Vegetation collision ID and LOD ranges

[Flexman]

Before I filed a bug report I thought I'd post here.

 

First...

 

Vegetation LOD ranges

 

^^= View distance to...

 

Currently, vegetation model LOD works by multiplying the editor Vegetation LOD distance * model LOD number.

 

In the editor Vegetation settings: If you specify LOD distance = 100

 

And you have a tree model with 5 LOD models, this results in the following:

 

• vegetation_trees_oak_a.gmf ^^= 100
  
• vegetation_trees_oak_aLOD1.gmf ^^=200
  
• vegetation_trees_oak_aLOD2.gmf ^^=300
  
• vegetation_trees_oak_aLOD3.gmf ^^=400
  
• vegetation_trees_oak_aLOD4.gmf ^^=500
  

 

Which isn't a fine enough level of control for tuning. Especially if you only have 2 LOD models or very small ones.

 

Ideally a command to set the LOD would be better, like thus...

 

veglayer1.setLODdistance(lod0, 50)

 

 

Billboard Normals

 

These are reversed? Here are two screenshots, one is the same position but rotated about 180' to look in the opposite direction. Look in the distance (not the trees close to the camera but the middle distance where they transition from 3D to billboards).

 

Screenshot A - 3D tree model is dark facing us. Billboards in the middle distance are lighter in colour.

 

 

Screenshot B - 3D tree model is light facing us. Billboards in the middle distance are darker in colour.

 

This makes blending near impossible for all lighting conditions.

 

 

Collisions FIXED

 

If I setting this to 5 in the editor then collisions are not recorded for some reason in code despite using the following code:

 

	Collisions(5, 1, True) ;
	Collisions(1, 5, True) ;

 

Leave them at the default value and collisions work. It makes detecting collisions with different vegetation layers difficult.

 

Macklebee sorted this one out. I had to edit COLLISION.LUA and COLLISION_CONST.LUA to set the values.

 

 

Raycasting on vegetation returns type "1" every time regardless of the vegetation collision type. This can be a problem.

 

 

Cabbage Patch Billboards

 

An option to turn off the overhead billboards. This would eliminate the presence of cabbage patch doughnuts appearing when viewing at altitude. Presently the only workaround is to edit the billboard to cut and past over it with a flat image which doesn't work too well.

 

 

 

BIG FEATURE REQUEST

 

Which I suspect can't be done but would be a big help certainly in making our game a bit more polished:

 

Fade-in vegetation billboards rather than a snap transition.