Hellshade 110 Posted November 22, 2010 (edited) If anyone else has the problem of clouds just "popping" in and out, try the following and see if it helps at all. In the Workshop is of course the CFS3 Config utility. Open that up and pull down the menu. You get 5 choices which are (from top to bottom) Image Quality, Overrides, Texture Info, Texture Limits and last on the list is Z-Bias. Select Z-bias. The default Z Bias Resolution is 15 bits. For now, leave that setting there. Then every other setting below that one, including Z-Bias Clouds, set to 0. Save it, exit out and try flying and looking around at the clouds. Once I did that, I noticed 99% of cloud popping simply went away. Hopefully it will be true for others if they give it a try. Let me know if it does or does not work for you please. It seems to work for tree popping also. Also, I then bumped Z Bias Resolution (the top slider in the Z-Bias window) down to 13. That allowed me to put my Terrain slider up to 3 (AC =4, Terrain=3, Scenery=4, Effects=5 and Clouds=5) but not lose hardly any frame rates. If I lowered it below 13 I noticed the cloud popping issue started back up again and if I raised it much higher (like around 22) I noticed I started getting some laggy frame rates. Again, I don't know how it will impact each individual setup but if you have cloud and scenery popping issues, give that a try. Hellshade Edited November 22, 2010 by Hellshade Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Olham 164 Posted November 22, 2010 I believe to have noticed an improvement with the clouds "flickering", since I enabled "OpenGL: Triple buffering" in my ATI CatalystControl. They hardly ever "flicker" now. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RAF_Louvert 101 Posted November 22, 2010 . Hellshade, I went in and tried your settings but noticed no difference with my system. However, I then started playing around and discovered that if I turn Z-Bias Clouds up to 4 the cloud popping at the edges of the screen goes away completely, (never really saw much tree popping in my set-up). Also, (and this one may be my imagination or lack of enough coffee so far this AM), I bumped all four water settings up to 3 and it seems to have improved the looks of that feature as well. More tweaking is in order in these settings I do believe. Many thanks for this very useful tip Sir. Cheers! Lou . Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Olham 164 Posted November 22, 2010 Screenshots, screenshots!!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Parky 8 Posted November 22, 2010 I believe to have noticed an improvement with the clouds flickering since I enabled OpenGL: Triple buffering in my ATI CatalystControl. They hardly ever flicker now. Unless you're using something like D3D Overrider to "force" triple buffering, what you're seeing is a placebo effect. There are only a handful of games that provide native support for Triple Buffering, and I'm pretty sure they have to be run in OpenGL in order for it to work unless you "force" it with a 3rd party application. Merely enabling the feature through Catalyst Control Center would result in no difference whatsoever, as as OFF runs exclusively in a D3D environment. Not sure if you were aware of this and thought it might be helpful.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Olham 164 Posted November 22, 2010 So in other words: I may as well switch it off again (and thereby save some action for the graphic card)? Thanks, Parky - I had googled "Open Glide", and it sounded like it would make sense to activate that. But like always: you know the details behind the surface. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Parky 8 Posted November 22, 2010 I don't think switching it on strictly via Catalyst Control will put any additional load on the card at all.....because at that point, triple buffering ain't working....lol. I'd like to hear BirddogICT's opinion with regard to this scenario though, just to be sure. Hopefully he stumbles on this thread and offers us some additional insight. This Z-bias thing is an interesting find by Hellshade nonetheless, and although I've fiddled with those settings in the past, I may just fiddle with them again to see if I get some positive results. Cheers, Parky Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tamper 9 Posted November 22, 2010 Great thread...I do hope it continues. One of the (very, very, very) few issues I have with OFF is the cloud 'presentation'. They look very believeable from a distance, but this "popping" thing has always bothered me. Like I suspect many probably do, I always wrote it off as something limited by CFS3 - but it's very exciting to know there may be hope. I need to try Hellshade's recommendations and others to see what effect I can get. Another cloud issue happens when I zoom in the default cockpit view. (I think most probably shun this, but I find it enhances the game by increasing my FOV). WHat happens is the could effect - the 'white out' or fogging that occurs in clouds is 'cut off' at both edges of my widescreen display. The middle looks great, but there's a very narrow bar of 'normal' visibility at both sides. Polovski had said once (correctly) that it only happens in zoomed view. But - here's the funny part - there was a point on my prior machine where it didn't happen. It could've been becuase I changed a setting, and when I upgraded my PC/reloaded OFF, I failed to set something right (though I have screen caps and thought I duplicated the old settings). Another thing it could easily be is drivers. In any event, if there are ways to improve clouds in OFF, it would eliminate the last remaining problems I have with graphics. I noted P4 has improved clouds - but again, since I associated the cloud issues with CFS3, I don't know how far OBD can go - even with their superlative record of making miracles of a mediocre game. