Table of Contents
Water Colors for Depth
ArmA 3 water colors for depth, how deep your ocean have to be in order it to be “dark blue” etc.
Elevation of 0.25m shows the ugly square grid (is it texture layer size?) on ground surface as water (difficult to explain, check it out yourself), do not ever use precisely 0 meter elevation, always go at least 0.5m above or below.
| Elevation Meters | Mapview Color | 3D |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | White (no blue tint) | Solid ground |
| 4 | White with blue tint | Solid ground |
| 0.4 | White with blue tint | Ground “water shade” starts below this |
| 0.25 | White with blue tint | Ground with ugly “water shade”, but no actual water anymore, dont use this |
| 0 | White / Blue in-between | Ground with transparent water layer on top of it (ugly), dont use this |
| -0.01 | Blue | Water |
| -5 | Blue | Water, shallow, river a like or a puddle. Takes water color effect from bottom satellite texture |
| -50 | Blue | Water, deep dark blue ocean |
3D
For land 0.25m looks fine, however on certain satellite texture colors you still can see the square grid ugliness. I recommend higher elevation than 0.25m for the land.
Ocean depths -5m is decent depth, except that you can see the bottom satellite texture shade / color, like if its bright the water is bright, if its dark the water is dark. For real ocean depths much deeper elevations are required.
Depth of -5m is not nearly enough for oceans, put it to -50m instead where bottom satellite texture wont give colors to the water and it feels like deep ocean instead a shallow puddle.
Ocean waves in -50m surface are larger than in -5m, I guess this simulates the shallow water being much calmer than deeper ocean.
If terrain edge depth is -5m or other shallow one, then the outside or “infinite” terrain gets this repeated look from the bottom texture (guess you have to see it to know what I mean). It is recommended to use “deep” depths for terrain edge heightmap grids to avoid this ugly look.
Mapview (M)
Mapview is normal white on approximately 5m elevation, when below it starts to have blue tint and it turns into full blue water below 0m.
The blue tint looks odd and annoying, if any way possible you should avoid elevations between 0m up to 4m maybe even 5m. This of course is a problem on real world data terrains where often the elevations are even below sea level.
