Screen-Door Transparency

[mebel]

It's more a question than a suggestion.
Is such transparency possible within PR engine? This may be used eg. to hide or limit the visibility of models hiding in grass etc to mitigate the effect of the outstanding player models over a distance, where scene is simplified.

Examples:
https://digitalrune.github.io/Digita...4b0840ab1e.htm

[Grump/Gump.45]

+1 vote from here on this effect. At distance things look suspect and not obvious when it comes to military uniforms that match terrain color.

Thinking on the visual effects of distortion at a distance to the eyes, even through a scope at distance.

If you are matching the camouflage uniform to specific terrain colors on the environment (not standing in muddy melted snow area, while wearing snow camouflage etc) you should not have an outstanding outline at all. But you could look like an un-melted snow patch in mud at a distance until your body comes into focus.

Olive drab can blend into brown muddy ground by the darkness of the Olive drab, so I would like increased effectiveness there. But obviously does better in greenery.

Please +1 on the effect.

Make this effect really start while crouched or prone. Not in unvegetated desert textures, only green and muddy brown ground.

Only time it works when standing is under condition of blending into your background by matching your uniform color to terrain by standing in the right spots. You have stand in front of what matches your uniform.

Its funny you used a blue barrel as an example. I used that barrel once as Chinese on Bora Bora with their blue uniform.
at a distance you wouldn't be able to tell except for our heads. Where is the shader man?

[[R-DEV]​papadanku]

It's possible

[mebel]

On top of that, the provided images are example of ordered dithering, however the patterns could be also non-ordered (random) so it would be more natural-looking, example on the right:

Originally Posted by Grump/Gump.45

Make this effect really start while crouched or prone. Not in unvegetated desert textures, only green and muddy brown ground.

Only time it works when standing is under condition of blending into your background by matching your uniform color to terrain by standing in the right spots. You have stand in front of what matches your uniform.

I think the initial implementation should only be distance-dependent, uniformly in all circumstances, to remove unnecessary complexity when implementing and testing in live game. Then making it covering only the bottom of silhouette or anything else more sophisticated can be considered.

The thing with models on a distance is also that the models are much darker than the surroundings - because of lighting. Ground is usually well lit due its surface orientation, while models have surfaces that are shaded. So you might have textures that blends into terrain in theory, but the model would be still darker. The solution here would be to reduce the difference between lit and shaded parts, or to disable model lighting, I don't really know but I can tell that in any game the model on a distance is usually darker due to the mean of surfaces orientation. In addition shadows are also not well presented on the distance (i'm talking about newer engines), but shading is still a thing, thus models stand-out even more because of that.

Anyway, the dithering should do the trick, and can also mitigate this aforementioned issue, and can be applicable on any type of terrain/uniform combination.

[Grump/Gump.45]

Originally Posted by mebel

On top of that, the provided images are example of ordered dithering, however the patterns could be also non-ordered (random) so it would be more natural-looking, example on the right:


The thing with models on a distance is also that the models are much darker than the surroundings - because of lighting. Ground is usually well lit due its surface orientation, while models have surfaces that are shaded. So you might have textures that blends into terrain in theory, but the model would be still darker. The solution here would be to reduce the difference between lit and shaded parts, or to disable model lighting, I don't really know but I can tell that in any game the model on a distance is usually darker due to the mean of surfaces orientation. In addition shadows are also not well presented on the distance (i'm talking about newer engines), but shading is still a thing, thus models stand-out even more because of that.

.

There are a bunch of S's when it comes to camouflage. Shadow, scrim, shape, speed, skyline, silhouette, spacing, shine, sound.

On the map Saaremaa, the USMC MARPAT stands out if you are not in shadows, when in shadows it becomes darker. In real life, say if you wore olive drab or coyote brown, no camo pattern, if you get under leaf shadows then it forms a unique pattern over you. This cannot be done in Project Reality, as the shadows are solid masses. But the shadows still work.

It goes above my head how this will be in game versus real life. Brent0331 YouTube channel has 100s of camouflage effectiveness videos in a playlist. If it will help you visualize. What you see in the camera versus your eyes would be different.

This comes down to rendering body models over distance, then more aspects and capabilities I don't know about for making video games.

[mebel]

Originally Posted by papadanku

It's possible

Any chance to create and test any prove of concept?

[Grump/Gump.45]

Going from left to right, top to bottom on your barrel pictures. It should be #5 as maximum, between #1 and #5 is where this would operate, we don't want to be fighting quantum phantoms in game. In desert at 500+ meters, in woodland/jungle at 100-200 meters.

Try to make this shader not cost more performance. If wearing a camouflage pattern, if you match the terrain color by standing in the right spots you should not stand out. Shadow should do this too a bit. Find what looks realistic.

Its less player render over distance, so theoretically, with my lack of knowledge on coding, not knowing the coding effects, it shouldn't cost more performance of FPS or stutter because this would reduce the effort on the game to render a player. I hope it would work this way. But results are results.

[[R-DEV]​papadanku]

Originally Posted by mebel

Any chance to create and test any prove of concept?

Yes, but I am busy right now

[mebel]

Originally Posted by papadanku

Yes, but I am busy right now

No need to rush, thank you for taking this idea under consideration.

[mebel]

By the way, as you can se in following image:

The grass covers up to a half of a height of a BTR wheel, such thing could be mimicked by proposed screen-door transparency technique. Of course applied on a distant models.