Would love feedback on terrain..

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

Link: www.egghedz.com/clan/Downloads/downloads.html

 

Link didn't work for me, so I tried http://www.egghedz.com/clan/Downloads/7.html instead. This the correct one?

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.

Work Computers
Compaq Laptop: 1.8 Ghz, 448 MB
Optiplex: 3.2 GHz, 768 MB

 

Nice work. I like the colors of the leaves.

MacBook Pro, 2.0 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, Radeon X1600 w/256 MB RAM: 30-40 fps.

Dell Optiplex 745 w/1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, Intel GMA : 3 fps

 

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.

Ricko

 

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

 

Low 40s to high 50s for me ... looks good. System specs : iMac Core Duo, 2GBbB RAM with 256MB video card. 10.5.1.

 

15-30 on a intel imac (2.0, x1600 512 ram).

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.

nice so far though ; )

 

MacPro Intel 2 x 2.0 Ghz, 3 Gigs RAM, GeForce 7300 GT, MacOSX 10.5.1

Browser-Window: 50 fps constant
Fullscreen: between 60 and 80 fps

Nice work by the way. And you definetly need some moving light and clouds!!!

Frank

 

That's really cool. Nice work.

30 - 45 fps on my MacBook Pro, 2.16 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB Radeon X1600.

I couldn't tell too much of a difference between normal and fullscreen.

 

I got ok framerates on my mac pro, 50 to 60.

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:

http://www.egghedz.com/clan/Downloads/assets/NorwaySpruce.zip

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. This is awesome.

Landscape:

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!

 

That is beautiful. Vaguely Tolkien-esque.

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.

Obscurity - Tolkein-esque is great!

Thanks for the feedback.
Boxy

 

Between 100 and 200 fps on Windows XP using an
NVidia GeForce 8600 GT.

Nice work.

 

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):

 

Hey thanks groovista. I love the way that fog hangs on the hills sub-par or not
Cheers
Boxy

 

MacBook Pro, 2GB, 8600M GT 256MB in the browser.

I get a fairly solid 40 FPS until I cross through the landscape and across the large lake and then on to the other shore where it drops to 21-25. After a while it kicks back in, but there are some strange texture paging issues on the coast.

 

Nice work !

XP, Celeron 2.8Ghz, 1Gb Ram, GeForce Fx5500.

I get around 18Fps out in the open.
About 8-11Fps when im running through the forrest.
Occasionallly it was lurching but when the framerate slowed it lurched less. I guess it was masked by the low framerate.

Hope that helps.

Cheers
ric

 

Thanks both
I'm going to compile all these into a chart as they have been really really helpful. I think basically, pretty happy but I need to play with terrains more because I bet there is more performance to squeeze out yet. I'd like to get to a point where terrain resources are not impacting on game play resources yet still look good enough.
Gregory your result is interesting because it sounds as though you have the same machine as me (Santa Rosa?) except that I maxed out the RAM. Mine drops to just above 20 in thick grass/tree areas and goes up to 70/90 otherwise. Only if you can be bothered - could you post a quick screen of the area you meant?
Thanks
Boxy

 

The only thing I would change is adding leaves on the ground around the trees somehow.

 

Thanks Deram, I've wondered about this. I'm going to try modelling some dead leaves and add them as a terrain detail mesh.
My main concern at the moment is that I can't get enough grass/detail coverage at the scale it needs to be. Making the grass bigger and wider is fine while there are no other humans in the scene, but As soon as they are added the grass looks too huge. Make it smaller and you don't get enough coverage...
Cheers
Boxy

 

3 fps on my once awesome dual g4, with geforce 4. It looks about the same as the gma 950. Time for a new computer.

 

First, let me say it looks fantastic!

So - some curiosity.

As a test, how do you see this implemented in your final game? The volume of the space is HUGE! I think it took me a mean 15 minutes to run from one end of the terrain to the other and the FP Controller is zipping along. (And my pub is just 5 minutes up the street!) (and then I read about the "e" key...)

I guess the reason is that I struggle when dealing with issues of game play v. beauty in planning a level.

Can you realistically keep all of your intended game play in one large 18km level? No Viz-blocking or other limitations...

Some technical questions...

Unity Pro?

Did you build the terrain internally or externally? And if externally, what package?

 

Thanks for checking it out Brian.

Thank you very much Little Angel, glad you enjoyed it.

Ideally, yes I'd love the player to be able to free roam over miles of land because the main tasks will be based around scouts defending clan territories or invading other territories. I quite like the idea that it takes a long time to get around because it does take a long time to walk around a loch - though of course each foray would need to be packed with incident to keep interest. In reality though, speed of gameplay/performance must come first and I think that will probably mean smaller levels. Even if the whole game was based in one huge terrain I think for the sake of playability it would need to be split into manageable levels with specific goals in each level.

I agree and the answer is probably going to be 'no I can't realistically do this', but this stage is all about boundary testing and as such it even comes before level planning. This is the first game I've thought about creating so I can't give you any authoritative answers, but the way I see it, you can't plan a level unless you know the asset budget, because planning is all about arranging the available assets to best fit your artistic vision. That currently means compromising one thing for another.
Though I have to say, now that I've done something on this scale I do really like the idea

Yes, Unity Pro.
I initially tested some raw imports created in Carrara but this one is done from scratch in Unity which I think is stunning A little way into the future and I can see that Eric's Fractscape will become an essential part of the pipeline.
I like these questions, it is important to discard things which other people can't justify, so please keep them coming if you have more
Thanks for the input.
Boxy

 

On my PC I got 14 to 40 fps, the lowest fps was in the trees on the other side of the lake to the left.

p4 2.7
2 gb ram
ati x1050
win xp sp2

The terrain looks really nice! In my limited experience I find that it is the animated characters that kill framerate and not the landscape, but your mileage may vary. Good luck!

-Matt

 

Thanks a lot Matt.
And thanks for the info on animated characters, I haven't even got that far yet but I suspected that this was sucking way to many resources anyway. Time to test another way
Cheers
Boxy

 

Super super nice work.
I love the terain did you use a hightmap or make it your self?

Some things I would change:

1) I dont find the sky box fitting I think its collors: dark brown clouds and and the blue sky, that just me .
2) I would make small "Islands" of undergrowth here and there, so you dont have the same kind og foliage look all over the ground. Break up the grass with these "island"/groups of other kinds of foliage. Ex make some more and bigger foliage spots under your groups of trees.
3)fix the the texture of the foliage where the alpha channel looks murky (frosty)
4) is it on purpose that you have very little saturation in your scene? exept the marble trees they kind of stand out because the have more saturation.

Tak this as good ideas ok? because you did a very job here!

Cheers

 

Thanks holmeren, great advice
The terrain was 100% hand made in Unity, I love the terrain tool!
I agree about the variation in vegetation and in fact all the other stuff! I was trying to add frost to the scene but I don't think it worked My experiments have since evolved into this, which is getting more like the look I was after:





Cheers
Boxy

 

Now we are talking, much better... great screens!

/clap

 

Thanks very much.
Now I have to go back to the drawing board and try and figure out how to optimise the bajeebies out of it and still look OK!
Cheers
Boxy