Extra Terrain Types.ini Statements

[+Menrva 4,200]

Most have probably missed this fact that with Strike Fighters 2 North Atlantic, additional types.ini statements for a terrain have been introduced. Here below you'll find the extra ones:

[TargetTypeXXX]
Reported=FALSE
DetailLevel=2
FadeWithDistance=TRUE
IgnoreHeading=TRUE
AdjustZBuffer=FALSE

The most interesting and useful statement is DetailLevel. The Ground Objects graphics setting in the options has always been rather pointless in Strike Fighters as it would only affect randomly parked aircraft. This DetailLevel statement makes it much more useful when applied to most if not all target types defined in a terrain's types.ini. DetailLevel=3 means that the target type will spawn only when Ground Object settings are set to Unlimited, a value of 1 means that the target type will only spawn when Ground Object settings are set to Medium or higher. The below screenshots show it clearly.

Ground Objects set to Unlimited; even the smallest eye-candy objects are shown, loading times are obviously higher.

 

Ground Objects set to Low; only priority objects (those that should be targets for missions) are shown, loading times are quicker.

The downside is that it requires a terrain modder to add such DetailLevel statement to each of the eye-candy objects in a types.ini file. If you have 300 or more, you can imagine it takes quite a bit of work and trial and error to choose which priority to assign to each object. This update/feature will be part of the IraqWA terrain in a future update of the ODS 30AE mod.

 

The other statements are also used in the stock IcelandNA terrain, here below a summary of what I managed to figure out about them:

• FadeWithDistance - No matter what, it doesn't seem to work. it would have been cool to have terrain objects fade like TOD entities; most likely this is a placeholder for something TK never implemented properly.
• IgnoreHeading - Rather self-explanatory, it makes the object type ignore the heading you give to it in a terrain target area of the targets.ini file. TK uses it for the countless tree LODs created for the IcelandNA terrain.
• AdjustZBuffer - When set to false for runways, they suffer from heavy z-buffering issues on tile based terrains. Most likely this option was needed for specific runways on the IcelandNA terrain, since runway LODs are placed over another LOD, that of the terrain. For our usual tile based terrains, this statement may be of little to no use.
• Reported - The only statement I couldn't figure out. For sure you wouldn't set it to false for main terrain objects.

This info may be useful to terrain modders wiling to optimize their own terrains and make them more scalable depending on graphics settings. Please admins, pin this topic for future reference.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Menrva