Effects visible distance?

[+Brain32]

I'm wondering if one can manage to make explosion effects show further out, not the regular ones which are quite ok but the nuke explosion can not be even seen as a whole because it fades with distance.

 

So the question is, is there a cure for that?

Thx.

[+Stary]

to a point, it's a MaxVisibleDistance= setting for an effect emitter, BUT the sim "forgots" long lasting effects like burning structures/vehicles when the point of view moves too far in the world, sadly

[+Stary]

I meant that when you have burning platoon of tanks in left corner of map with you circling overhead seeking that last pesky T-55, if you switch to view of other plane taking off on the far right corner of the map, and return to cockpit, then puff! all effects are gone

[+Brain32]

Well maybe to explain it better, I use your awsome effects including the nuke ofcourse and when I go Dave on targets I can't see the mushroom, flash is there and you can see something badass just happened but no shroom, not because it's not there but because it fades away, if I go to ground zero, there's only the stem if I look up for the main cloud it fades in only if I go up :(

I saw you have 120km MaxVisibleDistance so I don't understand why I can't see it, some game-level option perhaps?

[+Stary]

or patch level? Have no idea Brain...

[+Brain32]

Yeah could be, I'm fully up to date...

[+Stary]

emmm I meant might be my effects would require some updating... but I've had no issues so far using unified fx pack in my installs

[+Brain32]

I'll mess around with it a bit maybe view distance is limiting it or something like that...

[+Stary]

try particlesystem.ini, increasing max effects, max emitters and max particles per emitter values, it's in FlightData.cat IIRC

 

it's on top of the file as far as I remember (not at my modding system at the moment)

[+Brain32]

Funny thing I went to the "big" ini's first and tried enabling the 32bit Z-buffer, it was set to false(don't remember why or if that's by default) and the situation improved a lot

[+Stary]

isn't it enabled now by default?

 

remember SF particles system is quite simple and could have use of some extra flags to make things look interesting

 

umm wait... above applies to whole series

[Lexx_Luthor]

FLIGHT ENGINE clip distances get involved here for seeing effects at very long distances, and ramping some of these can help solve the game forgetting long distance effects, but I don't know how SF2 handles them anymore -- I'm SF1 only now -- Devolution.

 

Come to think, in SF2, do you ever get a nuke visual beyond about 20km in the stock game? That was about the limit in SF1 -- everything vanished, exhaust, contrails, explosions, etc.... A ~20km wall for visual effects are common in TheSims because its what I call the "dogfight bubble" or radius inside of which visual "dogfight" engagements are set up and take place. Developers don't think beyond that, while Saburo (Samurai, p.211) writes about seeing flak bursts over Guadacanal from 50 miles off. Its kinda neat that higher yield warheads (or natural thunderstorm cumulus clouds) produce clouds larger than the dogfight bubble, never mind seeing it hundreds of miles away or seeing the sky glow at night from a thousand miles. Air warfare requires an entirely new approach to game grafix, but that hasn't happened yet in stock TheSims.

[Lexx_Luthor]

 

Me...lol

Come to think, in SF2, do you ever get a nuke visual beyond about 20km in the stock game?

 

By stock, I mean nothing tweaked in the game ini files, notably FlightEngine, ignoring added nuc mods. Sorry about that.

[+Brain32]

Well Lexx I use your effect(MT30) for large yield warheads(1MT and above) and Stary's for yields in the kT range.

Setting the 32bitZBuffer to on I can see Stary's effect(not as nice as before but I can), however I really loved to launch a HoundDog with a 1,1MT warhead , turn around and just watch the EPIC super-explosion with the mushroom cloud extending kilometers in the air with blast rings at altitude and everything, in the latest version of SF2 I simply didn't manage to pull off seeing it in a whole, it clips, fades, distorts...too bad :(

[+Stary]

Lexx's master nuke effects sadly seems no longer to work due to new "farterrain" part of scene etc and associated shaders

 

and RGR Brain, mine fits best in tactical kT ranges... I don't like nukes in general, shoot

[Lexx_Luthor]

Brain::

...however I really loved to launch a HoundDog with a 1,1MT warhead , turn around and just watch the EPIC super-explosion with the mushroom cloud extending kilometers in the air with blast rings at altitude and everything,...

 

Yep, James Kasler in The hanoi Pol Strike talks about that (essentially lol) kind of thing...

 

:

:

We did not have enough fuel to reach Takhli, so I planned a recovery at Ubon if we could not get fuel from the airborne tankers. Looking back toward Hanoi, I could still see the smoke column over 150 miles away. The GCI controller found us a KC-135 tanker; we refueled over the Mekong, and headed for home.

:

:

 

There is so much to see beyond the 20km Dogfight Bubble shared by all flight sim games, so much more to challenge the player in a mission than mere "dogfight." Someday, TheSims devs will figure it out. But not today.

[Lexx_Luthor]

Stary::

master nuke effects

 

They are embarassing. I made them when I ran "budget" video cards and AMD Semperon cpu.

 

Since I got a 4850 (fanless with giant heat sink -- strap on my own fan) and became a real life computer gamer, I should be able to ramp the effects up. However, there are hard limits on the number of emitters the game can draw at one time, so...maybe.

Edited October 3, 2012 by Lexx_Luthor