Ground textures in VR vs 2D

[amadeus1171]

Yes, I have made this post before. But this time I hope to get more attention and traction on the issue so we can get a solution.

The textures and 3D maps may be fine for 2D. But in VR it looks like asp.

Get close to the ground in VR and you'll see what you mean. The ground is composed of texture maps and 3D maps. Where the 3D map ends, the texture map takes over and "fake's the funk", as it were, so the ground looks 3D in 2D. But in VR the textures clearly look 2D (flat) and looks like asp.

What's the solution? The game needs more detailed 3D maps. Unfortunately, the downside is that it will require more resources to display and human time to develop.

I could propose a solution but I would get shot down immediately. So it's up to FD's engineers to come up with a solution. They're the best candidate to explore and solve this problem because they're closer to the code.

What do you VR guys think?

 

[Ian Skippy]

Making it look better without requiring more from my pc? Sure. Else there is no point as I can't run it at max quality anyway as it is now.

 

[amadeus1171]

Are you running VR?

You're satisfied with the VR flat texture rocks?

 

[Ian Skippy]

Are you running VR?

You're satisfied with the VR flat texture rocks?

I am not quite sure what was confusing about my post? Yes, I run VR. And as I explained, I would love better graphics 'for free'. If it demands stuff from my pc I cant use it as there are already plenty of settings I can't max.

Q:"Hey, you guys want a faster Lamborghini?"
A:"If it is free, sure. But if you're gonna charge 250k for it I won't care because I don't have the monies for that."
Q:"Are you driving cars? Are you satisfied with your civic?"
A:"Yes I drive a car, and no matter how much you dislike your current car: I dont care about any imaginary better car if I cant afford it if it were real."

 

[znôrt]

gotta love car analogies ...

what are you even driving, op?

 

[amadeus1171]

I am not quite sure what was confusing about my post? Yes, I run VR. And as I explained, I would love better graphics 'for free'. If it demands stuff from my pc I cant use it as there are already plenty of settings I can't max.

Q:"Hey, you guys want a faster Lamborghini?"
A:"If it is free, sure. But if you're gonna charge 250k for it I won't care because I don't have the monies for that."
Q:"Are you driving cars? Are you satisfied with your civic?"
A:"Yes I drive a car, and no matter how much you dislike your current car: I dont care about any imaginary better car if I cant afford it if it were real."

I hear you. But there are ways to make it look better with little or no sacrifice.

They can apply height maps to VR sweet spots, they can dynamically switch from texture to height maps. They can even revamp their code to not render unnecessary things so that resources can be freed up for more detailed height maps.

 

[amadeus1171]

gotta love car analogies ...

what are you even driving, op?

I said nothing about driving cars. And I drive a Lexus, ok? See? I didn't want to say, but you make me do it. x.x

Let's not get off the rails and focus on the topic at hand.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I hear you. But there are ways to make it look better with little or no sacrifice.

They can apply height maps to VR sweet spots, they can dynamically switch from texture to height maps. They can even revamp their code to not render unnecessary things so that resources can be freed up for more detailed height maps.

I don't know enough to discuss the technical details. If what you say is true, and I can get better visuals for next-to-nothing: sure, gimme. Who wouldn't want that?

gotta love car analogies ...

Well, it is that or restaurant analogies.

 

[amadeus1171]

I don't know enough to discuss the technical details. If what you say is true, and I can get better visuals for next-to-nothing: sure, gimme. Who wouldn't want that?



Well, it is that or restaurant analogies.

The real question is, will FD care enough about VR to make these changes.

VR hardware continues to evolve. VR is not dead and far from dying, and people are adopting VR on a regular basis.

It's time for FD to give VR more attention.

 

[znôrt]

I said nothing about driving cars. And I drive a Lexus, ok? See? I didn't want to say, but you make me do it. x.x

good to know, but i didn't really ask how you deal with your inferiority complexes (we all have them, everybody knows, it's all good, man, etc).

it was a tongue in cheek question about what your pc is. as said, there are barely any systems on the market that can max out graphics settings in this game, texture quality is just another variable in a whole set of constraints which multiply in vr. afaik the game already supports 4k textures, it's just that's too heavy to move around in vr.

you might argue this might have been optimized better, which is debatable, but you should realize that regardless of that debate, a significant breakthroughs would be needed at several points in the chain to improve this, so asking for this at this point is ... a bit moot?

your best bet is to wait for next gen consoles and hope this is in the target range of new era.

 

[amadeus1171]

good to know, but i didn't really ask how you deal with your inferiority complexes (we all have them, everybody knows, it's all good, man, etc).

it was a tongue in cheek question about what your pc is. as said, there are barely any systems on the market that can max out graphics settings in this game, texture quality is just another variable in a whole set of constraints which multiply in vr. afaik the game already supports 4k textures, it's just that's too heavy to move around in vr.

you might argue this might have been optimized better, which is debatable, but you should realize that regardless of that debate, a significant breakthroughs would be needed at several points in the chain to improve this, so asking for this at this point is ... a bit moot?

your best bet is to wait for next gen consoles and hope this is in the target range of new era.

No, no, it's not about textures. It's about height maps to add depth to textures. The current textures are actually ok, but the height maps are not detailed enough.

 

[jojon]

What are these height maps, exactly, and what do you want done with them, that would add no rendering cost?

