TO LOWER THE ALTITUDE OF CLOUDS IN SF2

[Wrench 10,454]

TO LOWER THE ALTITUDE OF CLOUDS IN SF2

by pagsab

- Read the full thread at https://combatace.com/forums/topic/97376-clouds-altitude-hack/ to understand the potential and side-effects of Stary’s ingenious tweak.

- Save the ENVCLOUDS.FX file from Stary’s opening post of the thread.

- Navigate to your Flight folder, which should be in  – [your name] – Saved Games – Third Wire – [the name of the version you are playing].

- Open the Flight folder, and paste a copy of Stary’s file there.

- Open the file with Notepad, scroll down to the Vertex Shader section, and find the active line of code (without the preceding //) in which Stary inserts a deduction of 1900.  If desired, you may increase his deduction to make clouds even lower over flat terrain, or reduce it to keep the cloud base above hilly terrain.  Deductions from 1000 to 3000 should work.

- Close the file, and agree to save any change you have made.

- Start the sim and press Single Mission – Create Mission to test the results.  Select Scattered or Broken clouds (the only ones affected), and note that modifying cloud height in the mission editor has little if any effect.

- Accept and Fly the mission, and climb up to see the results.  The change should affect Scattered or Broken clouds in all missions including saved and Campaign missions, and can be tweaked by exiting the sim and amending Stary’s deduction or removing his file before restarting the game.

 

Stary’s tweak does not work in a few terrains such as EuroWW2, apparently because they contain higher mountains than normal.  If you wish to lower the clouds for missions over flatter parts of the terrain, you will need to cut the mountains temporarily down to size.

- First, read the full thread at https://combatace.com/forums/topic/80880-te-question-height-map-to-hfd/, especially Baltika’s helpful comments on using the Third Wire terrain editor for height map editing.

- Download the terrain editor from http://www.thirdwire.com/downloads_tools.htm, and extract the zipped files to a folder in a location of your choice.

- Open the folder, and open the TerrainEditor.ini file with Notepad.  Check that the HeightScales for BitmapExport and BitmapImport are set at the default 10.  Close the file and accept any change that was required.

- Double click on TerrainEditor.exe to start the program.

- In the File menu of the resulting window, click on Open, and browse to the folder of the terrain concerned, which should be in Desktop – [your name] – Saved Games – Third Wire – [the name of the version you are playing] – Terrains.

- Select the terrain folder (such as EuroWW2) without opening it, and click on Open at the bottom of the program window.  This should create a window showing any sub-folders within the folder, and any HFD files in the folder (such as EuroWW2.HFD).  HFD files whose name does not exactly match the name of the Terrain folder will not be opened by the Editor, so if need be you will have to rename the file before continuing.

-Select the HFD file without opening it, and click again on Open at the bottom of the program window.  In the View menu, select View Height Field and select a zoom level of 100%.  If all is well, you should now see a coloured square map showing the terrain.

- Move your cursor across the map, and note how the height of each point is displayed at the bottom right of the program window.

- In the File menu, click on Export Height Map as Bitmap.  Change the save location to your desktop, and choose a file name such as EuroWW2mod.bmp.  Press Save to export the bitmap.

- Minimize the Editor window if need be, right click on the saved bitmap, and select Properties – Details to find its size in pixels.

- Return to the Editor window, and click on New in the File menu.  If the Terrain Map Size in the resulting dialogue box is not exactly half the width of the bitmap in pixels, modify it accordingly.  (The EuroWW2mod.bmp should be 3000 pixels square, matching the default Terrain Map Size of 1500.)

- Clicking OK should replace the terrain map with a completely blue square, representing a new blank ocean map.

- In the File menu, click on Import Height Map from Bitmap.  Navigate to point the program to the saved bitmap on your desktop, highlight it, and click on Open at the bottom of the program window.

- You should now see the coloured terrain map again, but with the crucial difference that moving your cursor over it should show that the highest mountains have been capped at 2550 meters.  (Baltika explained the reason in the thread which you read at the outset.)

- In the File menu, click on Save As, and again choose to save on your desktop and to name the saved file EuroWW2mod.HFD or the equivalent.

- Clicking on Save at the bottom should create several new files on your desktop.  The only one you need is the HFD file, so you can delete all the rest and close the terrain editor.

- Navigate to your terrain folder (such as EuroWW2) in Desktop – [your name] – Saved Games – Third Wire – [the name of the version you are playing] – Terrains.  Open the folder, find the original HFD file such as EuroWW2.HFD, and rename it to something like EuroWW2real.HFD.  Now rename the modded file on your desktop EuroWW2.HFD or the equivalent, and move it into the folder so that it becomes the active HFD file for the terrain.

- Start the sim and fly a test mission as explained above, to see if Stary’s cloud tweak now works as it does elsewhere.  You may rename and swap the HFD files to choose between low clouds or uncapped mountains, depending on where missions are flown.  You should make backups of both the original and the amended HFD files and store them safely just in case.

 

The terrain editor may also be used to increase or decrease all heights in proportion, so as to exaggerate relief as in Sundowner’s Photo Real UK Terrain or to tone it down to a more realistic level (helpful in stopping lowered clouds colliding with beefed-up hills).  This is a more advanced process involving divergent Height Scales for bitmap export and import, and you will need to experiment for yourself once you have got the hang of the basic functionality covered here.

 

EDIT: 

The Terrain Editors (there are 2 - one for SF 1&2 Desert style terrain, and the other for WoI/WoE/WoV and the rest of the SF2 series, EXCEPTING SF2:NA. As that's a LOD based terrain, nothing works on it.

Link:

https://combatace.com/files/file/6492-terrain-editor-2-versions/