Realistic grasses

[sagevanni]

I've asked this before.

What are the settings to use so grass plays realistic. What I mean is when my ball is in the APCD planted grass, I want the settings to have an affect on the shot.

grass setting.JPG (69.88 KiB) Viewed 5401 times

grass setting-1.JPG (117 KiB) Viewed 5401 times

Thanks......Sage.....

[Adelade]

Referencing picture below:
1st red ring: "All Pass Through" Just means the red-white box disappears so that no part whatsoever of the object is set to give hard bounces. (Objects can still give hard bounces if they were swapped to a different object - after being planted - without updating the image). Needs to be ticked for all normal grasses and most smaller bushes.

2nd red ring: Density is a pure luck factor, if set lower than max, there is a chance that the ball can go through a visible part of the object and still be completely unaffected. Therefore I personally like setting it to max, at least for grasses. I set it to around 95% on some low resolution trees or bushes to give the player a small chance of a miracle pass-through, but in general it is more fair and realistic for the setting to be at max, unless you like making things more luck-based. If the object is high enough resolution to have transparent holes/windows here and there (which is usually the case with grasses), the ball will still go through unaffected at max density setting, if managing to find those particular spots.

3rd red ring: Dampening is how much % the speed of the ball will slow down if it hits a visible part of the object (as long as no density luck factor comes into play). I tend to set grasses somewhere around 10% (in the picture below it is set to around 12%), but both higher and lower settings can be justified. I would say it depends a lot on the exact situation, how densely the objects are planted will have a large effect, and some grass objects look much denser than others. Arguably, settings around 20-30% might be more realistic in many situations since in real life, it is after all pretty difficult to hit through grasses, but I think it makes for a frustrating gameplay experience to set them that high. Players usually have no good way of knowing whether the grasses are set to behave realistically or not, so its a bit of a guessing game, and therefore I personally like to put things on the gentle side.

In your second picture, it looks like the grasses are very widely used and very close to the short-grass play areas, so if it was me (and if I wanted them to have an effect on the ball, like you said), Im thinking I would have set them to maybe as low as 5%, to not frustrate players too much. 5% might be so low that it is nearly impossible to tell a difference though, I recommend testing it out before going ahead with a full planting.

For trees, I tend to set around 30 - 60% dampening.

GrassProperties1.jpg (150.29 KiB) Viewed 5397 times

[sagevanni]

Hey Adelade,

So those are the settings you use most of the time...?????

Thanks for the detailed explanation.........

Sage.....

[pmgolf]

That 1-click mark of dampening looks like a reasonable compromise to me. I would hope that the dampening isn't cumulative with other textures close by. I'd be interested to hear what testing revealed.

Pete

[Adelade]

So those are the settings you use most of the time...?????

Around there yes, for grasses. By the way, two of your grass objects that you used to use longer ago (they were on both Chicago and Chambers Bay, but perhaps you stopped using them nowadays), had a faulty alpha channel in the TGA file, which made them unnaturally or at least very surprisingly difficult to play through. The areas around the visible grass were not 100% black in the alpha channel the way they should have been, but rather 99% black (which looks the same to the naked eye, but that small discrepancy made all the difference to the properties, in that the whole square image counted as dampening). I recommend either not using those again or else fixing the TGA files. They looked like these two:

Faulty_TGA_Grasses.jpg (48.37 KiB) Viewed 5363 times

I would hope that the dampening isn't cumulative with other textures close by.

Im not 100% sure what you mean by "textures". Normally in APCD, that phrase is only applied to the ground surfaces, but I know that people who arent "indoctrinated" by APCD-terminology might apply it to other things as well. But yes, dampenings are cumulative per unique moment of contact between the ball and individual 2D object. For example, if planting a certain grass object with 10% dampening twice right beside one another, and a player hits the ball so that it makes contact with the visible parts of both of them, the ball will be slowed down by 10% twice. This might sound bad, but the chances of actually making contact with more than one grass object with grass straws as thin as these examples above are pretty small, at least when the ball is on the way upwards at the beginning of a shot (unless you use a 1-Iron or something, because then the ball passes through more objects before getting above them). I've tested it a lot at different times and even when I go in practice mode and place the ball where I think I will have the best chance of hitting the grasses, it still often takes me a few tries before I manage to hit them and I have to use a lower lofted club than I would have guessed.

[pmgolf]

I said textures without thinking that those items appeared in the 2d object lists! Duhh-h! I plead "Senior Moment!"!

I mentioned the cumulative effect thinking about Liberty National and how shots are crippled by the long grass. I don't know if that is because of cumulative effects or wrong dampening effect setting.

Pete

[Adelade]

I cant say for sure, but based on how it felt when I played that course in the past, I strongly suspect the dampening is just way too high on those grasses. They're probably around 50% or maybe even higher.

[Ian Wells]

Gentlemen,
I am beginning to plant Victoria National and I am trying to find the best way to represent the deep grass regions usually found along the side of each fairway. My first attempts lead me to planting grasses very densely. (I have followed the suggestions as outlined by Adelade in his earlier post regarding the grass properties.)

If I play out of this area with a wood or long iron it "normally" travels 40-50 yards, although it sometimes travels the normal club distance. The "safe" choice is to pitch out to the side.

I remember reading previous posts where some players did not like the idea of an inconsistent outcome when playing from an area, even though, in my limited playing experience, it was the norm.

I could reduce the density of the grasses making it easier to play out, but it will not give the look I like, therefore at present it is not an option.

Therefore there are two options:

• 1. I could leave the area as identified above

• 2. I could designate the deep grass area as a hazard, thereby offering the player a re-hit or a drop.

If the above look is my final choice, which option would you prefer.

Ian

[pmgolf]

It's always better hitting a recovery shot out of heavy grass rather than taking a drop. Dampening shouldn't be set too high, though. It might help you with the settings to play a hole or two at Liberty National and try hitting from the high grass. It will give you an idea of the frustration level your future players will face if the dampening is set too high - which it is at Liberty National. If I can be of any help to you with Victoria National, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm dying to play that course!

Pete

[Adelade]

In general, how close to fairway edges (and/or ideal landing spots on fairways or greens) are these deep grass regions we speak of? To me, that can have a major impact on whether something is annoying or not. If a player hits a really wild hook, being penalized with a drop tends to feel more acceptable than if only having missed a fairway by a couple yards.

One way I might have measured it if it was myself, is if a 7 iron reliably travels nearly the expected distance (that is to say, the expected distance specifically of a deep rough shot, which in most situations is not as far as a regular 7 Iron), that is definitely fair enough IMO. You say 40-50 yards with woods or long irons, but if players pick a 3 Iron from visibly dense tall grass, I feel like they have themselves to blame if things didnt turn out great.

If the grasses visibly LOOK like they would be really difficult to play out from, players are probably more likely to do a safer lay-up escape shot. What feels worst IMO is if things visibly make it seem like it wont be much issue escaping, but then it is. If the grasses both look tough and play tough, that feels more like a fair warning.