now one large grass area model is of 144 tris. 6 times larger than I used earlier based on a model from Loopix. it can be bigger on flat terrains, and lod could be used too. I will make some more trials and include it in my editor, so everybody can play with it.
what I found not to be an effective thing is to use sprite based bushes (500 bushes means 1500 _x.dds sprite entities), I will combine them into single models with 2-3 lod models.
in the sceen above I used 4 split pssm shadows, processing only the 2 closer splits. in a RPG/FPS game it results in a fine fps boost, while camera.clip_far can be 10.000 quants to have a far enough visibility range. moreover using UNLIT and OVERLAY and no SHADOW for grass and bushes is also a speed increase. only the emissive values of the unlit material should be adjusted to level lights...