Update Speculation thread

Billboard grass don't look bad, especially in open fields. I think even Project Cars using it. However Grass very close to the road have problem, when it is too wide and for me it should be 3D or move further from the road.

 

but 3d glass (i assume) is fps intense... do you know how much foliage there will be on this map?!

also Italy looks like it just might be my new favorite map, before i've even seen it!

 

Problem is will us peasants with moderately good computers be able to run them? Not every one has hundreds of dollars/pounds/euros laying around

 

maybe it could be a graphical setting ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Those don't always work. cough wcusa cough

 

let's see... look at the first computer in my sig, then here is my FPS number.
It is a staggering 5-15 FPS! Plus, it takes over 5 minutes to load... so yeah, that's how I have come to be so patient.

 

even if they were to keep the billboard grass, and just have more of them with smaller amounts of grass.

 

You set a distance limit for it to be used, so that close to the player youll see the 3d grass, beyond that you can use billboards or just the ground texture. As @Acrain7 said, it could be a graphical setting, and i think its a good idea, although that might open up a whole world of map related settings that the devs might not want to spend time on.

Looking at Project Cars i did see some use of billboard grass but seems like its due to graphics setting, or PC/PS4 version? They seem to use parallax texture for when youre really close to it:

 

What does "billboard" grass even mean? I don't quite understand.

 

So is it kinda like that effect Sketchup uses to make 2D people face the viewer?

 

A billboard's flat 2D thing that has a fixed location, however rotates to directly face the camera, that way it always looks flat depending on how you look at it. At-least that's how I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong.

They've been around forever and don't show any sign of going anywhere anytime soon.
You can use these in place of more resource intensive 3D objects to give the illusion of a 3D object, but with less cost on the system resources.

 

a solution to the billboard grass is something Giants has come up with. it's two of the billboard grasses put into an X configuration and it is static and doesn't move with the camera. also, I would like to say that I do not like the abandonment of .PNG file format for pictures. at least allow the modders to continue to use it. I've seen the high quality images used for the CRD turn into pixilated things from the PS2.

 

Game currently lacks (full) support for Premultiplied RGBA .DDS formats though, which could massively help in circumstances where the aggressive compression factors of both DTX3 and DTX5 simply don't cut it.