GRASS - The forgotten element of the sim

[IckyATLAS]

After so many years It would be very welcome that the grass model be somewhat improved. Spring, summer autumn seems to be all the same even across maps. For trees and bushes I will say fine with it even one can do much better, but grass is really bad, spring summer autumn not a difference. Stalingrad or UK not much difference either. 

Everything has been improved in this Sim, visually, and technically. Grass is important visually when you are on the ground, airfields, countryside. Here we have a kind of average model for whatever surface season or place. 

I hope the devs can really improve on this.

[Monty_Thrud]

Yup agree, don't mind the original but very samey all over, some of the MODS look very good with variety, flowers in Spring etc...

 

 

 Would be nice to have in options for Ultra HD grass.

 

On a sidenote, I noticed the ring of clarity seems to have disappeared, noticed when Tonking, or have I snorted too much Pepsi?

[BlitzPig_EL]

I turned grass off completely some time ago.  The sim treats every location the same as the steppe, and that's just wrong.

[Jamppa]

It's called a flight sim for a reason, not a lawn mower sim ? My grass is off.

[Jade_Monkey]

I remember reading a comment from a dev not too long ago that it was one of their personal things they wanted revamped. They didn't say it was part of the roadmap, just something they personally disliked. 

[kendo]

Might be nice to improve it...but in the overall scheme of 'things to improve' this probably wouldn't even make the top 500. 

 

I personally would put it just behind actual leaves falling from trees on the autumn maps.

Edited November 4, 2022 by kendo

[Jade_Monkey]

I'm sure tankers feel differently about it.

 

I only care about the grass near the airfields though.

[PaladinX]

Still no AI control, reasonable AI behaviour, waypoint changing during flights, no 4 engine aircraft and so many more things missing and we talk about the grass? In a flight simulator?

[LukeFF]

1 hour ago, PaladinX said:

Still no AI control, reasonable AI behaviour, waypoint changing during flights, no 4 engine aircraft and so many more things missing and we talk about the grass? In a flight simulator?

 

Yes, what's wrong with that? Just because it isn't at the top of your list of things you want fixed doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile suggestion. 

[Vishnu]

1 hour ago, PaladinX said:

Still no AI control, reasonable AI behaviour, waypoint changing during flights, no 4 engine aircraft and so many more things missing and we talk about the grass? In a flight simulator?

You do realize there is a module called “Tank Crew”, which is a tank simulator, right?

[spreckair]

On 11/4/2022 at 10:06 AM, kendo said:

I personally would put it just behind actual leaves falling from trees on the autumn maps.

...or butterflies and grasshoppers.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

On 11/4/2022 at 12:56 PM, IckyATLAS said:

After so many years It would be very welcome that the grass model be somewhat improved. Spring, summer autumn seems to be all the same even across maps. For trees and bushes I will say fine with it even one can do much better, but grass is really bad, spring summer autumn not a difference. Stalingrad or UK not much difference either. 

Everything has been improved in this Sim, visually, and technically. Grass is important visually when you are on the ground, airfields, countryside. Here we have a kind of average model for whatever surface season or place. 

I hope the devs can really improve on this.

Personally i have grass turned off, because it to high and enemy grand units (mashinguns) are hidden in grass hard to spot. If there would be option in ME to delete grass or make in short near objects or building it would be great.

Objects like factories etc placed in the fields look artificial do to lack options to change ground in the Mission Editor. When mission developer puts objects the ground should change automatically or can be changed manually. Making scenery look more realistic. 

[IckyATLAS]

1 hour ago, 1PL-Husar-1Esk said:

Personally i have grass turned off, because it to high and enemy grand units (mashinguns) are hidden in grass hard to spot. If there would be option in ME to delete grass or make in short near objects or building it would be great.

Objects like factories etc placed in the fields look artificial do to lack options to change ground in the Mission Editor. When mission developer puts objects, the ground should change automatically or can be changed manually. Making scenery look more realistic. 

This is something I did mention many years ago for the Mission Editor. We should have the capability to define an area that is void of vegetation. Otherwise, when we put hangars, tents, gun artillery positions or even concrete structures we have high grass everywhere and inside which is totally unrealistic. 

Seems vegetation are not objects but are locked with map design. This is why trees never burn even in the midst of flames and bombing. They are not destructible. There is however some hope. The devs stated during their last presentation they would make available the map design editor to allow us to build maps.

Maybe this will allow us to also adapt existing maps and improve from the vegetation standpoint.

[AtomicP]

9 hours ago, spreckair said:

...or butterflies and grasshoppers.

Reminds me of ARMA 3 which has bees that cast shadows. I don't think this level of detail is required in BoX though (ARMA 3 has notoriously bad performance on anything but a supercomputer), but some variety in the foliage would really help sell the simulation in terms of feeling like you're there. That's something the Ubisoft games like Far Cry do really well. Obviously the budgets are very dissimilar but I'm sure something like Speedtree has a vast library of the sort of things that would help liven up the sim.

[spreckair]

Trust me, it they wasted resources on butterflies and grasshoppers, I would be very disappointed.

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

The grass is so bad I can barely put it into words. Seriously, the grass in DCS vs. IL-2 is the difference between a Windows XP game and a Windows 11 one. This, along with the trees, really hold back the cockpits, plane models, sky, and volumetric clouds. Even mods don't help that much in VR.

Edited November 20, 2022 by drewm3i-VR

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

Just to piggy back on my previous post, part of what makes IL-2 appear slightly "cartoonish" and dated at ground level and low flight levels is simply the lack of quality 3D grass, in addition to the lack of species diversity and variation in the existing grass. Here is DCS which despite its obvious faults, excels at graphical fidelity.

 

 

 

Now despite the difference in grass quality, IL-2 excels at texture quality compared to DCS, but without proper grass, IL-2's great textures don't always look right at low level. Rough terrain is something I love about IL-2, but until the grass and trees are improved, the ground-level graphics will still be lacking.

 

The time to fix it is now as the age of VR is in full swing and these poor 2D features really pop out in VR in a bad way.

Edited November 20, 2022 by drewm3i-VR

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

What I dislike on the map like Kuban or Stalingrad are  the  cities, they  have to much trees in them, hiding buildings and from far away where trees lod is just texture, same city look like grey flat blob. Up close to much trees and from far  away look like there are  zero trees in the city,  this inconsistency is beyond my apprehension.

Edited November 21, 2022 by 1PL-Husar-1Esk