This also resulted in bad visual effects flying over the forests. The worst being seeing the trees dissappear at the bottom of the screen.

So I will not advise that.

I suspect that 'flickering' trees and disappearances might be due to too much object overlap. I set these two variables in bdg.txt like so

Code: Select all

TEMP_AG_TL_DIST = 7000  
TEMP_AG_SN[15,3]=1543

I don't see the artifacts that often. Don't know if it cured it. I'll do some more testing tonight.

33 fps all the way!

Yay! I am glad to hear that your Autogen tweak helped you maintin 33 FPS all the way.
If you are ok with it then, I shall bring this version of forest 3D bin to a logical conclusion.

To summarize:
High LOD version (with Autumn trees):http://www.mediafire.com/download/z97pz ... in5_v2.zip
Reduced LOD version (just bin):https://www.mediafire.com/?e0817fxttsnt31s
Summer trees textures:http://www.mediafire.com/download/8l335 ... tterns.zip

Ah! I just noticed your edit with the "6 summer variations" texture.
So.. more time to play around with these, before I will reply about those.

Eagerly awaiting your feedback on these textures.I am no texture guru but, I learn something new everyday. Artwork is HARD!

Some nice Indian spice.

So nice to hear that Indian spice is improving the taste of BoB2.
Can't help but notice that your autogen tweak actually 'sprinkles' 1543 just like how spices are sprinkled with other ingredients

Regards,
Vasanth

[PV]

This is looking really good. Looking forward
to trying it out this weekend. It's been a few
days since I've had time to sit down at my
desktop.

[vramesh]

Dear PV,
Thank you. Looking forward for your inputs/feedback. It was your idea afterall .

Stickman,
Did some cursory testing last night. I found the 'vanishing' tree problem with TEMP_AG_DIST = 4000.000000. Found issues with anything below 4000.
Didn't find any such issues for values TEMP_AG_DIST = 5120.000000 and above.
All testing with TEMP_AG_SN[15,3]=1543
Your mileage may vary.

Maybe I am not able to get that specific angle(s) at which the problem arises. Trees disappear easily with values less than 4000 though. Will do some more testing.

Regards,
Vasanth

[stickman]

I tried all textures, a lot of different AUTOGEN lines, and mixed in various old tree objects, looking for a good recipe.
Found something that looks and behaves real good.
Note. I have not tried the Lo LOD frst.BIN object yet. Will do later.

Here are my lines to get the forests well populated with a mix of the new frst.BIN (Hi LOD) object and the old #1192 tall beech tree object.

# AutoGen stuff (experimental):
TEMP_AG_SN[15,0]=1543
TEMP_AG_SN[15,1]=1543
TEMP_AG_SN[15,2]=1543
TEMP_AG_SN[15,3]=1192

TEMP_AG_DIST = 5500.000000

I used the 03_frst_side and 03_frst_top textures. 20 trees. It is the less grid like object, and trees are scattered best.
When there is spillage, and it is not very bad, I do not want the spilled trees looking like orchard trees in a grid.

The forest AUTOGEN lines above mean that 25% of objects are the #1543 object and 75% of the objects are the #1192 beech trees.
My main requirement is that I will not drop below 33 fps during my tangmere flight test. OK, good!

I do not see any trees disappearing at the bottom of the screen. OK, good! Thanks for tip on the TEMP_AG_DIST = higher than 4000 to stop that.

None of these trees have the bad .fx shine at Dusk and Dawn times.

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Some pictures.

At the end of Tangmere test run. I did drop to 32 fps twice, for a half-second. OK.


Same Tangmere ridge place and time a few seconds later:


West Malling. Spillage appears at that strange spot. I can get rid of it by a certain setting that uses very few trees.
I want MORE trees! So I accept this spillage.
Note the Squadron on take off. They miss these trees, and would miss them if I had them taking off from west to east runway, too. OK.
No bad spillage at the Kenley aircraft revetments.


This at west Malling, too.


There are still some bare spots on the underlying forest texture at big forests that do not get covered. Oh, well.

Let us take a walk in the woods, Little Red Riding Hood!
I see some moss hanging the tree trunks. Not in England, I think. I will brown that out.


Spooky woods! I expect a German paratrooper to pop out and take a shot at me!

[vramesh]

Wow! That last screenie gives me goose bumps if I may say so.

Way to go Stickman!

--
Vasanth

[PV]

I have downloaded the mod and looked through it,
but sorry I did not get time to see it in game; did
not get to my desktop till midnight sunday, and
it was Daylight Saving change weekend, an hour
was stolen from me, and I have a hard enough time
getting up before noon as it is. I hope to carve out
some time for it tomorrow. I'm very tempted to
spend some time tweaking the tree colours before
installing, but that will take some time, so I'll have
to resist...

[vramesh]

Dear PV,

Thank you.
At work now. I will share the PERL code I wrote to generate these tree textures after I get home tonight. It may not affect in tweaking tree colours but, might help you and Stickman (and I hope other BoB2 users) with experimenting with different types of tree groupings.
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EDIT:
Dear PV, Stickman,
Here is the (much simplified version of) PERL code for generating tree textures for object #1543.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/gruvm ... nerate.zip

You may need to install PERL to run this code. Running the code creates two files, namely, frst_sid.svg and frst_top.svg in the same place where the perl code is located. Use GIMP (or something similar) to open the svg file and export to dds format. NOTE: If you plan to move the svg files, then be sure to move the trees/ folder also along with it. Otherwise you'll see only empty images.

Line #19 in the code controls the number of trees. Change 42 to 20 to get twenty randomly arranged trees. Why 42? It is the answer to everything, of course . However, any value greater than 30, the grid starts to show. Max allowed is 64 when the grid is completely populated.

If you must, you can change the individual tree<type#>_<color#>.png and its corresponding top<type#>_<color#>_<level#>.png images to get different trees. Legal level numbers are 0,1,2 and 3. 0 is the bottom-most layer, 3 is top-most layer.Be sure to change rand(2) to rand(4) in line#61 and comment out line #62.

Forgive me if it is not very user friendly. Please inform me about any issues.
Usual disclaimer applies. Please use at your own risk! Always back-up things!
END EDIT
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Regards,
Vasanth

[ShadowShooter]

Life imitating art?


Not a screenshot from BoB2 featuring the new forest textures, but an aerial view of an unknown piece of English countryside.