Issue with Distant water textures

[Ian Astill]

Hi Guys, Nice to see peeps still involved with this sim. Also a bit sad to see a few faces missing. Anyhoo. I'm back and already struggling! haha.

Any ideas what is going on here?

I have installed ETO scenery following Rami's excellent guide. I then added BOB campaign using the auto installer packages 1a, 1b and 2. The only other add ons I added were several sets of Euro water textures, None of which fix this issue. It seems to me that the most distant LOD is referencing old PTO textures but im not sure where from. As I fly towards it euro textures appear. However it does make things look ugly.

 

[Shessi]

Hi Ian,
Blast from the past....good to have you back.

Right, the dreaded distant tex. Unfortunately it's a CFS2 thing. Not that noticiable on a standard install, but will be when you're upgrading. The fudge is to reduce your distance view setting to 10-15 miles, this will give you a misty distance view, and you won't see the problem until over 10,000ft. I also make sure there are some/one covering cloud layer, also several others that are dispersed clouds. This looks quite natural, and it covers up that distant view issue somewhat. So with the two settings, it vastly improves what you see. BTW it's not just water that it happens with but land tex as well.

Cheers

Shessi

 

[dvslats]

Grief Saver

Remember Ian, To change this maximum viewing distance with Win 10 the cfs2.cfg has to be hand edited.

MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=24140 = 15 miles

MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=32186 = 25 miles

Try to keep a working "good" copy of the cfs2.cfg stored on the desktop or folder of choice.
That way if anything gets snafued, the good copy can always be copied, pasted and overwrite the porked one in cfs2's main folder.

I'm saving a txt of settings needed as I run into them. That's where the above numbers came from.

Cheerz, Dave

 

[Ian Astill]

Again, thanks for the tips guys. I'll make the adjustments you have recommended.

Is there a way of changing the altitude of Quick Combat engagements? If not I'll just make up some quick missions to use instead!

 

[Ravenna]

Remember Ian, To change this maximum viewing distance with Win 10 the cfs2.cfg has to be hand edited.

MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=24140 = 15 miles

MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=32186 = 25 miles

Try to keep a working "good" copy of the cfs2.cfg stored on the desktop or folder of choice.
That way if anything gets snafued, the good copy can always be copied, pasted and overwrite the porked one in cfs2's main folder.

I'm saving a txt of settings needed as I run into them. That's where the above numbers came from.

Cheerz, Dave

Thanks for this valuable tip Dave. Can't wait to try this out.

 

[Motormouse]

Yes, its a draw distance thing, fs02 and fs2004 suffer similar.

Imagine if you will, your user plane is at the centre point of a WW2 Luftwaffe 'cross', the arms of the cross are directly in front and behind you, and to the left and right. The area within this cross out to the draw distance specified by the cfg file, will be presented in detail, so as your aeroplane moves, so does this cross shape of detail across the terrain.

Problem being, the larger the draw distance, the greater the difference between detailed and mipmapped
terrain textures, and that is what you are seeing in your shot.

You could try removing mips (mip maps) from terrain textures, but, your graphics card and memory use will increase, a lot, and some graphics cards won't handle non mipped textures at all (you get a ctd or stutters)

Ttfn

Pete

 

[gius]

Many Thanks for the useful tip, Dave
Gius

 

[Allen]

@Motormouse
I don't think it has anything to do with mip maps. From my testing it looks like the far area isn't using a texture but is colored by material settings.

 

[UncleTgt]

See this thread for an informative discussion regarding the blue/green squares displaying in the distance from high altitude. Looks like it was a conscious coding decision when they created CFS2 to avoid memory draw problems ...

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforu...ual-renderer?p=1096629&viewfull=1#post1096629

 

[Rami]

Reply...

Ian,

Since you have a good, working ETO install, (and can probably make another copy of it) I can give you a copy of the Battle of France to beta test as we are just about to the finished line for Part I.

337 missions should keep you busy for a while... (Belgian, Dutch, French, British, German)

 

[Ian Astill]

That sounds amazing!

And yes I have a blank ETO install as a backup!

In relation to my initial problem, I forgot that you could customise the visibility in the cfg. I reduced the value to 15000 and it has completely eradicated the issue. The only thing is it looks like there is a permanent haze. I'll keep adding a little more distance until I get a good compromise!

 

[Rami]

Reply...

That sounds amazing!

And yes I have a blank ETO install as a backup!

In relation to my initial problem, I forgot that you could customise the visibility in the cfg. I reduced the value to 15000 and it has completely eradicated the issue. The only thing is it looks like there is a permanent haze. I'll keep adding a little more distance until I get a good compromise!

Ian,

I usually go with the 15 mile setting.

As far as BoF, I will try and have a copy on my box.net site ready for you this weekend. There may be a minor change or two from its final form, but you should be good otherwise. It's practically completed.