i don't really care about grass that renders all in the distance, though it's possible. i'm talking more generally more abundant foliage.
Possible or not only confirmed by practice. In the case of the grass practice tells us that full-fledged grass ~3km not possible for performance reasons. As the complexity of rendering it increases with the square of the distance. Please show me a game where the grass is displayed on at least 2 km? Otherwise, our talk vague about some fantastic things.
right now, it's kind of empty. even in the desert regions, i feel the grass on the ground texture doesn't match with the actual blades coming out. i don't mean tall grass, but in those grass patches, a more 3d effect.
This is always the case, due to projection of grass texture maps on landscape is obviously not the same as the 3D projection for grass blades. It is generally different things and are designed for different: one is material (totally virtual), the second is object ("3d effect" as you talk).
also, do you feel the shader or normal effect on the ground always has these squares on it? will that be fixed? maybe a different shader or higher resolution normal map layer?
Please bring a screenshot what you mean, it is not clear.
anyway, just some thoughts for graphical improvements. i really feel the core engine is good enough for it, and can go all the way up to the level of war thunder. possibilities are good.
For WT level must first redraw textures at higher resolution for much more money (we will not to do this), the rest does not matter. Let me remind you that the SABOW is the game released in 2011, not in 2015.
also, the smoke is really resource intensive, do you feel there is a way to streamline it?
There is the same problem as with the grass, lots-slowly, few-quickly. Significant optimization leads to a strong decrease in quality (examples with edge squares can be seen in clouds in WT if you reduce quality).
Best solution is GPU with good fillrate. May be coming DX12 is have some ways, but they are not for SABOW of course.
i know volumetric smoke effect is good, but it's really different in this game, like super thick. can control not just density, but volume and thickness?
In our game there is not volumetric smoke.
Control for volume and thickness not have any sence
.
Thickness does not affect in any way, only yes / no pixel.