I think, for game balance and immersion, grass should always be rendered, no matter the distance.

Will you play with 2 fps?

CoD/DayZ kids even here. Facepalm.
CoD doesn't render 20km x 20km maps.

No I'm not a CoD/DayZ kid, although I did play Cod4 when it was released.
About the Fps issue, that's why I suggested a much lower quality grass to be rendered in the distance.

Render the low quality grass in the distance you can see on your screen.

Also, as of right now you can reduce the grass render distance to 0, so grass will never hinder your vision. I find that OP. (Like in some games were you can reduce the particle effect on Smoke Grenades, so they become totally useless)

Grass is the bane of my life, so it sounds like a good point to me. However, I believe a lot of PvP servers in Arma 2 set the grass draw distance to be the same for everyone using scripts.

Yeah, it should be much farther than the current distance IF POSSIBLE, but they have to ask themselves: Will we retain more customers by making it more "real" (more intensive to render that much more even if it's low quality) or by making the game run smoothly on more machines (less intensive rendering at short distance). Also, IF it's adjustable, why wouldn't I reduce it as much as possible so that no one has an unfair advantage over me? Pretty hard to find the perfect implementation

I'll not downvote you, but you definitely need some sort of MAX, there's no way they could render the entire island (and this is the SMALLER map), no matter how low quality you make the grass.

Once again, I'm not talking about rendering the whole island, I'm talking about rendering what's on your screen...

Do I really need to point that out? Thought it would be obvious.

Sounds good but I'm afraid even low quality grass would impact performance way too much.

A combination of sinking units partially into green terrain, like ARMA2 does, combined with a shader to fuzz the edges of objects next to the terrain. Add another shader to make the rest of the terrain noisier. It's a very rough approximation, but shouldn't be too expensive.

No, no, and no. Grass is probably the worst single FPS killer, enabling this would probably make the game unplayable (less than 1 FPS and/or crash all the time) for 95 % of the users.

Unless devs make some magic and change the grass to not kill your FPS, I vote down. Would like to do it multiple times if I was able to do that... :P

The solution? Disable grass in MP (servers force the visuals in MP). Almost doubles your FPS and everyone is in the same situation. No need to thank me :D

Dont make us all have to render the grass. If a server owner wants to set the grass drawdistance for PVP or because he likes to make my GPU work then thats up to him.

Disable grass in MP (servers force the visuals in MP).

LOL What is the point if you can observe enemy from miles miles miles away?

Where is realism? Where is tactics?

There is surely a solution to render grass a long distance with minimal performance impact.

currently the grass texture is rendered at 50-100m which is way too short. the ground seems naked, it's ugly, and there is no way to hide.

what about to implement a basic grass effect beyond 100m range, a grass without movements, but just to simulate the colour and the form.

or maybe a simple ground re-colourization imitating the grass color, where players can actually use camouflage technique efficiently.

severgun,

there are several points in disabling the grass in multiplayer. If you have actually played the game, you should know that the grass is rendered only up to about 100 m distance, so your claim "you can observe enemy from miles miles miles away" is absurd.

The snipers are now overpowered. They are overpowered many ways, e.g. because of lacking micro-level terrain, so people can't hide between slopes, bumps and such. Enabling grass makes them even more OPed, because they have the advantage to have grass-free view while the people using e.g. assault rifles have the majority of their targets in grass render distance. Disabling the grass in MP will result in 1. much better performance (it can double your FPS) and 2. more balanced game when also other units than already OPed snipers can have grass-free view.

There's the realism, there's the tactics. ;P

How about a 'Grass Draw Distance' slider, combined with grass becoming lower quality the further away it is? That way, everyone can set the distance as far as they can without performance becoming too low for their liking, and could turn down other graphical options in order to and more headroom for grass, if they so wished.

or maybe a simple ground re-colourization imitating the grass color, where players can actually use camouflage technique efficiently.

Color is nothing in camouflage thing. Flat surface is flat with any color.

