Greatly reduce the ugly horizon band

[Bandy 3]

This is a FlightEngine.INI mod I found posted by Stary either in a thread somewhere now buried (or perhaps in Stary's terrain mod?) to push the horizon out and reduce the ugly gray band - it works very well in FE and has literally rejuvenated the game for me. Many thanks!

 

I make no illusions to being involved, I repeat this here only because several people have asked me about my mention of it elsewhere, and I could not point them to the right place to get it. The portions with // are code comments or stock code left in place to revert back to the original. Experiment and see if your rig can take it, it has had very little impact on FPS, perhaps only a little when close to the ground.

 

Remember to run in-game terrain settings at unlimited to use this mod, see relevant portions of code below:

 

FlightEngine.INI

 

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[GraphicsSettings]

ZBufferDepth=24

MaxVertexCount=16384

MaxIndexCount=32768

MaxTextureCount=8192

//MaxModelType=2048

//MaxMeshPerScene=4096

//MaxModelPerScene=4096

//Stary's suggestions>>>

MaxModelType=4096

MaxMeshPerScene=8192

MaxModelPerScene=8192

 

MaxLightPerScene=256

AspectRatio=1.333333

MinPixelSize=1.0

 

[FarSceneClip]

//FarClipDistance=20000.0

FarClipDistance=35000.0

NearClipDistance=1000.0

 

[NormalSceneClip]

//FarClipDistance=15000.0

FarClipDistance=25000.0

NearClipDistance=149.9

 

[NearSceneClip]

FarClipDistance=150.0

NearClipDistance=0.4

 

[LowDetailOption]

HorizonDistance=6000.0

DetailMeshSize=4

DetailLevel=0

WaterEffect=0

NoiseTexture=0

MaxTextureRes=128

 

[MedDetailOption]

HorizonDistance=7000.0

DetailMeshSize=6

DetailLevel=0

WaterEffect=1

NoiseTexture=0

MaxTextureRes=256

 

[HighDetailOption]

HorizonDistance=7500.0

DetailMeshSize=8

DetailLevel=0

WaterEffect=2

NoiseTexture=1

MaxTextureRes=-1

 

//[unlimitedDetailOption] STOCK values>>>

//HorizonDistance=8000.0

//DetailMeshSize=10

//DetailLevel=1

//WaterEffect=2

//NoiseTexture=1

//MaxTextureRes=-1

 

[unlimitedDetailOption]

HorizonDistance=20000.0

//HorizonDistance=15000.0

DetailMeshSize=10

DetailLevel=1

WaterEffect=2

NoiseTexture=1

MaxTextureRes=-1

 

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[Mikhayl 0]

Hi Bandy, could you post a screenshot to see the effect in your game?

When I do that edit, the horizon is much more distant but there is "object clipping" with a clear border between the tiles with objects and the empty tiles, like that:

 

With the stock unlimited settings there's that constant smog but it hides the clipping, as far as you can see there's no empty tiles:

 

Still looking for the best of both worlds

[Mike Dora 171]

Mikhayl,

 

I have the same problem. I've experimented with a range of different FlightEngine.ini settings, currently I'm using these:

 

[FarSceneClip]

FarClipDistance=36000.0

NearClipDistance=1000.0

 

[NormalSceneClip]

FarClipDistance=35000.0

NearClipDistance=149.9

 

[NearSceneClip]

FarClipDistance=150.0

NearClipDistance=0.4

 

[LowDetailOption]

HorizonDistance=6000.0

DetailMeshSize=4

DetailLevel=0

WaterEffect=0

NoiseTexture=0

MaxTextureRes=128

 

[MedDetailOption]

HorizonDistance=7000.0

DetailMeshSize=6

DetailLevel=0

WaterEffect=1

NoiseTexture=0

MaxTextureRes=256

 

[HighDetailOption]

HorizonDistance=7500.0

DetailMeshSize=8

DetailLevel=0

WaterEffect=2

NoiseTexture=1

MaxTextureRes=-1

 

[unlimitedDetailOption]

HorizonDistance=20000.0

//HorizonDistance=35000.0

//HorizonDistance=16000.0

DetailMeshSize=10

//DetailMeshSize=16

DetailLevel=1

WaterEffect=2

MaxTextureRes=-1

 

But what I still get looks like this:

 

 

 

Trouble is, I've now long lost the original FE settings! I just wish that I completely understood what each *clipdistance and horizondistance parameter actually does.

