Hello
I guess this should be in a WIP section but there isn’t one I could do with some feedback on how this big terrain is doing performance wise - I’m trying to find a balance between tree/grass density and draw calls/fps. It exists to test the boundaries of what size terrain I can get away with (currently 18x18km). On my Santa Rosa Macbook Pro I’m getting between 20 and 80 fps which is pretty good.
There is currently a splat map issue on older ATI cards which means the terrain textures a very blocky up close - as I understand it bi-filtering is not switched on for some reason, haven’t found a solution yet.
Anyway much appreciation for trying it out, please do post your specs and fps if you get a chance. Eventually I’d like to amend the fps prefab script so that I can hit a key to toggle between 3 speeds - walk, run and supersonic - but that little gem is currently beyond me, I just started the basic tutorials hehe. And one of these days I’ll get round to making some different skies!!
Cheers
Boxy
If so, nice terrain. Fullscreen on my work laptop, I was getting 7 to 10 fps, but I had several resource hogs going on in the background and it’s older machine. On my Optiplex, I was getting anywhere from 20 to 47 fps. Big map; I ran across the water and it took almost 2 minutes to reach the other shore. Glad I didn’t have to swim.
I was experiencing the terrain blocks, but once again, these are my work computers and are worthless with any sort of graphics. I’ll update when I test on my home computers.
Thanks both - yes that is the right link, not sure why it shouldn’t work :S Please do have a go at home. I’m sort of viewing our macbooks as a base config to aim for because lets face it, by the time I’ve actually got any meaningful gameplay in ther, they will be
I’d be really happy if a base config could run it at 30-40 fps.
thanks for taking the time.
Boxy
Looks great! Gives me 60fps on a Mac Pro Octo with Quadro FX 4500. It turns smooth with the mouse until I get closer to the island. Once I am almost to the island or on it, turning with the mouse is jerky even though the framerate is still high. Strafing or moving with keyboard remains smooth though.
Thanks for taking the time Ricko. Very happy with 60fps on any machine, though the island thing is interesting, guess I must have put too many trees up for your config - I’m quite surprised an octo mac didn’t get a bigger fps.
In the meantime I tried to amend the fps controller script to add a faster speed for testing purposes so I could get around quicker and blow me it worked, which might not sound much but a huge milestone for me hehe. Press and hold E together with W to move at supersonic speeds. take your finger off E at any time to return to normal running speed. It is also great for propelling yourself off the top of a mountain to the other side!!
Thanks
Boxy
one weird effect - your really tall trees on the island start out a few meters off the terrain when billboarded scale into the ground when changing to mesh. maybe an effect of the transition on a taller object, i don’t know if extending the trunk down more will get rid of it.
Those spruce trees are excellent! I think the scots pines are a bit too small compared to the other trees. Turning up the anisotropy on the orange leaf trees will help them look better from farther away. I think one thing that might help a lot is very meticulously tweaking the grass. I don’t know what it would take but if you can get the grass to match the color of the ground beneath it everywhere it will rock. Also, personally I like static grass more and a trick I use a lot to get more grass for less triangles is to widen the texture and billboard size. Looking great so far though! I suggest you try to get small parts of the terrain looking good with all the perfect colors and stuff, then try to write a vegetation planter editor script that matches what you created. A huge terrain with nice shape and color everywhere would be a truly beautiful thing to see in a unity game.
Brilliant feedback, thanks everyone.
Dr Jones - that is a consequence of trying to get a decent framerate v great looking 3D vegetation. It happens when you’re looking up at billboard trees. If you look at them straight on they sit in the right place again. It is a dilemma because ideally I’d like to just lengthen the tree fade, but I got to these tweaks by looking only at draw calls and fps. There is still a lot of 3D architecture, people etc to add not to mention the overheads of gameplay, so for now I’m thinking something has to give. When it comes down to it a beautiful looking game that plays at 10fps is not worth playing
Frank you’re right I am crying out for a weather system - it was always intended to be an integral part of gameplay so your timing could not be better and I’ll be glad to help where I can!
