Poll - COD Terrain: Your Opinion

[FS~Phat]

Originally Posted by carguy_

It should be further researched if the 'draw distance' option affects also the aircraft. It did in IL2. If so, if you were to turn it on medium, you would be at a significant disadvantage.
Plenty people have need to reduce their video setting for obvious reasons, so for others setting textures to high can cause much more stutter than to have medium textures and high draw distance. I have worked up a nice compromise wich consists of "BUILDINGS AMOUNT = high", "DRAW DISTANCE = high" and medium textures. Even though the buildings take a considerable amount of video memory, the smaller textures smooth out the experience. What I notice is the buildings don`t pop up no more, the ground quality is still acceptable (sorry- I have to have those trees, the terrain looks just so bald without them). In a set of LW escort missions to Dover and London dogfighting over the coast and over terrain proved fairly smooth (27-32 fps) and spotting objects like airfields poses no problems. Remember that those escort missions didn`t have the amount of 4 planes, but over 20 everytime.
Still, one needs to get used to an ocasional 0,2sec stutter every now and then.

I just did some a-b screen shot comparisons and there is no difference in aircraft draw distance between medium and high land detail but there does appear to be less detail on land for trees and other things in the very far distance. You have to flick between 2 screen shots to see it because the difference is so minimal, but performance is way better!

I just redid the screen shots with everything max and land detail low so it was easier to see what is going on as it was really hard to see the difference between medium and high land details.

Max


Low land detail everything else max


Max


Low land detail everything else max


Max


Low land detail everything else max

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by FS~Phat

I just did some a-b screen shot comparisons and there is no difference in aircraft draw distance between medium and high land detail but there does appear to be less detail on land for trees and other things in the very far distance. You have to flick between 2 screen shots to see it because the difference is so minimal, but performance is way better!

I just redid the screen shots with everything max and land detail low so it was easier to see what is going on as it was really hard to see the difference between medium and high land details.

Max


Low land detail everything else max


Max


Low land detail everything else max


Max


Low land detail everything else max

I see a big differance.

[Blackdog_kt]

Nice comparison shots FS~Phat. It just reinforces my belief that i don't really miss much by dropping a few settings to medium in exchange for a smooth 25-60 FPS (capped at 60 due to Vsync) under any kind of scenario on my two year old PC.

I'm not saying it's the same and sure, people with an eye for detail will spot differences but to be perfectly honest with you all, i just don't see it. Maybe if i start looking really carefully i'll see it, but then it defeats the purpose as i won't be scrutinizing the landscape that hard when i'm actually flying.

The only settings i'd want to be able to run higher are forests and building detail and that's just for the eye-candy factor, i run them on low and houses/buildings are a bit sparse on detail but then again, i don't really notice unless i'm skimming rooftops or crash landing next to a farm.

[Dano]

It's the distant horizon where the differences are, if you're not seeing it then you're in a win win situation in regards to turning it down and gaining fps

[ATAG_Dutch]

The main difference seems to be with the definition of the rivers in the distance, rather than the land.

Just ran a few tests and FPS is definately improved by a good deal, without any visual sacrifice that you'd notice.

Well spotted Phat.

[SNAFU]

Nice work. At low alts there is in my eyes not a huge difference.
Now those screenshots at 7000m would be interesting for comparison.

[kendo65]

It seems that with the exception of a few stragglers (...Tree? Wonder which option he'll vote for ) the results are in.

Thought I'd give my take on the outcome, with the proviso that it is just my opinion. I can foresee disagreement in the interpretation of all this - maybe we just moved the problem one step back, from disagreeing about the terrain to disagreeing about the meaning of the vote about the terrain Really, the only interpretation that is important is what the devs make of it.

I'll be upfront and state that I voted "Very Unhappy", but I'll try to give a balanced reading of how I see the result. Some of you may disagree on whether I succeed or not.

It's a mix of good and bad. Roughly two thirds of people are happy against one third unhappy. The devs should take some comfort from that. It means that maybe it isn't so critical to get this fixed asap - the majority of people can continue to enjoy the game while waiting for terrain improvements. (This wasn't clear before the poll. From the noise generated it was easy to believe the split was closer to 50:50.)

Having said that, the vast majority (94%) believe that further improvement is necessary.

On the bad side, to have over a third (38%) of your customers dissatisfied with something as important as the terrain IS serious, and to have 1 in 8 (13%) of the people responding say that the terrain actually puts them off playing the game is disastrous (despite being one of the afflicted I was really surprised the number was as high as that).

So, not sure overall exactly what this proves - maybe that we are severely split - though we didn't need a poll to realise that. A majority are happy with things as they stand. A small, but significant, number are so unhappy they don't want to play the game.

Over to the devs......

[Lixma]

The very existence of this poll carries more significance than the actual results.

[pupo162]

low.jpg vs high.jpg

[Sammi79]

I voted generally happy. The one terrain thing I notice every time I fly that could do with work is the way that the shoreline render essentially draws over the top of the water render. The effect this has is to slightly shrink the area the water covers (specifically inland rivers & lakes) as the edges are drawn over by the shoreline render. As this is a distance affected render, as the river or lake becomes more distant the shoreline render dissapears. The overall and undesirable affect is that rivers and lakes appear to get wider and wider the further into the distance they get, resulting in a kind of patchwork land archipelago effect. It would almost be better if the shoreline was only rendered at distance, and dissapeared close up but that would kind of defeat the point of it.