 

Mike

[Mikhayl 0]

Hi Mike, this looks like another problem, your terrain looks fairly seemless but there's that geometric haze that I don't have in my game. Also, if you have the SFP1 extractor tool, you can get a fresh stock FLIGHTENGINE.ini from FlighData.cat, or just delete or rename your current file and the game will revert to stock settings.

 

I tested some other options, I think my "problem" is when using Stary's new terrain + that horizon edit. Pictures are better than words so... In my post above the screenshots are taken with Stary's Enhanced terrain + Panama Red's Realistic sky, 1st one with far horizon and 2nd one with stock "unlimited" horizon (8km).

 

Now this is stock game with no mods at all except the horizon edit:

 

The transition between "tiles + objects" and "empty tiles" is nearly invisible, because the trees are less visible to start with.

 

Now this is my modded game with Stary's terrain + Panama Red's Realistic sky + horizon fix + the option in Stary's terrain readme to have differently rendered trees (close to the stock rendering like the screenshot above):

 

The transition is hardly visible, but the problem is that the trees are hardly visible as well, compared to Stary's default trees (here with stock 8km horizon):

 

Looks like the options are:

-Far horizon, nicely rendered trees, but very visible object clipping in the distance

-Far horizon with no object clipping, but nearly transparent trees in the foreground

-Nicely rendered trees with no object clipping, but horizon limited to 8km with "fog"

[Bandy 3]

Yes, one has to find what causes the least visual "pain" and go for it. I try to ignore the object clipping, it really only is a factor for me when approaching city tiles.

 

Getting rid of that horizon band was THE most important thing for me. I was easily disoriented and felt very claustrophobic. Now this mod makes a HUGE difference when flying Vogesen terrain, you can actually see the ranges of mountains Gepard developed, it is pure heaven...

 

Mike, I will try your numbers out as well.

 

Image simply lifted from my other post, I'll try to get something more illustrative later

 

Edited November 18, 2009 by B Bandy RFC

[Mike Dora 171]

Bart,

 

I'm going to launch into another series of experiments too, but not for a couple of weeks because I have a family visit "in" just now. Just a couple of thoughts & queries in the meantime though. Might my sharp-edged haze be a product of the EnvironmentSystem.ini file as opposed to the FlightEngine.ini file? I ask because I notice that the former has "fog" settings, I wonder if they affect the ground haze?

 

Secondly, and more fundamentally, just what is the "clipping" thing, and how does it work? Maybe I might make more progress adjusting the *clipdistance parameter, if I actually know what I'm doing!!

 

Thanks

 

Mike

[Mike Dora 171]

Bart,

 

Continued my experiments by copying exactly the Stary terrain and Panama Red sky that you're using (I was using those already, but re-loaded them to ensure consistency), and the FlightEngine.ini settings that you quote. Result is no change, I still get that ugly hard-edged haze.

 

So if it's not the in-game settings, thinks I, maybe it's the graphics card settings? I'm using an NVidia GeForce 9800GT, with the following settings for FE (can't now remember _why_ I set up these settings.. ):

 

 

 

I wonder if this is the place where things are going wrong, I wonder what your comparable settings?

 

Thanks

 

Mike

[Panama Red 22]

I was hoping that this modded FlightEngine.ini would improve my Realistic Sky Mod, so I gave it a try.

 

I tried my Realistic Sky Mod both with and without the modded FLIGHENGINE.INI and from what I can determine, it did not change the clear sky horizontal band at all, all it did was change the "fog" distance so you can now see the ground objects cut off line.

[Bandy 3]

P.Red I implemented your sky mod (many thanks!) a while before using the flightengine.ini mod and only then saw dramatic improvements to the horizon band. I can now fly at altitude (well, up to 7,000 to 10,000 ft. so not historically accurate maximum but I'll take it...) without the sky closing in on me and the visible ground turning into a postage stamp.

 

Hopefully we are talking about the same atmospheric effect, because people in this thread are mentioning different side effects resulting from the removal of the horizon band (and likely partially why TK had it in place in the first place).