Yoggy thanks for the tips, I didn’t know about the aniso thing on leaves. You are right about the grass, I’m struggling with both density and colour - trying to give it a frosty coating and then there is the lightmap influence on top. I can’t get any more density in there, I’m guessing if there were more vertices in the terrain mesh the grass would get more dense? Anyway I agree, need to play with that. But again although it is nowhere near finished, I ended up removing quite a lot to keep the draw calls down. The vegetation planter script sounds awesome, but it is way way beyond me at this point, I only just figured out how to add 2 speeds to the player
Anyway all my vegetation is going to UniTree in the end so feel free to have the giant spruce if you can make use of it in your racing game. The trunk texture is just the scots pine one so no need to upload it:
I particularly wanted to make these trees much much huger than the others because I saw something like it on my last loch holiday, I’m not sure they were Norway Spruce but they absolutely dwarfed everything else and that is what I tried to get. Awesome.
Thanks very much so far anyway.
Boxy
Wow, did you do it all yourself? It looks, well, real! The textures are all in the right place, etc… Cool.
Trees:
The trees are very nice! Great job! But there’s not enough pine debris under the pines, and the debris itself needs just a little tinge of orange( if possible ).
Undergrowth:
I noticed that most of the ferns on the island look a bit frosty, is that deliberate? You also need a few small vines/creepers/brambles in the pine thickets, to add yet another level of realism.
Performance:
I get 20 to 30 fps on a ATI Radeon HD2600, but then I never get below 20 fps on this GPU anyway.
Overall:
Totally awesome. Great work! I can’t wait to play the finished game!
It didn’t dip any lower that 42 FPS for me, but that might skew your results because I ran it on a Mac Pro with quad core proc, 2gb of RAM and a 512mb ATI Radeon x1900.
Thanks guys.
Cheers for the ideas dragon rider, I think you’re right, the floor and vegetation need improving really
The ferns are supposed to look frosty, as are some of the trees and grasses, I was trying out some cold autumn-ish things, not sure how successful that is really.
Holy humma, nice one! Actually I noticed I was getting over 100fps running in full screen vista/bootcamp on the mbp. Interesting that the PC seems to perform faster.
Thanks for taking the time.
Boxy
PC, AMP XP 3000+ (2.1 GHz), 1.5 GB RAM, GeForce 6 LE, 1680x1050 fullscreen: between 25 and 45 FPS. I think I also had very rare drops below 20 FPS.
BUT unfortunately the movement is anything but smooth. Either it’s too much for my GFX card at this resolution or although because the frame rate average might be ok, the frame duration may not be very constant which may cause the acceleration/deacceleration effects? Do you use deltaTime or smoothDeltaTime?
Thanks for the heads up Dom. I’m just using the standard fps prefab with altered speed and mouselook x sensitivity turned down a bit. The fps walker script uses deltaTime. I tried substituting smoothDeltaTime but it didn’t seem to make any noticeable difference. I’m not quite sure what the problem is, do you mean a kind of lurching forward effect every few frames as you’re walking? I get this slightly in the editor when moving through grassy/tree areas, but it isn’t noticeable in the build. Or is it also related to mouse looking?
Thanks a lot for the feedback.
Boxy
…And a blecherous three (3) fps on an Intel Mac mini with the execrable GMA 950.
Seriously, having wrestled a long time with the deployed base vs. the ideal base in the realm of website design, I think it’s a good idea to test the low end experience. My used-Mac lot of a studio is useful in that regard
That said, your terrain is still WONDERFUL! The lake ripples and relfects, the underbrush rustles in the breeze, and the gloaming light is just right.
On my mirror-door dual-876 MHz G4, 1.25GB RAM, nVidia GeForceMX, I get this (weird and sub-par but still navigable):
I could do with some feedback on how this big terrain is doing performance wise - I’m trying to find a balance between tree/grass density and draw calls/fps. It exists to test the boundaries of what size terrain I can get away with (currently 18x18km). On my Santa Rosa Macbook Pro I’m getting between 20 and 80 fps which is pretty good.
