Disappearing prop disc and time compression frustration

[redpiano 6]

Hey guys, I've been enjoying the game a lot more lately, I downloaded Andy's sound mod which is phenomenal.

 

Anyways, I'm having an issue where effects, objects and the prop disc on my plane will disappear depending on where I'm looking. With the prop disc when I look slightly upwards it disappears but if I look down it reappears, I also have this problem with clouds as well, some clouds will disappear when looking slightly off to the side of them and then reappear at a different angle, I also noticed this with smoke trails from burning planes, often times the black smoke will simply vanish until I look at a different angle.

 

Also the time skip seems to be a bit weird and a little frustrating, often times when I use it it'll warp me forward a ways until an enemy is in the vicinity, which is fine, but then when I continue forward along the waypoint until the enemy is no longer in the area when I click warp it turns me around and heads me back to the previous waypoint instead of the one I was headed to.

 

Any ideas? Is there a simple time compression like in il2 and other flight sims instead of the time skip?

[NS13Jarhead 6]

Many years ago, Sandbagger produced a handy Excel chart that had all the key combos on it. It may still be in the hints stickies at the top of the forum.

 

These are the keys you're looking for:

 

Speed up time: Ctrl + Shift + E

Slow down time: Ctrl + Shift + R

 

But just like Warp, these will drop you back to normal speed if you are near an airborne enemy.

 

For Warp to take you to the next waypoint, you have to hit Shift + W before warping

 

Sorry, but I can't help you with the props and clouds.

Edited April 27, 2012 by NS13Jarhead

[redpiano 6]

Oh awesome, I couldn't find anything in the controls options. Do you know if there's a way to change the input?

[Shootist 0]

Oh awesome, I couldn't find anything in the controls options. Do you know if there's a way to change the input?

 

Problem being if you use some of the other methods of time compression, you'll anger the Manager. While it might work ( for a while anyway ). It's Not Good to anger the manager

 

 

 

 

 

[+Polovski 460]

Speed up time: Ctrl + Shift + E

Slow down time: Ctrl + Shift + R

 

Works fine normally. To void any issues best not to warp or time compress for long periods anyway - you are basically running much of the sim at high speed loading in more data and crunching numbers = more work for the cpu/memory .

 

But a correction - these will NOT drop you back to normal speed if you are near an airborne enemy. You will die quickly :)

Also unless you enable auto pilot first, you have to fly too. Quite good on 4X when you are high enough to turn it off quickly.

 

Note do NOT remap these keys to something else it will likely stop it working for good.

 

So take it easy maybe 16x when you are high and sure you are clear otherwise drop to 4X or 2X so you can stay in control.

 

 

Yes some textures especially huge clouds will flicker sometimes not much you can do it's when they are just in or out of view at odd angles. TrackiR likely makes it worse.

 

Props known issue was not fixable in P3 and in OFF2 we have looked at briefly but not found a better way. If there is time maybe we can look again but there is always so much to do, so "maybe" is all we can say at this stage.

 

Warp is fine but again use it in shorter bursts is best. Sometimes you can avoid more enemies that way too.

Check you have not remapped something else to the waypoint next/prev keys too. Also on some patrol/cap type missions you must loiter between two points several times so warp will send you back of course.

[redpiano 6]

Okay thank you Pol that answers my questions, much appreciated and very much looking forward to OFF2.

[Olham 164]

redpiano, to warp to the NEXT waypoint, you need to make sure it is assigned.

Cause if you haven't passed the previous waypoint via "warp", the warping will bring you to that one.

 

To select the waypoint you want to warp to, you need to have the TAC up.

The command for shifting through the waypoints is "Shift + W", if I remember right.

(See key commands chart by Homeboy in the Stickies above).

[redpiano 6]

It's alright, I'll just use time compression, I prefer that to time skip.

[+matt milne 5]

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_(computer_graphics)

 

Clipping is a 3d and 2d nightmare, 'popping' as it's called in the business is incredibly common right up to the latest engines. Also early culling on the clip plane (where the polys on the nearest surface to you clip out because the camera is looking through it is another common headache. the z buffer and the clip system will disagree on where the surface is and so the engine will not draw it. This can be much more noticeable with 2d transparent textures and effects.

sometimes in a fps if you are near to a wall and turn slightly, the wall will disappear and you will see through it. This is because the surface of the wall is closer to the camera than the near clip plane, so it is not drawn. modern fps games resolve this issue by setting the wall's collision distance greater than the near clip plane.

 

With spherical clipping the problem is worse where objects are partly in the clip sphere and partly out (one corner of a cloud for example could be sticking out of a sphere causing the whole object to disappear)

where you have a large number of 2d sprites in the same area, the computer struggles to determine which is infront and which is behind (see z buffer fighting)

where the object has a z buffer and a clipping issue, the engine will fight with the graphics card for supremacy.

 

Most current graphics cards struggle beyond 1000 individual objects, and/or 100k polys, subsequently clip planes and lod (levels of detail) are the only way to reduce the load. until we all have supercomputers on our desks this will always be the case. there are hundreds of other tricks.

 

Forests for example are usually a collection of 2d planes (little cut out trees) but up close they are replaced by 3d trees. both look the same up close and at distance, but one is a thousand times less information than the other. if each tree was drawn in full detail you'd be down to 1 frame a second after a hundred trees. And games such as off and rof, would be impossible, where forests of thousands of trees are shown.

 

the human eye is thought to have a range of similar filtering techniques so that only important objects are focused on.