 

Mike, while I'm not a well versed v-card tweaker (meaning I did my best setting up what I've got and left it at that), I doubt that the differences you are seeing reside in your video card. I have an ATI card, so likely a different ball'o'wax.

 

But certainly playing around with anisotropic filtering (if I remember correctly, but please correct if wrong...) may help a bit with distant texture resolution, but I don't think that cut-off.

 

I haven't played around with the settings further, mostly because I'm having fun and when there are clouds in the sky you just don't see it, but perhaps it is possible to push clipping distance out further. What are the limits???

 

EDIT: now that I'm going over the earlier posts and images again, there is a factor mentioned only tangentially to this issue, that being player altitude. The object clipping appears to be closing in on the terrain when you are at higher altitude (see Mike's image of Flanders at almost 8000 ft) because the distance is absolute, i.e. object clipping is not an issue at lower altitudes, but becomes pronounced (or more visible) when at higher altitudes because more of the clipping distance is taken up by your visual reference point "height".

 

Again there is a trade off, game play at historically realistic altitudes, or just enjoy the game at the lower altitudes TK has coded into the combat encounters (rarely over 5000 ft.). I have noticed I do not venture above 7000 ft anymore...

Edited November 24, 2009 by B Bandy RFC

[Panama Red 22]

I will agree that your FlightEngine.ini tweaks increase the range of viewing (it moves the game fog further away), but it unfortunetly it does not move the viewing line for ground objects the same distance as your new viewing distance. As a result, you now see the "cut off line" where the ground objects stop, so you have to decide just what you want to see or not see in the game and tweak accordingly.

 

When you first posted your FlightEngine.ini tweaks, I was hoping that it had deceased the horizon "blue" line even more since that was my original objective for my mod. Maybe there is still some secret out there to fix it, or it may just be hardcoded and we can do nothing till TK "fixes" it in the future.

[Bandy 3]

P. Red, not my mod, but Stary's.

 

I bet we can figure out the object clipping thing...

[NathanKell 0]

Should be the near, med, far clipping bands in the INI, right? IIRC I tweaked them out some and had to pull them back from stuttering (which meant they were doing _something_). I presume the near is bullet holes, the med are tod objects, and the far are terrain objects?

[Bandy 3]

Nathan. You mentioned stuttering, did the fps drop as well? I'm guessing that pushing clipping distances out further must geometrically increase the number of ground objects required to render and keep track of. Our systems at this time may not be able to handle that much information (?). Pushing tiles out may be relatively easy for the computer since many/most of the tiles are already loaded and they simply repeat. As mentioned, I'm just guessing.

 

I know Stary's new terrain with all the trees etc. absolutely kills my fps, and my system is still relatively powerful though 3 years old. The HD is likely my bottleneck and perhaps the 667 RAM, though I have 11 GB of it now (gotta love x64!!!).

 

Another observation. That ground fog "line" appearing at medium to far distance only is visible under certain conditions, such as the angle of the sun and what side the sun is on relative to the aircraft. I've noticed it generally gets worse at the periphery of my "vision" with TIR4, and "line" appears only on one side of the airplane, the other side has no "line".

 

Anyone notice this?

Edited December 10, 2009 by B Bandy RFC

[+Stary 2,427]

Hello guys,

 

I've been away from Combat Ace for several weeks due to RL, but here's one more thing:

 

The key is the method of AlphaObjects (namely: trees) rendering, set via terrain's _DATA.INI file. Like Mikhayl (welcome aboard! ) noticed, there was optional "blurried trees" setting in my readme, that uses filtering of the alphaobjects, reducing their appearance with distance, but I like the strong solid look of canopies, so it's allways a compromise. Currently I'm rebuilding my system, don't have FE+MODS up and running yet, but will look into the settings as soon as I'll get it working again.

 

Also remember FE2 will be out in weeks (so I hope, TK!) incorporating all the advanced shaders gallore (and creating few new oddities too...) and new settings for us to try -if you do also fly SF2 Israel, you already know the framerates goes waaay up, so does the image quality. I'm now knee-deep working on "high definition" SF2:E Germany terrain update, so I tell you -we can have dense trees and cities coverage way to the horizont, with minimal fps impact.