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Burning Beard 14 Posted November 22, 2010 Open GL is not the same as Open Glide.....Glide was used by the old 3DFX (Voodoo) cards and I believe Open Glide was an emulator to allow you to run Glide applications on other cards. In case you wonder why I know this, it is because Glide cards or Open Glide was necessary to run Red Baron 3D. Beard Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Hellshade 110 Posted November 22, 2010 The Z-Bias settings definately have an effect on how things look and run, however it appears to be a bit of a big ball of tangled yarn. When I pushed up all four water sliders to 3 as Louvert suggested, the water did indeed become more detailed, but then my cloud popping came back too. As soon as I put all four sliders for water back down to 0, the cloud popping went away again. Overall though, I definately notice things run smoother when I push Z-Bias Resolution down to 13 from 15 without personally noticing any loss in details. Perhaps that only affects the stuff far in the distance. At any rate, another trick that seems to have a bit of a positive impact is to reduce the range that Fog starts at under the Texture Info menu. It defaults to 100,000 which means no fog. Slide it to the left a little and the next time you fly, you should notice that you can't see all the way to the horizon even on a clear day. Fog sets in, reducing the amount of land and scenery your video card has to draw. With so many different configurations for everyones machines I can't say for sure what any given change will effect, but I highly recommend folks looking to push a little more perfomance out of their rigs play around in the Z-Bias menu to see what they can do for themselves. I'm able to run at 4,4,4,5,5 settings, 1920 x 1200, 16xQ, 16x AA at a very steady 60 FPS as long as I'm not recording a FRAPS video (obviously when you try and write a full screen video to your hard drive while playing, you are going to get a performance hit). I hope others have some good luck in there too. Hellshade Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BirdDogICT 3 Posted February 28, 2011 I don't think switching it on strictly via Catalyst Control will put any additional load on the card at all.....because at that point, triple buffering ain't working....lol. I'd like to hear BirddogICT's opinion with regard to this scenario though, just to be sure. Hopefully he stumbles on this thread and offers us some additional insight. This Z-bias thing is an interesting find by Hellshade nonetheless, and although I've fiddled with those settings in the past, I may just fiddle with them again to see if I get some positive results. Cheers, Parky Sorry, Gents, I hadn't seen this thread...was lucky enough to land a new job and have been very busy. I check in every day or so, but am mostly lurking these days. Parky is exactly right...opengl triple buffering in Catalyst doesn't work without a third party vsync program running. I use D3DOverrider with good success. I simply start it before I run BHaH. It's a simple program, doesn't make any registry changes, and the interface is easy to use. Adjusting z-bias can be a can of worms, but Hellshade's advice is good. I only made two changes...set Z-bias Resolution to 13 and Z-Bias Clouds to 0. No cloud popping at all. Cheers Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BirdDogICT 3 Posted March 1, 2011 At any rate, another trick that seems to have a bit of a positive impact is to reduce the range that Fog starts at under the Texture Info menu. It defaults to 100,000 which means no fog. Slide it to the left a little and the next time you fly, you should notice that you can't see all the way to the horizon even on a clear day. Fog sets in, reducing the amount of land and scenery your video card has to draw. Hellshade Can you set it up so that you're flying in a fishbowl like RB3D? That would be retro! LOL Good advice Hellshade. Keep it coming! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Wodin 0 Posted March 2, 2011 @Tamper to stop the cloud effect cutting off on either side of the screen disable in cloud effect.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tamper 9 Posted March 2, 2011 @Tamper to stop the cloud effect cutting off on either side of the screen disable in cloud effect.... Thank you, sir :) I had actually been reviewing this lately myself, but I do appreciate your thinking of me. I had seen this, and also another thread where it was suggested to turn off the 'in-cloud' effect. Unfortunately, a lot of r/l has kept me lately from a lot of stuff I would rather be doing *lol*. One of these - a good thing, actually - was I got two more SSDs for my RAID0 array (now total=4). But this necessitated reloading my machine in order to get the drives on the controllers like I wanted. Then several friends and relatives had PC problems, so that took some time...then a leak in the basement ceiling (awfully close to my 'theater room' ...yikes!) and on and on...I have had a front row seat to the "Crazy as a Sh*thouse Rat Show" for a while, it seems *heh* Good news is things are starting to settle down now, so I hope to get a chance to try Hellshade's advice and the in-cloud setting sometime soon. Thanks again for your suggestion! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