The surface geometry is progressively tessellated, and offset using procedurally generated height maps; You could change LOD bias for these, for greater geometry resolution (and as a VR users, I have been calling for this, myself), but it would be expensive as hell.

But you say it in the context of textures... You can use matched height maps along with your diffuse textures, to offset further tessellated geometry, but that is not exactly cheap either... Or, you could take one fidelity step down, and use them with parallax mapping, that shifts texels around from your point of view, to give a 3D effect, as long as you don't look at any poly edges - a fair bit cheaper, but still by no means free... Or you could take the next leap down, and bake your heights into normal maps, which would be what we have currently: Every texel is correctly shaded for the direction the light is coming from (EDIT: ...and the direction the side of a rock that texel is depicting is facing), but remains just as flat in appearance as in actuality - not bad, in truth, as long it's seen from a bit of a distance, but up close: Ugh!

I agree about-, and have long been annoyed with- the ground textures appearing as wallpaper on polygonal terrain, but am aware of my not anemic rig already breaking rather a lot of sweat, presenting those planets to my eyes. :7

 

[amadeus1171]

If textures conveying objects that are supposed to have dimension, but don't have hight maps, then those textures might as well be smoothed out and don't convey the non-height-map objects. Make it a dithered color or something. It's better than seeing flat rocks.

 

[jojon]

If textures conveying objects that are supposed to have dimension, but don't have hight maps, then those textures might as well be smoothed out and don't convey the non-height-map objects. Make it a dithered color or something. It's better than seeing flat rocks.

Hmm... That's just about every texture on any surface that is not explicitly perfectly smooth all across, in the game, though... All those bevels and other greebling on plating? -texture/normal map on a flat plane... Extremely obvious to the eye - especially in VR, like so many other of ye olde tricks that are used with realtime 3D graphics, and yes: I'd really have liked it, if they really did have actual 3D detail, and greater detail, too; That mipmap resolution level on the menu screen hangar floor, seen from the point of view of standing, down on it, rather than from high up on the bridge of a ship, really takes you back a few eras of graphics fidelity - it's like standing atop a (flat, indeed) digital photograph of asphalt, blown up to twenty times real world scale. The worst bits are, as usual, all those places where you have something incredibly detailed right next to something that is rendered with one or more magnitudes lower density.

...but as for the planet surfaces... Yes, kind of... When (in an update) the current textures replaced the previous apparent procedural noise normal maps, seemingly without any imagery texturing, from when Horizons first launched, there was a widespread feeling of gain-some-lose-at-least-just-as-much.

On one hand, one gained a feeling for scale, with defined "looks-like-something" closer range featuring resolving, as one descend, whereas the preceeding "untextured" (dithered-like) terrain felt kind of like delving deeper and deeper into a fractal set, which just keeps repeating infinitely; Stuff at armlength distance looked just the same as something ten kilometres away.

On the other hand, the limited amount of different textures and their colouring (remember the old beige-ening drama? :7), soon became very apparent, as did the way they plastered themselves flatly over polygons, and how egregiously they tiled -- some of the yellow-er ones makes it look kind of like one flies over a sheet of coarse fabric.

Look, I'm not disagreeing - I would like the world, too, and remarked on the issue of this very topic, back when the textures were added, but I can also understand the tradeoffs made.

 

[govny]

What's the solution?

Don't get too close to the ground.

by the way, I don't even know what you are talking about.

 

[amadeus1171]

Don't get too close to the ground.

by the way, I don't even know what you are talking about.

If you don't know what I'm talking about then why respond and present a faux solution?

 

[govny]

If you don't know what I'm talking about then why respond and present a faux solution?

you wrote "What do you VR guys think? "
I wrote what I think, simple.

 

[amadeus1171]

you wrote "What do you VR guys think? "
I wrote what I think, simple.

Not much apparently; But being a guy I know the feeling. Don't you hate when your significant feminine other asks you, "What are you thinking?"

PSA: Men don't think like that.

If we have a task we think on that task. We don't randomly ruminate on arbitrary things.

But where was I?

There has to be a better way to introduce close up detail in VR without significant performance impact. That's what I'm talking about. Because the current situation looks like ASP.

 

[znôrt]

by the way, I don't even know what you are talking about.

he means that at some level of detail relief is not really 3d, but post processed flat texture which becomes apparent in vr depending on view distance and angle.

ironically, you must have gotten the deeper gist of it because your 'thinking' is spot on. we're stuck with that for a while, as jojon explains very well this is a hard dilemma every 3d engine faces. improvement is always possible and desirable, but it will take a while and it also depends on commonly available hardware, not everything can be optimized or styled away. so it's best to just not focus much on the ground and just enjoy an otherwise magnifficent experience.

 

[amadeus1171]

he means that at some level of detail relief is not really 3d, but post processed flat texture which becomes apparent in vr depending on view distance and angle.

ironically, you must have gotten the deeper gist of it because your 'thinking' is spot on. we're stuck with that for a while, as jojon explains very well this is a hard dilemma every 3d engine faces. improvement is always possible and desirable, but it will take a while and it also depends on commonly available hardware, not everything can be optimized or styled away. so it's best to just not focus much on the ground and just enjoy an otherwise magnifficent experience.

But those flat rocks, though... It's like talking to a person who has a big red pimple right on the tip of their nose. I'm sure everyone has had this experience as a teenager, on both ends. "The North Star" was the worst!