Make Runways Cleaner/Sharper

[Vraciu]

Guess you didn't fly into a lot of places I've been.

There is obviously variation but, overall,  airports are kept pretty well trimmed up.

Sometimes down here after a big rain between mowings the Johnson grass will get away from us for a day or two but that's about it.

The question here is one of how well World War Two permanent bases were maintained. 

[bustr]

You guys are being "trolls" at this point since all of you know you can google "ww2 airfields Europe" and get a bumper crop of photos.

If you want runways that have razor crisp edges you have to ask Waffle to build 3D slab objects that can be fitted together to replace the straight legs of the main runway surfaces. He probably would have done that while developing the new fields if there was any value to building out multiple 3D objects in the face of being able to texture paint the runways onto the field object tile.

The super large airfield has asphalt runways and the pictures below show what looks like concrete rain gutters bordering the asphalt in these ww2 photos. I've seen that configuration at some airfields in the US. Other than that, you will not get runways to be any clearer any sooner than your graphics card and detail sliders will allow you to see the rest of the airfield at a distance. A runway has the added problem of your viewing angle relative to it and the fact it's running along the surface of the polygon mesh. The lower your relative angle, the closer you have to be to get a detailed rendering of that painted tile. That is why you have detail sliders to render the tiles out to 3 miles, the maximum distance I believe in AH3 now. And then some players would run into FPS hits around multiple cons just so they can see a razor's edge at 3 miles. Or they can use zoom....

[oboe]

I'm just not sure changing tiles on the map would fix it.  I can go to external view on the runway in any plane, hover 10 ft off the wingtip, start moving my viewpoint down to be level with the wing.   The closer I get to level with the wing, the blurrier the wing's surface becomes.  The wingtop insignia blurs out badly, as do the panel lines.  I they are very sharp when viewed from above.

Seems to me like the same problem?

[100Coogn]

You guys are being "trolls" at this point since all of you know you can google "ww2 airfields Europe" and get a bumper crop of photos.

If you want runways that have razor crisp edges you have to ask Waffle to build 3D slab objects that can be fitted together to replace the straight legs of the main runway surfaces. He probably would have done that while developing the new fields if there was any value to building out multiple 3D objects in the face of being able to texture paint the runways onto the field object tile.

The super large airfield has asphalt runways and the pictures below show what looks like concrete rain gutters bordering the asphalt in these ww2 photos. I've seen that configuration at some airfields in the US. Other than that, you will not get runways to be any clearer any sooner than your graphics card and detail sliders will allow you to see the rest of the airfield at a distance. A runway has the added problem of your viewing angle relative to it and the fact it's running along the surface of the polygon mesh. The lower your relative angle, the closer you have to be to get a detailed rendering of that painted tile. That is why you have detail sliders to render the tiles out to 3 miles, the maximum distance I believe in AH3 now. And then some players would run into FPS hits around multiple cons just so they can see a razor's edge at 3 miles. Or they can use zoom....


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Nobody said that they should be 'Razor Crisp'. 
They should no look as though they were air-brushed in as an afterthought.
It's not just the runways either.  The base surroundings look just as bad.

Coogan

[bustr]

You haven't built any kind of a terrain with the AH3 terrain editor have you? You might describe it as how a piece of Japanese hand made paper is meshed together. Way back when we were first testing the terrain for FPS, the mesh was really tight and we had really crappy results for the majority of us who couldn't afford a new super computer every month. The AH3 world environment is what it is at this point.

I guess you have reached that stage where you don't care how it works, you want what you want even if no one can play the game after that....

[100Coogn]

You haven't built any kind of a terrain with the AH3 terrain editor have you? You might describe it as how a piece of Japanese hand made paper is meshed together. Way back when we were first testing the terrain for FPS, the mesh was really tight and we had really crappy results for the majority of us who couldn't afford a new super computer every month. The AH3 world environment is what it is at this point.

I guess you have reached that stage where you don't care how it works, you want what you want even if no one can play the game after that....

I never said I built a terrain map. I said the runways look like crap.
Please stop putting words into others mouths. 

Coogan 
I

[bustr]

If you had ever worked with the AH3 terrain editor it would be apparent how the ground and tiles are meshed together at the polygon level. Then you would understand why straight lines painted on the clutter\texture tiles are not really straight lines so have a blurred or dithered effect which looks straight at a distance. Then you would see the clutter mesh makes up the ground and has been thinned to allow for the weakest possible PC and graphics card from the AH3 game hardware requirements to support the game. Which means if you want straight lines you have to change what you are wishing for to replace how the runways were created.

I'm not putting those words in your mouth, I'm trying to explain why the runway looks the way it does. It's obvious you have made up your mind you don't like what you see and now it's just the internet jousting to win the last word all of this usually descends to when you don't care how something in the game works.

So do you really think Waffle will completely recreate all of the runways?

[100Coogn]

Again, I'm not interested in how terrains are made.
I simply made an observation and a wish.
You are the one who's trying to dissect things.

Coogan