 

edit:

 

Also try using "supersampling" for antialiasing-transparency in your NVIDIA CP -I have impression it enhances the quality of distant trees slightly

 

edit 2:

 

seems I found the settings, quoting self from other buried post:

 

"2) Trees render settings:

 

If you don't like the look of the trees, there's way to make them look softer, but may cause slight rendering errors:

 

the settings adjusting the look of trees can be found in terrainname_data.ini (ie. wwiVerdun_data.ini), under the tab

 

[AlphaObjectTextureMaterial] :

 

this mod by default uses these settings:

 

[AlphaObjectTextureMaterial]

DepthBufferCheck=TRUE

DepthBufferWrite=TRUE

RenderedInOrder=TRUE

AlphaTestEnabled=TRUE

CullMode=TRANSPARENCY

LightEnabled=TRUE

SpecularEnabled=FALSE

EmissiveEnabled=FALSE

FogEnabled=TRUE

AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.00000

DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.00000

ZBufferOffset=2.000000

BlendOp=BLEND_DST_ALPHA

NumTextureStages=1

TextureStage[01].TextureName=

TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE

TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE

TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE

TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=TEXTURE_BLEND_TEXTURE_ALPHA

 

while these settings render the trees correctly, is makes them a bit solid and blocky when viewed from long distance,

 

so you may wish to use these settings instead:

 

[AlphaObjectTextureMaterial]

DepthBufferCheck=TRUE

DepthBufferWrite=TRUE

RenderedInOrder=TRUE

AlphaTestEnabled=TRUE

CullMode=NO_CULL

LightEnabled=TRUE

SpecularEnabled=FALSE

EmissiveEnabled=FALSE

FogEnabled=TRUE

AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.00000

DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.00000

ZBufferOffset=2.000000

BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA

NumTextureStages=1

TextureStage[01].TextureName=

TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE

TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE

TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE

TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=TEXTURE_BLEND_TEXTURE_ALPHA

 

makes them look softer, slightly fading in the distance, but slight white outlines around them may appear, engine renderer error

 

finally, here are default First Eagles settings, causes rendering order errors (further trees look as in front of the closer ones, no scene sorting):

 

[AlphaObjectTextureMaterial]

DepthBufferCheck=TRUE

DepthBufferWrite=FALSE

RenderedInOrder=TRUE

AlphaTestEnabled=TRUE

CullMode=NO_CULL

LightEnabled=TRUE

SpecularEnabled=FALSE

EmissiveEnabled=FALSE

FogEnabled=TRUE

AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000

DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000

ZBufferOffset=2.000000

BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA

NumTextureStages=1

TextureStage[01].TextureName=

TextureStage[01].MipMap=FALSE

TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE

TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE

TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=TEXTURE

 

feel free to experiment with the settings, maybe you'll discover setings that suits you the best"

Edited December 10, 2009 by Stary

[Mike Dora 171]

Thanks for that Stary,

 

I'm away from home just now, so look forward to experimenting with these alternative settings when I get back. In the meantime though, will these AlphaObjects setting in the *_data.ini files, affect the surface fog hard-edged "line" that is a major source of annoyance? I ask because I'm getting that line over the sea, where there are of course no trees.

 

Thanks

 

Mike

[+Stary 2,427]

Mike unfortunately no, I think the line is related to the terrain mesh rendering engine, and the farterrain advanced shaders in upcoming FE2 might correct this. But I'll look into it. Might be enviroment system related (fog, after all) aswell.

 

TK stated they want FE2 out this very year, right? not much weeks left

[Mike Dora 171]

Thanks Stary,

 

As for FE2, I view its introduction with a degree of trepidation. While looking forward to the anticipated improvements (hope it includes descending balloons & balloonatics' parachutes), I just pray that it is backwards-compatible with all of the work that so many people have invested in expanding and polishing FE1.

 

BTW, random silly thought, if FE2 gets a couple of patches, would the second one turn it into an FE2b?

 

Mike

[+Stary 2,427]

I'm pretty sure there will be some compatibility issues, but I hope not that many. Sadly the FMs are prone to code changes, so may need some additional tweaking (thinking about Peter's ones)

 

Surely it would, keep in mind if patched in wrong order may turn into Aviatik C.II