If you have actually played the game, you should know that the grass is rendered only up to about 100 m distance, so your claim "you can observe enemy from miles miles miles away" is absurd.

Did you read this report? Read it again. This report asking about maximization range, not about disabling. I know that now it is rendered only up to 100m. But this is fail thing and we are asking about fix.

Disabling grass in MP not an option AT ALL!(only for noobs it can be useful) This is far from realism, flat ground is awful and now in ARMA2 I can hide in forest anyhow.

severgun, yes I did read the report, and I'm strongly against because of my personal opinion, nothing more. Disabling grass in MP is an option for some people, like me, and not for some, like you. It's matter of taste.

If the developers could create som way of rendering some kind of grass vegetation without the enormous performance hit it would be amazing. It has alway been my worst gripe with arma.

The thing is Ezcoo, that if you disable grass in MP, you get quite an advantage; People can't hide that well, and on a map with mostly just hills and slopes, people wouldn't be able to hide that well at all, it's also very unrealistic.

Forcing some kind of grass to be rendered (even if it's a static super low quality grass) then people can at least hide.

As of right now, a sniper can easily spot an enemy at 500M range. Thus making the sniper quite OP.

I've played with grass disabled always when it has been possible and will continue doing it, I appreciate the massively better FPS and less OPed snipers. Haven't had any problems without grass so far, rather vice versa.

The grass itself is not problem for me, but the implementation is. I'd like to have grass that is rendered to the whole viewdistance without unacceptable performance cost instead of grass that is rendered to max. 100 m distance and dropping your FPS to half.

As it is now, even if the grass layer is not rendered at far distance, you can notice bodies partly "in the ground" to simulate the grass effect.
If you have a enemy that is prone at 500 meters, for example, the only part you can see of it is the top of the helmet. That said, you can still hit the non visible parts.

This trick from devs behaves well (it's in A2 aswell) and is not OP at all (i played a lot of PVP on A2)

Are you serious? Most of us can't get more than 35Fps and you want to maximize the grass draw distance?

I think you are right! I have a High-end-gaming PC and I can play with everything on max.
but I still see this ugly "naked" ground, and they are rendering the Trees and rocks too. That means it has to be possible to have far away grass. They could use
shader, or 4 poly-grass planes that cover a lager space of ground and additional the ground could have grass-like textures on it to make it look like actual grass.

and I'm strongly against because of my personal opinion, nothing more. Disabling grass in MP is an option for some people, like me, and not for some, like you. It's matter of taste.

"Disable grass" option already available.
"Grass equal view distance" option not available and you still strongly against. Nice logic.

Most of us can't get more than 35Fps and you want to maximize the grass draw distance?

I have 40-50 FPS on Ultra and this is only alpha. 6000 view distance(for infantry 3500 more then enough)
GTX670
I think I can get 30-35 fps on my 2 year laptop on medium or low settings even with grass

This thing with no grass in the distance is indeed quite anoying sometimes. But most when using some sort of optics.

Im asking myself if it would be possible to adjust the area where grass/bushes are drawn depending on what fov is used and where im looking at. For example you look through scope on the oposite hill. As you probably can calculate the rough area you see grass, could be drawn there.

So additional to render by position there should be something as render by view.

Grass draw distance slider in game options would be nice.

Instead of "setting to max" I would argue that having a minimum draw distance is much more useful. Drawing grass for somebody at 3 km is already irrelevant as he would be too small anyway from that distance. Perhaps drawing grass for 1500 m is enough, perhaps even 1 km or lower, although the most optimal distance can be finetuned.

I completely agree however that having no grass on distances lower than 500 meter is not advisable. Furthermore, providing sliders in the option menu is nice, but these options should be server sided. Clients shouldn't be able to adjust the grass settings themselves to make camouflage and going prone in high grass much more effective.

There should be an option to select what draw distance you want the grass to be at.

