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[Matt6767]

It looks great. I'm going to walk through the forest as Outerra guy for a while.

It does dance on my screen like Jagers, I'm sure you'll sort that out. The framerate dropped from 80 to 60 though. So it looks like I'll have to change some settings as I can't stand dipping below 60 fps. 

[Chaoss]

I am REALLY liking the regular updates in development screenshots and the new 3D grass implementation, gratz

[Jagerbomber]

It does dance on my screen like Jagers, I'm sure you'll sort that out.

There might not be much that can be done to fix it, especially if your display's resolution isn't that big.  There's AA, but that only does so much and only to the point at where your resolution is the bottleneck.

[cameni]

I think also FXAA adds up to the dancing noise. Angrypig wants to try a MSAA2+FXAA combination to help it, but FXAA must be adapted to that.
Grass animation will change it as well.

Don't you think that the bumps are a bit big now?  Looks good against the 3D grass I guess, but odd with the 3D grass off.  Kind of related to this - Could there be an option to extend the 3D grass farther (and maybe shrink the bumps along with it since I don't think they would need to be as large as they are now if the 3D grass is "blending" farther away)?

Yes they are too big, I think I'll make them change not so steeply with 3D grass off. 3D grass is already 20% higher than the bumps, can be tuned around but not too radically.

Just another note, I am experiencing some quite high lag around the Decheng Temple, it is fine initially but upon pressing '8' and going into first person walk mode im getting around 5 - 10fps, coming out again does not fix the lag only restart fixes it. It's not the grass either it happens whether it is on or off

Old object pipeline has some perf problems on some cards, but it won't be addressed since the new pipeline is quite changed.

I mentioned this before, but roads are causing significant framerate loss.

Roads should not cause you a framerate loss, they are static once created. They could cause a loss of dynamic framerate, when moving, but then it would be some specific problem with your graphics card.
Objects can cause framerate loss, see above.

[Chaoss]

I think also FXAA adds up to the dancing noise. Angrypig wants to try a MSAA2+FXAA combination to help it, but FXAA must be adapted to that.
Grass animation will change it as well.

Don't you think that the bumps are a bit big now?  Looks good against the 3D grass I guess, but odd with the 3D grass off.  Kind of related to this - Could there be an option to extend the 3D grass farther (and maybe shrink the bumps along with it since I don't think they would need to be as large as they are now if the 3D grass is "blending" farther away)?

Yes they are too big, I think I'll make them change not so steeply with 3D grass off. 3D grass is already 20% higher than the bumps, can be tuned around but not too radically.

Just another note, I am experiencing some quite high lag around the Decheng Temple, it is fine initially but upon pressing '8' and going into first person walk mode im getting around 5 - 10fps, coming out again does not fix the lag only restart fixes it. It's not the grass either it happens whether it is on or off

Old object pipeline has some perf problems on some cards, but it won't be addressed since the new pipeline is quite changed.

I mentioned this before, but roads are causing significant framerate loss.

Roads should not cause you a framerate loss, they are static once created. They could cause a loss of dynamic framerate, when moving, but then it would be some specific problem with your graphics card.
Objects can cause framerate loss, see above.

There is a visual bug I noticed, the flowers in the grass are making patches of the 3d grass white which looks kind of odd, would removing that and replacing them with 3d flowers later on down the line make the grass look that bit more realistic? And having a grass draw distance option would be absolutely brilliant for photos, high end computers etc

[cameni]

Yes, known issues. Grass takes its color from the grassy terrain texture; the flowers will be created in 3D. Nevertheless, I like how it looks like a dried grass in the distance. I think I'll replace the flowery texture with one with patches of dry grass instead.

Shadows don't work on the grass, I will add them only after we make a shadow mask. The way shadows are done now also causes visual bugs in the shadowed parts, it will be fixed by the mask as well.

The distance is going to be configurable, I just wanted to get it out quickly now. Btw, with current distance of 25m, there are around 5 million triangles of grass being thrown at the card, a small percentage of it being culled on the GPU.

[Chaoss]

Yes, known issues. Grass takes its color from the grassy terrain texture; the flowers will be created in 3D. Nevertheless, I like how it looks like a dried grass in the distance. I think I'll replace the flowery texture with one with patches of dry grass instead.

Shadows don't work on the grass, I will add them only after we make a shadow mask. The way shadows are done now also causes visual bugs in the shadowed parts, it will be fixed by the mask as well.

The distance is going to be configurable, I just wanted to get it out quickly now. Btw, with current distance of 25m, there are around 5 million triangles of grass being thrown at the card, a small percentage of it being culled on the GPU.

I understand and wow that is A LOT of triangles being drawn, I like the dried appearance but right now it looks to white and the dry bits would usually live under trees and up against the edges of things . Something else I noticed and I'm not sure whether or not this will be changed is the frequency and locations of mud patches. I was trying to get an all grassy meadow type view for a desktop wallpaper but there were to many mud patches, maybe spread them out a bit and increase their size a little. The mud patches themselves appear to bright and/or under-saturated as well, I wasn't sure if this was intentional or will change later on or not. I have a monitor with extremely accurate color representation designed for graphics editing, broadcast checking, medical imagery and cad work so i tend to notice these things more.

In terms of the grass blades themselves I am very very impressed, I have never seen the grass being done like that in a game or real time 3d application before, it looks very very realistic and I love how it's different lengths (short in certain areas etc). as previously recommended though maybe make the blades just a tiny bit more dense at around a 1m radius around the players feet so when you look directly down, the blades look like they are more dense and you can't see the base ground so easily.

The distance blending is REALLY good, I don't see the grass pop in or out as i slowly fly towards or away from the ground. I did notice a small bug though, when you fly down towards the grass (in ufo mode) and slowly fly forward the closest blades disappear before they are completely off-screen.

Another minor visual tweak I think would look great Is to randomize the direction of the grass a bit, currently it is all pointing up and looks quite systematized. Here is a reference of some longer grass compared to Outerra's grass


The color of the overall grass and grass texture could use a tiny tiny tiny tiny but of tweaking as well (there's just a bit to much of an orangy/yellowish hue, the grass currently looks to 'warm') probably nit picking now though. Try making it look a bit 'colder'

Here's some images I've taken, these should give you a nice view of the grass for those of you who haven't bought the alpha yet, click for the full size pics (2560x1440)

[ChookWantan]

I was going to mention the beach grass... Looks great when it is being rendered, but the bumps in the background that are supposed to blend just look strange on the flat beach.

[pico]

I have found a Place with a lot of this Pushup Bugs.
(When you fly through a Valley and it is pushing you up.)

[ZeosPantera]

Oh. Icelands mountainous regions also have pretty severe topographical striping. It looks like a drawing.

[drdeemanou]

For some reason, whenever i go underwater, it doesnt look anything like the view thats presented in the following video:



Instead, its extremely dark and i cant see the surface. its just all black. anyone else having this same problem?

[ZeosPantera]

Well yes actually. I think this was a beta feature he was testing or he modified the waters scattering which was also only in the beta, beta.

[cameni]

Underwater rendering is broken at the moment, and the surface is rendered incorrectly. You can adjust the darkness in environmental settings.

[pico]

Environmental Settings Save Config please. 

[ZeosPantera]

May need to set the grass changeover distance to farther away depending on the FOV.


at 90° it is much less visible than my standard 45°