Author Topic: trees look gret from above but bad from below (Read 422 times)

Citabria · « **on:** October 19, 2003, 01:38:09 PM »

for flying airplanes the il2 style tree solution is very convincing and looks amazing but when i was tooling around in a vehicle all i could see was these circular ufos interspersed with rows of very good looking trees (that look good from the ground and as good from the air)

the flat plane tree rows dont look bad from the air though.

is there any solution that is workable like making the circle trees turn into tree rows when viewed from angles where you could see between the circles?

if posible this would make for some amazing treelines

Black Sheep · « **Reply #1 on:** October 19, 2003, 08:10:25 PM »

Yes true

But fly a 109 on the deck next to some of IL-2 trees

same thing

Im sure they plan on fixing it eventually b4 the release

214thCavalier · « **Reply #2 on:** October 20, 2003, 04:19:59 AM »

One suggestion was to offset each of the circles ie top circle angle it say 45 degrees down to the north next one 45 degrees to the east etc.

From above they would look the same but from below or level you would now see a fully formed tree without the need for trunks.

How easy this would be to code and the relation to frame rates etc i have no idea.

But it sounds like a perfect fix to me.

Easyscor · « **Reply #3 on:** October 20, 2003, 05:09:45 AM »

I hope the final trees will be a combination of the old crossed vertical panel trees and the new floating tiles. Seems to me that would produce the desired results without too much impact on fps.

Tilt · « **Reply #4 on:** October 20, 2003, 05:52:03 AM »

They seem to be rendered from very simple pixel shapes to form 3 layers of flat "clutter" (for want of a better word).

I assume they are tile driven......... ie they only appear over forest tiles.

It would be neat if they were translucent.

Could this not be done in the same way as is used with lake.bmp

Here a masking bitmap is used (usually black and white) to delete and merge the overlay with the tile. However if the mask is now coloured then the effect is one of translucence depending on hue.

A flat clutter object called canopy can them be made with a common base bit map but three masks each used at different heights (eg 7',15',25'...7 ' one being soft so that GV's drive thru this clutter)

The trick is angling it to the plain of the terrain below it.

Further the closer one is the more translucent it seems.

Hence a vehicle under the canopy has a better view out than an aircraft high above has when trying to view in. This seems right to me.

The canopy is then semi continuous with breaks in it that vehicles must pass thru. However where it is in evidence it is continous with differing levels of translucency rather than patches of trees/no trees equi-distant apart.

Another "dirty trick" would be to use the forest tile bitmap as the source bit map for the various layers to be masked. Then a new forest canopy bit map does not have to be remade for every terrain and gaps (at tile intersections) in the trees are not self evident by a pronounced change in local terrain detail.

The next problem seems to be one of assosiated vertical clutter. This could easily be a matter of mixing in std vertical trees. In which case I would suggest that all the "canopy" can be made "soft". The tricky one to me is that stuff like a tiger would bulldoze its way thru forest all be it at reduced speed where by an M3 type vehicle would be stopped by the first tree trunk.

Then the vertical tree clutter would have to be designed or positioned to allow a canopy that extends slightly beyond it. Such that vehicles not able to penetrate the forest could shleter at its edges. This may involve the use of the transision tiles (eg forest to grass etc) where by vertical clutter is not used but a part of the canopy clutter is.

Rutilant · « **Reply #5 on:** October 20, 2003, 05:59:16 AM »

I just had an idea..

We have the disks, right? THey look good from the air and all.. So what if we used that same effect on the ground, using the properly shaped disks (guess they wouldn't be disks anymore, huh?) vertically, in two directions..

As seen from above (ignore the .'s)
.......|....|....|
....--------------
.......|....|....|
.-------------------
.......|....|....|
....--------------
.......|....|....|

(These are 2d, so don't complain to me about fps

)

But, the disks will hide that, so it looks good from both the air and the ground since the ground vehicles and low planes would get the same effect from the vertical panels that the planes do from the floating disks. I imagine those would make some nice looking trees