Is there just one solution?
Problem is that you can spot far enemys to fast regarding the missing gras.
How is it possible to solve this, any clous?

Objects and people at a certain distance should not just sink into the ground and I think we can agree that rendering grass up to 1 km is probably not an option at this time. So one has to come up with a solution.

The sinking appeared a while ago in some Arma 2 beta patch (iirc) and it felt appropriate at that time. In 2013 and also in regards to the fidelity of the rest of the game it feels more like a makeshift solution, imo not worthy of the otherwise great visual appearance.

I think an adjustment to the current system would be easy to implement. Taking a prone soldier as an example: how about a fade effect to simulate grass, a higher opacity where the body is closest to the ground, towards normal where the head is sticking out of the grass. Maybe even make that effect a bit uneven, simulating grass leaves, small bushes, etc.

Why isn't rendering grass up to x meters a solution? My already quite old rig (Radeon HD4890) performs fine when rendering grass at the maximum settings in Arma III, so for me it's a solution. Up to 600 meters might be enough for most infantry combat in Arma III with no significant performance effects.

Furthermore, sinking or fading would then be dependent on the kind of terrain somebody is. Fading should only happen on areas with high grass and bushes, not on concrete, roads or low grass.

If you are outside of the grass drawing distance, you will sink into the ground if you are on a grassy area. If you go prone, only the top of your head is visible from a distance. No change needed, except a better distant ground texture with more noise and not so even colors.

If there's a way to implement this without reducing performance any lower than it already is then great, it's ridiculous that you can be hiding in grass and virtually invisible but you're easy to spot from 500m away because the person looking at you doesn't see the grass.

However if grass performance can't be improved I'd say go the other way and disable it altogether- I'd do anything for 60fps and if grass has to go then so be it.

Look at this pls

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=3505

Also: Gras is enormour performance hungry...its ridiculous to request having it rendered till the end of your view distance...

Grass is laggy so no thanks, unless they can render it without dropping the fps.

It would be nice to have the option to render the grass as far as wanted. this was one of my main complaints in previous Arma games. Then we could max it and it would be far more realistic and be able to hide yourself and enemies in the game. Nothing looks more silly than someone hiding in the grass and someone else only having to step back a few yards to see them in the middle of the field. Not having this option is ridiculous!

I am downvotign only bc I think this post is actually getting the developers attention..this one http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=3505

so good job NordKindchen for also noticing this great post and idea..

this guys idea is so much better than having laggy grass everythwere.

u just simply cant compare to COD bc its a smaller terrain either way. this guys idea can fix the actual issue and save fps

Yeah, Tintee, increasing the amount of rendered grass is literally the WORST possible option out of many

Yep, snipers have virtually xray vision because of the missing grass layer.
Sadly this would be the only way to prevent it.

Perhaps this could be set on a per-server basis?

I would love to be able to choose grass rendering distance! This is a PC game, so why not? I would much rather play in a more realistic environment, and if my machine has the power then I want to use it!

Playing single player I always max out grass, and even in MP Arma2, I select grass display in settings when playing Dom.

Give us the option and perhaps, as the OP suggests, provide a low-cost solution for grass 200+ meters away. The ground looks barren and naked without it.

DRAW DISTANCE IS AN OPTION- GRASS SHOULD BE AN OPTION AS WELL!

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=3505 FTW !
Performance wise it will be better and with good results. :)

The problem on public servers will be that the grass distance often will be preset to a static distance (to provide the same atmosphere to all players), a distance some may be able to handle, but will cause performance drops for others.

chill guys, they're already working on something http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=3505

jjondle....The key word here was OPTION. How is having the option bad? Bad for you or bad for me? I could run it, as could all my friends. If options were not there we would all be running at 800x600 and minimum graphics settings + draw distances. Options are always good!

"I want to see grass in like 5km distance, but I also want to have 60FPS!!11"
Just sayin'.

Maybe this is an option for OP:
http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=3505

See #0003505.