Feedback please!

[rdaniell]

Attached is a screen shot of a scenery object intending to be representative of a bunch of tall dry grass that you might see around beacon towers, hangers, etc.
I would really appreciate some feedback from some of you'll as to how you think it looks.

I have been trying to make different grass objects for some time now. The biggest problem seems to be that mine are frame rate hogs and add considerably to the size of my projects. I've looked at some other people's work and that seems to be pretty much the case with all of them.

As an example, I had one project that started out at about 12 Mbs without the grass. I then planted some grass around and the size of the project almost doubled in size.

Thanks for any input.

RD

 

[Navy Chief]

Looks very nice! If there is just some way to lessen the impact on FPS, eh? NC

 

[rdaniell]

Looks very nice! If there is just some way to lessen the impact on FPS, eh? NC

Thanks for the feedback NC. About the only way I know to do that is to limit the placement to only a couple around one or two objects like a beacon or water tower.

RD

 

[falcon409]

Attached is a screen shot of a scenery object intending to be representative of a bunch of tall dry grass that you might see around beacon towers, hangers, etc.
I would really appreciate some feedback from some of you'll as to how you think it looks.

I have been trying to make different grass objects for some time now. The biggest problem seems to be that mine are frame rate hogs and add considerably to the size of my projects. I've looked at some other people's work and that seems to be pretty much the case with all of them.

As an example, I had one project that started out at about 12 Mbs without the grass. I then planted some grass around and the size of the project almost doubled in size.

Thanks for any input.

RD

Are these 3D grass blades like the ones I tried to use in the Old Rhinebeck scenery? If so, therein lies the problem. . .it looks awesome, but as each blade is a 3 dimensional object, once you place enough to make a small group as shown in your image and then begin placing those around the scenery, it kills the fps. The type I've used that seems most effective with very little fps hit is the type that's a texture placed on a flat transparent plane.

 

[rdaniell]

Are these 3D grass blades like the ones I tried to use in the Old Rhinebeck scenery? If so, therein lies the problem. . .it looks awesome, but as each blade is a 3 dimensional object, once you place enough to make a small group as shown in your image and then begin placing those around the scenery, it kills the fps. The type I've used that seems most effective with very little fps hit is the type that's a texture placed on a flat transparent plane.

No. These are from something I found at SketchUp Warehouse which I modified so they would work in FSX. I think what you are referring to is my attempt to draw the blades from scratch. There has to be a way to make these as I've seen them in other people's sceneries. The problem with those is they can't be used in my projects as they are copyrighted. I'm trying to find a solution so that I can include the grass in my sceneries.

As a matter of fact, folks who are downloading my South Two Ten scenery may wish to delete the grass from it if it presents a fps problem for them. It works fine on my set up, however. BTW, I made those objects so there is no copyright issue with them.

RD

 

[Lane Street]

When it comes to performance there are two things to consider, poly count and drawcalls.

Your tallgrass44 has 11,040 polys and 2 drawcalls.

Mixedgrass7 has 27,600 polys and 2 drawcalls.

The drawcall count isn't that bad, however the poly count is huge.

As a comparison, the default C172 exterior model has 14,921 polys.

So each time you plant a tallgrass44 is close to using a C172 as a scenery object and mixedgrass7 is like using 2 C172s.

Generally speaking drawcalls cause more of a performance hit than polys do, however these models are so poly heavy I am not surprised they bring down FPS.

Reducing drawcalls usually helps performance, not much you can do with these as they are.

Another factor is the textures are pretty big. You have a 1024x1024 and a 2048x2048 texture for the grass objects. You could resize them down and try to reduce the drawcalls with the Model Converter X drawcall minimizer. That might help yet I think the poly count will still hurt performance.

Creating good performing models is a compromise between detail and performance.

Any detail you can add in the textures instead of using polys helps, and using as few textures as possible.

cheers,
Lane

 

[rdaniell]

To Lane Street. Thanks for the advice. I'm going to learn how to lower the poly count one of these days. I'll keep taking stuff apart with MDX and looking at how it's made. That's pretty much how I've learned what I know so far. As noted earlier, other people have made grass that looks good yet doesn't generate a "slide show."
I have found that some of the grass objects have one texture DDS with an alpha layer instead of a material texture DDS like I've been using. It looks like it's painting a picture of grass onto a "box."

RD

 

[Lane Street]

I took a look at the tallgrass model and one blade of grass was 15 polys.

Your textured box, something like...

...with double sided planes is only 16 polys and could be any size you want.

Scenery design is a compromise.

Also, the textures are DXT5 with a solid white Alpha channel.\

If you are not using the Alpha channel for transparency or reflection you should use DXT1 textures. They will be half the file size of DXT5. Every little bit helps.

cheers,
Lane