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WOW VonS you have just transformed my fe2 the flightengine.ini file works a treat on my PC I put a few pics check out the view distance with your flightengine.ini file No more shimmering roofs, telephone poles showing cows all there and to top it all what a view nice one mate thank you.

Mirage F-1JA v1.2 is waiting for approval. What's new : - Reworked skin. - Upgraded avionics. - Upgraded data.ini and loadout.ini. - New Loadout image.

Testflight over the Marmolada glacier

Me and my wing man having some fun...

Sure, when they are done.

V1.2 uploaded, waiting for approval. Enjoy

Thunder and Lighting

Hey Soulfreak, are you planning to release the new G91 and the Canberra one day? One more person we'll ask about this and he we'll have to.

Hey Soulfreak, are you planning to release the new G91 and the Canberra one day?

Glad you fixed the telephone pole and cow problem. If you still experience shimmering buildings in the future, I also recommend checking the following post by Mue: https://combatace.com/forums/topic/85970-shimmering-tods-and-target-objects/ Install the FE2 terrain shaders listed there into the relevant Terrain folder that you're flying, and then in the relevant terrain data.ini file, under the SolidObjectTextureMaterial section, change the following value: ZBufferOffset=2.0 change to: ZBufferOffset=5.0 Also, if you find that buildings or trees are popping up oddly at the edge of your terrain when you fly around, tweak the numbers for the terrain mesh as indicated by 33Lima in this post: https://combatace.com/forums/topic/90108-fe2-terrain-objects-drawing-distance/?do=findComment&comment=728237 Or simply download my modded flightengine.ini file and place into the Flight folder of your FE2 user directory, for more panoramic scenery in the distance and no tree/building popping and disappearing (keep in mind that this modded flightengine.ini file hits frame rates - I'm storing it for a computer upgrade sometime in the future ). Happy flying, Von S

A little action over gterl's excellent Vosges2 map. George, it sucks to be you.

Agree about time - I did not have time for FE until I retired! Gotta question for the brain trust about making dedicated airfields. Would it be easier to place a single airfield module (consisting of many objects) rather than place a large number of individual objects on a map? Shots below of an outstanding 1/48 scale diorama sorta/kinda explains what I am thinking. What if the line of hangars and lineup of low-ish poly aircraft were ONE BIG 3D MODEL? What would be the disadvantages, if any?

Gear up ...

The work is still progressing, now the last member of the Mirage F-1 family... The Mirage F1CT (my favorite camo) :

Here is the official trailer for the 4.5 release - which when released on Steam will be called Cliffs of Dover - Blitz Edition. I have to say, it certainly does look immersive. As I already own CLoD, it's going to be hard not to download and install this update for free. And for the new flier - CLoD is only $9.99.

New HUD .

The shimmering of TODs and target objects and the flickering of shadows in the thirdwire game engine always anoyed me. And since I'm playing FE2 recently, there this problems are more intense,I decided to have a closer look at this issue and possible solutions. This is what I came up with: As many of you already know, the shimmering of the objects and flickering of shadows is caused by the limited precision of the z-buffer. The precision of the z-buffer depends (besides the buffers bit depth) on two values: the near clipping plane distance (znear) and the far clipping plane distance (zfar). To increase the z-buffer precision you have to shorten the interval[znear,zfar], either by decreasing zfar or by increasing znear. Whereby increasing znear is FAR more effective for increasing z-buffer precision. Changing zfar: I'm not quite sure what *.ini setting defines zfar. But I think that decreasing the horizon distance in the game options menu decreases zfar. But I found to see any (minor) effect (regarding reducing shimmering/flickering) I had to change the horizon setting to Near. But I like the horizon setting at Very Far and I will let it at Very Far. Changing znear: znear is defined in the flightengine.ini by FE2: [NearSceneClip] NearClipDistance= SF2 with object fading disabled (fading enabled I haven't investigated yet): [ForegroundSceneClip] NearClipDistance= But there is an exception: If in the <aircraft>_cockpit.ini OpenCockpit= is set to TRUE, then znear is defined by (the usually smaller value) ExternalClipDistMin=. Thats the reason why in some aircraft the shimmering happens, while in the external view it does not. The external view uses the flightengine.ini setting. The znear value has to be increased as much as possible. Unfortunately this value can not be increased arbitrary without side effects: e.g. clipping issues. You have to experiment until you find a maximum znear value without side effects. If you are lucky then the znear increase was sufficient to stop the shimmering/flickering. If not, then you have to tweak further. Tweaks against flickering shadows: Against the flickering shadows I don't know any tweaks. The only solution is to switch them off: Shadow option = High switches TOD shadows off, = Medium also switches target object shadows off. The following tweaks are meant to reduce the shimmering caused by z-fighting between the terrain and the TODs / target objects. What the tweaks do is to increase the z value distances between the terrain and the TODs / target objects. Tweak against shimmering TODs: In the <terrain>_data.ini set [solidObjectTextureMaterial] ZBufferOffset=2.0 or higher (in FE2 I set it to 5.0 to stop the shimmering) That modifies the z value by an offset so that the TODs are put a bit "forward" in the z-buffer. But this doesn't affect target objects shimmering. Tweak against shimmering target objects (and TODs). The solution I found is to modify the terrain shaders: TERTERRAINEFFECT.FX (near terrain) TERFARTERRAINEFFECT.FX (far terrain) TERWATEREFFECT0.FX (terrain with water, Water Detail = Low) TERWATEREFFECT1.FX (terrain with water, Water Detail = Medium) TERWATEREFFECT2.FX (terrain with water, Water Detail = High) In each shader I added the following lines in the vertex shader code const float zOffset = 3.0e-7; output.pos.z += zOffset * output.pos.w; That adds an offset to the z value so that the terrain is put a bit "back" in the z-buffer. This tweak ALSO affects TOD shimmering. But it has a side effect: The TOD / target object shadows are a bit shifted if viewed from greater distances. It's a tradeoff: choosing a greater zOffset value lessens the shimmering but shifts the shadows more and vice versa. You can try to decrease/increase zOffset in small steps (e.g. 1.0e-7) to see which offset fits best. The terrain shaders for FE2: fe2_zbufferoffset_shaders.zip Put the shader files (*.fx) into the Terrains\<terrain> directory. @admins/moderators: I also have modified SF2 shaders. But I don't know if the combatace policy allows to upload modified LOCKED shaders. Update: The terrain shaders for SF2: sf2_zbufferoffset_shaders.zip