[RamblingSid 3]

Thanks Matt,

 

for the explanation. I get "popping"

in OFF and RoF and have often

wondered why. Like Red, I

thought TIR may be a cause, but

now I know.

 

Cheers

[redpiano 6]

I haven't experienced the disappearing geometry in any game before, I noticed it with the rockets on the N17 earlier too, it's quite a bother.

[RamblingSid 3]

I haven't experienced the disappearing geometry in any game before, I noticed it with the rockets on the N17 earlier too, it's quite a bother.

 

Hi redpiano,

 

I've only seen it in OFF and RoF. But I don't have a very wide experience of

computer games/gaming.

 

In OFF I get popping with clouds/trees/buildings, but lately much

reduced due to fine-tuning - especially clouds.

RoF popping with trees and, I think, sometimes clouds.

 

Never had a prob with N17 rockets, but wasn't there a fix in one of the

patches ?

[+matt milne 5]

I haven't experienced the disappearing geometry in any game before, I noticed it with the rockets on the N17 earlier too, it's quite a bother.

 

take any game with an adjustable draw distance or level of detail, and lower the settings to minimum. You'll see these effects no problem.

Most common in simulation, strategy and fps games. I seem to remember a transparent building issue in sc4, popping fire effects in medal of honor, and anything else in id tech 3, the occasional fsx cloud issue, also model and texture issues in the lord of the rings games, as well as similar problems in the star wars games, also gta 3 onwards had similar issues. Like I said, it's a programming and design nightmare even for the best.

Water is a common problem, where it z fights with the edge of the terrain. Glass windows are another example, where the pane z fights with the frame.

 

TIR enhances the phenomena by turning a smoother more restricted camera into a freer rotating one, so objects coming into and out of the field of view are easier to see before they've fully rendered. Generally moving a camera quickly in any rendering environment will cause a precision issue.

[redpiano 6]

Are you sure you aren't confusing "pop-in" with "popping"? This seems to me like a different issue than pop-in, which is something that occurs for a various number of reasons, such as the distance at which you can see detail objects or for things like Unreal engine you have texture pop-in where it takes time for the textures to load in when your each a new scene, but that stuff isn't like the issue I'm having, like with the N17 rockets, they're five feet away from me in game but if I angle my head down a bit they disappear.

[Flyby PC 23]

I think a contributing factor with TrackIR is that it lets you see things from viewpoints which objects were not meant to be seen from, and they run into issues of planes and renders not quite matching up. I've seen it in lots of games, and quite often, you can also get your character 'stuck' in that part of the scenery. Fallout New Vegas had lots of gremlins like that. Jump around the hillsides or collapsed buildings looking for good sniper shots and sooner or later you'll find yourself stuck and unable to move. If you're lucky, there arent any enemies near and you can quick move to another place, but if you can't you're stuck there. It's also quite similar in having issues over perspective, where big 'barn sized' objects suddenly appear out of nowhere.

 

 

I personally don't have a problem with it. When everything has multiple renders and every piece of geometry worked out 100%, it can really slow down the game. I remember flying multiplayer missions with the old CFS3 planes, and when some of those user built planes appeared in view, your framerate just collapsed. I seem to recall a corsair being particularly FPS hungry. If those were around, I had to fly with full Zoom on to keep these aircraft out of view or my FPS became a slideshow. If they happened to be the target, then that was game over for me.

 

 

I'd rather have a smooth running game where from time to time I can see the edges, than a fully resolved and perfectly rendered world with 2 or 3 frames per second.

[redpiano 6]

It's not like I'm trying to look at spots I shouldn't be looking at, simply angling my view down or looking in the direction of the N17's rockets makes them disappear, if seeing rockets and the flat prop disc is going to bring my framerate down then something else is wrong here ;P

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

RP, this has been an issue since the release of CFS3. OFF unfortunately is the inheritor of the same problem due to its shared engine. All you can do is tweak your graphics setting to minimize it as much as possible. It also helps if you hop out of the cockpit shortly after takeoff and briefly pan 360 degrees around your aircraft, then hop back in.

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

 

.

[redpiano 6]

Okay, no problem I just wanted to know. I'll try what you mention next time I play.

[+matt milne 5]

also make sure scenery and terrain detail sliders aren't on maximum, sometimes they accidentally get put on max. Make sure you've got high-resolution z buffer ticked, think about reducing the clip settings as well. olham has a screen capture with suggested graphics settings. try lower settings if you keep having graphics glitches.

 

some sliders should be kept at minimum or less than maximum, regardless of the rig.

 

As a general rule of thumb for any game, the more you can see in a world, the less well you will see it:

the z buffer has a limited number of places, and all objects infront of the camera have to fit in them. z fighting occurs when more than one object tries to occupy the same space. usually greater clip distances and detail = lower quality.

less is more, as they say.

 

[+Polovski 460]

I think this thread has run it's course. Been discussed many times.

Props have been in the FAQ for some time under

 

KNOWN ISSUES COMMON TO BH&H and HITR:

 

....

b) Blurred Propellers do not show from Virtual Cockpit (VC) or may flicker when viewed at an angle– currently not fixable due to shorter distance for eye point to propeller in WW1 craft.

"

 

The VC is a special area that is not the same visual space as the Lod100 model. Sometimes some items encroach in a way that makes them vanish. Not all objects do but some do. Props for example do. Shorter noses on WW1 craft than WW2 don't help. Rockets in some instances, we may be able to fix we shall see. Props one day maybe.

 

 

We have improved lots, and will keep doing and improving/fixing/adding, given infinite years and support from people buying OFF.