ArmA 3 Forum, ArmA 3, ArmA 3 Config, ArmA 3 Missions, ArmA 3 3D Modeling, ArmA 3 Scripting, ArmA 3 Terrain, ArmA 3 Texturing, ArmA 3 Tools

ArmA 3 Terrain Builder, ArmA 3 Terrain Builder Support Forum

Terrain Builder Satellite Tiles are the small PAA files in your data\layers\ directory.

The data\layers\ PAA tiles are also called Satellite/Surface (mask) tiles, in fact PMC terminology “satellite tile” is mostly referring to splitting up a large satellite texture/mask source image into smaller tiles which are easier to edit in GIMP.

Satellite/Surface (mask) tiles setting can be found from Terrain Builder Mapframe Properties → Samplers tab.

Image from PMC ArmA 3 Ultimate Terrain Tutorial.

When you edit large terrains with huge satellite texture/mask images, well beyond 40,960 x 40,960 pixel resolution, its recommended to use Satellite/Surface (mask) tiles size of 2048 because otherwise you get ArmA 3 in-game mapview zooming out bug where satellite texture appears as … err difficult to explain without example screenshots but it looks like “checker board” all messed up. PMCTODO add example screenshot here.

Most large ArmA 3 PMC Terrains previously used even as small as 512 x 512 pixel resolution surface mask tile sizes, it was only when this was increased to 2048 x 2048 pixel resolution when that ugly mapview zoomed out bug went away.

I cant remember terrain specifications for the 1024 vs 2048 surface mask size difference, if your terrain is 40km x 40km with 40,960 res satellite texture/mask I recall then 1024 is large enough surface mask, but I need to verify that from my terrain builder project files or dev diaries, hey don't blame me I haven't edited terrains in over a year now! hehe. 2024-08-04T11:55:00Z PMCTODO