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Trees popping 1 meter in front of you when flying (LOD Issue?)
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Description

When flying helicopters at low altitude. small trees, bushes and dead trees appear suddenly and at very short distances from you. Sometimes appearing >1 meter in front and sometimes they don't load at all causing unavoidable and frustrating helicopter crashes.

Details

Severity
Major
Resolution
Open
Reproducibility
Always
Operating System
Windows 10 x64
Operating System Version
Version 20H2 (OS Build 19042. 1415)
Category
Terrain Processor
Steps To Reproduce
  1. Find tree with popping issue.

Probably one/all of these from an earlier/abandoned ticket
c_Plant_Mullein
c_PlantGermander_group
c_StrWeedBrownTall_group
c_StrWeedGreenTall
c_StrThistlePurple_small
c_Thistle_Thorn_Brown
c_Thistle_Thorn_Desert
c_Thistle_Thorn_Gray
c_Thistle_Thorn_Green
c_StrThornGray
c_StrThornGreen
c_StrThornKhaki

  1. Fly a helicopter (preferably a hummingbird) straight towards one of the trees in question at around 5 meters in altitude or higher depending on the size of tree.
  1. Try to see if your reflexes are fast enough to dodge a tree popping 1 meter in front of you
Additional Information

The issue can happen on NVME SSDs, Normal SSDs and of course HDDs
A lot of arma pilots spend thousands of hours perfecting the arma flight model. Having a tree load in before you can even see it is very discouraging and insulting to the player.

Event Timeline

This comment was removed by RosemarysBaby.
This comment was removed by Tenshi.
Tenshi added a subscriber: Tenshi.Dec 16 2021, 10:24 AM

Hello thank you for reporting the issue, could you perhaps give me some coordinates of a area where you experienced trees "popping"?
I've flown over a couple maps but didn't see anything that could confirm the issue

Sure. i will post a video shortly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLo1fFbaMiM
This video was taken at X=071 Y=154 and features one of the popular dead trees with popping issues. The first clip shows normal flight through a common route in one of arma 3s most famous game modes, king of the hill.
the second clip shows the tree staying rendered for a longer distance after popping in. before disappearing again
the video was taken in the editor to show it isnt a server side issue. and I could gladly provide my config file with all video settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjDXWnu81p8
This video was taken at X= 103 Y=149 and shows one of the popular miniature pine trees that suffer from the same popping issue. it also shows the tree staying in for a longer distance before fading out.
These trees, along with the dead trees are scattered everywhere throughout the map
,

My apologies if the tree names listed above arent the correct ones. I ignorantly copy and pasted the names from a different ticket without knowing if it was indeed the trees in question. I didnt have the knowledge necessary to provide you the exact tree names.

There are probably hundreds of unlisted clips that feature this issue. It is definitely a well known issue amongst arma 3 pilots

Hello thank you for the videos and information.
Please for next time add the map your talking about, i figured it was Altis.
Secondly your co-ordinates were off by a factor 1000, but i managed to find the tree.
This is what the tree looks like at distance on my screen, i can see the limbs all the way to the top.


maybe its your graphic settings?

Seems like a manifestation of the FOV issue. The FOV is broken in Arma, thus you see incorrect LODs, or objects disappearing at certain viewing angles.

You probably noticed but the two above links are from 2 separate users. The first link being all low graphic settings and the second link all very high graphic settings.

Our FOVs are customized which could possibly be the reason for this issue. but if there is a possible fix it would change the game for pilots drastically

Also @Tenshi correct me if i'm wrong but you seem to be (zoomed in) in your screenshot. When zoom is toggled I believe LODs behave differently, appearing at a further distance. Most pilots dont play while fully zoomed in

No i just made a selected screenshot i wasn't using right click or + at that time.


As you can see no zoom but i can still see the branches in the distance.
Sorry but i dont seem to be able to repro the issue, atleast on my pc

i can get a vid from every sideways/trick/combat pilot showcasing this issue. if that isnt enough i dont know what is

Sorry, I'm Quality Assurance, i test and process tickets.
In this case i am unable to confirm the issue, but that doesn't mean I'm saying that i dont believe it exists.
It does mean however that either the Repro is incomplete or it has conditions we don't know about.

I don't know enough about the game and the way LOD/FOV works to be able to make any guesses as to the cause.
That's why i was trying to get a working stable repro, so i can narrow down the issue and pass it to a programmer.

I hope this clears things up.

This comment was removed by Tenshi.

The first link being all low graphic settings

Even with pixelated video trunk of the tree became visible at 0:11
at 0:12 branches became visible.
at 0:13 it is fully rendered.

So this is just poor rendering of thin lines(branches) or far LODs don't have them at all.

Second video is another story.

@Tenshi I would be glad to sit in a discord call with you and try to narrow down to issue, if thats a possibility. Though im pretty convinced it should be an easy thing to reproduce. I could be wrong

Tenshi added a comment.Jan 6 2022, 4:41 PM

Hello, Sorry for the delay.

"Our FOVs are customized which could possibly be the reason for this issue.

I asked a programmer and they say i might be your custom FOV, We don't officially support changed FOV.
Due to the current phase of Live Ops development in Arma 3, it's unlikely that we will be able to fix it if this is the case.