[FEATURE] LOD trees[FEEDBACK REQUIRED]

[Weppo]

It's more a QOL thing but when you are flying for example most of the trees don't load. Some of them already have LOD's but not even close to half to my knowledge. It would be nice to have LOD trees so we can experience the San Andreas landscape better and overall make the game prettier.
During the winter with the increased view distance or even in the extreme cases of there being no view distance this would make the gameplay experience way better.

I have seen mods which use this, but to my knowledge this isn't for MTA but for either singleplayer or SAMP? (PM me if it is possible, would love to try if I knew how) it would be great if SAES could imploment this here too for people who want to use this. There are pictures and videos of this online it looks REALLY great.

Side benefit:
Most people have experienced at least once during their gameplay where they or a teammate flew into a tree which only appeared once it was already too late. this could/would resolve this once and forever.

For FPS sake this could be toggled like car shine and other mods like snow.
Added benefit would be to toggle view distance too, has been requested many times before.

[LOD = Level of detail, it means an unsharp version of an object gets loaded after a set distance, right now the trees just dissapear, making a rather boring landscape]

Edit: My last reply also should work (existing script from MTA)
TLDR: adding a script from MTA which renders more objects then the gtaSA default, which would (probably) fix the issue of some objects not loading fast enough. BUT also will massivly increase the overall experience in playing as it can be adapted for further view distances if fog distances are increased. Making the map look 100x better as it would then load all objects.

 

Edited December 22, 2023 by Weppo

[Weppo]

It's more a QOL thing but when you are flying for example most of the trees don't load. Some of them already have LOD's but not even close to half to my knowledge. It would be nice to have LOD trees so we can experience the San Andreas landscape better and overall make the game prettier.
During the winter with the increased view distance or even in the extreme cases of there being no view distance this would make the gameplay experience way better.

I have seen mods which use this, but to my knowledge this isn't for MTA but for either singleplayer or SAMP? (PM me if it is possible, would love to try if I knew how) it would be great if SAES could imploment this here too for people who want to use this. There are pictures and videos of this online it looks REALLY great.

Side benefit:
Most people have experienced at least once during their gameplay where they or a teammate flew into a tree which only appeared once it was already too late. this could/would resolve this once and forever.

For FPS sake this could be toggled like car shine and other mods like snow.
Added benefit would be to toggle view distance too, has been requested many times before.

[LOD = Level of detail, it means an unsharp version of an object gets loaded after a set distance, right now the trees just dissapear, making a rather boring landscape]

Edit: My last reply also should work (existing script from MTA)
TLDR: adding a script from MTA which renders more objects then the gtaSA default, which would (probably) fix the issue of some objects not loading fast enough. BUT also will massivly increase the overall experience in playing as it can be adapted for further view distances if fog distances are increased. Making the map look 100x better as it would then load all objects.

 

Edited December 22, 2023 by Weppo

[Weppo]

@Tut said in [FEATURE] LOD trees:

 

 

Can you show a few locations that lack LOD please

 

 

For what I have seen only the large pine tree has an actual LOD, all other trees just load after a set distance.

 

 

The distance when a tree loads for what I can see is dependend on:
The location set tree is
Which tree type.
(large types load faster then smaller types, could also be because they have a smaller 'hitbox'?)

 

 

LOD example:

Spoiler

LOD1: long distance; almost no detail in the pine tree, some brenches can be seen

LOD0: Short distance; more detail in the pine tree, brenches and individual leaves can be seen

Spoiler

Example locations which LODs/faster loading would greatly benefit from:

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

 

Why I made a suggestion for LODs rather then changing the distance a tree/object loads at; FPS, LODs give less stress to a users PC.

 

 

For reference, this suggestion is not new around the GTA community, and there are examples of LOD mods working for gtaSA. It looks great, here is a preview;

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited December 22, 2023 by Weppo

[Weppo]

If it's @JohnnyEnglish his voice then yes

[Tut]

Can you show a few locations that lack LOD please

[Tut]

LOD does not improve performance in all cases as you would still need to display a second object on screen rather than zero. It's great if you have to display an object in the distance and don't want to load high detail that far away. For us I think the main reason we would want this is if there are tall trees that aircraft crash with, or players who drive high rates of speeds and aren't able to react in time to trees that load in areas where you would drive to reach SR's and race checkpoints. I'll see with the dev team

[Weppo]

@Tut said in [FEATURE] LOD trees:

LOD does not improve performance in all cases as you would still need to display a second object on screen rather than zero. It's great if you have to display an object in the distance and don't want to load high detail that far away. For us I think the main reason we would want this is if there are tall trees that aircraft crash with, or players who drive high rates of speeds and aren't able to react in time to trees that load in areas where you would drive to reach SR's and race checkpoints. I'll see with the dev team

That's one of the side benefits I mentioned yea, but if this is being developed at any point in the future, my suggestion to bring this further by having for example 3 setting toggle states,
1; default
2; basics; so just high trees which could otherwise not be seen in time for aircraft/cars to respond and change direction
3; pretty; loads them all like the last Spoiler shows, which makes the map just incredibly beautiful imo

[Brophy]

Perhaps on the back of this, we could (for those with limited hardware) at least warn pilots on the altometer who are below a certain height threshold, which can be set above the tallest trees/buildings

[General]

@Brophy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YNsCLFWi_g

[General]

@Brophy Maybe add the GPWS system