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FSX Volumetric Grass Testing

Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt

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I think that looks great!
Furthermore your technique using less layers/height shift is a good idea for bigger airports regarding performance and besides the people are flying large jets so you don't come in touch with the grass directly seeing that its less detailed than grass with more layers.
Well done.
 
jtanabodee

jtanabodee

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Tejal Bernardo said:
Hey I saw how the wind have moved the grass ¡:D
Click to expand...

It is what we planed to do. But I think it will hurt frame rate so badly. I'll try to animate those grass. But I think it is better to do just some places not all the airport.

I think we can move each layer a little. The top most layer move more than the lower one. It should work.

But wait a minute! If I animate it too much, the layer will separated and the grass will be cut.
 
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jtanabodee

jtanabodee

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Hi Thunderbolt,
I did it!, animated grass.
I have to set the material to fsx:
Default trasparent.
No Z alpha test
No shadow
in XML No Crash tag should be applied.

But...... does it worth to do.
I is not quite visible unless your airplane is small enough.
It is fun to try tough.

I have the video. It's quite nice. I will tell the link later after I upload to YouTube. But I cannot do it now.
Let me know how do you think about that.
 
T

Tejal Bernardo

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Some day the vegetation could act as the windshocks, adjust the wind slider and done, anyway the grass you have got is cool enough by itself, I don't think the grass move be too much important, in some special scenery would worth the pity.:cool:
 
Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt

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jtanabodee,

thats great news! I didn't have the time so far to test it out but for
now I'm very curious about the clip.
Isn't the problem that one should export the grass as an FS2002 groundpolygon which can't be animated (to my knowledge) because if I export the grass
as a FSX-native model I get flickering. May not occur for smaller grass areas.

I'd also suggest to animate small parts only where the user gets directly in touch with because of probably upcoming performance issues.
 
Clutch Cargo

Clutch Cargo

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Saw your vid... looks like the grass is breathing, :eek:

Personally, I don't think grass needs to be animated. It would take a lot of wind to actually see grass moving (like the backwash of a prop), and the grass would have to be so tall that it is really not grass anymore but more of the height of weeds.

Orbx even tried some plant movement with their trees which would be easier to distinguish but fell under mixed reviews. I would save the FPS for some other feature at the airport. Again, it's just matter of priorities.
 
T

Tejal Bernardo

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The grass iself is really cool, how do you get the animation, with the animation key ?. as any other animation.
The people are very sensitive with the frame rates, and any thing tha could affect to this they get scared.
 
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Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt

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The moving grass looks cool, thanks for the vid!
Would be nice to have some kind of a connection between the wind strength and the grass movement though.

I think I'll leave mine unanimated concerning performance plus the option to deactivate it completly.
The volumetric grass at my little airfield has around 4000 polygons so far which might affect performance.
 
jtanabodee

jtanabodee

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I think the frame rate is not affected so much. But I did just only a small area. It could affect more if it is bigger. But I think I'll pass this for my VTSP since it is a big airport. If it is a small airfield and small GA airplane, it would be very good. It will be overlooked if you are on 747.:D

@ Tejal Bernardo: Nothing special on animation. Just move the upper plane a meter and the other lower plane lesser than that. I animated just only 4 planes out of 15 planes of the grass. So I think it does not affect so much with the fps.

@Thunderbolt: I wonder why you use such a lot of poly by 3d grass. Why don't you draw the whole field by the outline of the field you want and turn it in to polygon. Then you map the whole thing with texture. Make it repeat as much you want and you will use less poly than you think of.
I think it is possible to make it rotate to the direction of wind in FS2004. But in FSX this option is not possible, we cannot tweak mdl in FSX. Anyway, this idea is still difficult since the whole grass has to rotate and it will not fit to the area you place it on.
 
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Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt

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Yeah, I had a wrong number in mind when I posted that.
Actually its 600 polys and 2800 Verts in final stadium :)

But isn't a meter of movement too much?
What I'm thinking about is that every dot has to be more or less over the dot on the lower plane to keep the illusion of 3 dimensions.
Whatever, the way you did it looks good though!
 
atorque

atorque

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There is a very dated post on this forum regarding the same topic and I experimented with exactly the same concept a long time ago.
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21729&highlight=grass Here is the link. Scroll down about half way and you will see my post with exactly the same results. Nothing new sorry mate.

If you do this on a small scale then it works fine, but the moment you go big, you will notice a massive frame hit. When I say big, I mean something beyond 1000 meters. Obviously it is only good for extremely flat areas. Due to these limitations I abandoned the concept. I also experimented with the idea of bump mapping but that didnt work too good either so that also fell along the wayside.

Regarding the flickering, you could try a different format. I cant remember exactly which works better but if you are using DDS, try using extended BMP istead or visa versa.
 
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jtanabodee

jtanabodee

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atorque said:
There is a very dated post on this forum regarding the same topic and I experimented with exactly the same concept a long time ago.
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21729&highlight=grass Here is the link. Scroll down about half way and you will see my post with exactly the same results. Nothing new sorry mate.
Click to expand...

Ha..ha....I read that topic too and I could not understand a bit of Ashis English.
I'll try to do a bigger scale and see how it affect the fps.
Fow now it does not affect much though. But I think it is good for small airfield like grass strip rather than International Airport. You cannot see the movement of those grass on 737 or 747 at all.
 
atorque

atorque

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Im happy to hear I am not the only one. I was a little concerned that my english sucked.
 
Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt

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Hey Rich,

this is only about bringing the technique to higher levels, playing around, testing (as the title says).

I just want to inspire other people with this thread because I think this is the most effective technique to create a deeper illusion of three dimensions on airfields.
And I'm very happy that jtanabodee got awesome results even on bigger airports!

And btw. thanks for the hint concerning flickering!
 
P

pfabian

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netherlands
Hello,

I tried doing this grass, looks great in gmax, but I have trouble exporting it to simulator.

Can someone please point me how to export it?

I have tried exporting it directly from 2002 gamepack, keep files, and edit .asm, but the simulator freezes at scenery loading, it does even when I dont edit the .asm.

Or is this problem already in .gmax? I am not sure.
 
jtanabodee

jtanabodee

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Hi pfabian,
I just exported it by fs2002 gamepack. It worked just fine. It is just simple plans though. I think the problem is your gamepack not the model.
Regards,
Tic
 
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