A graphical tweak for a better environment

[Kaleunt]

Since i use the 16km visibilty mod, i was disturbed by some graphical
glitches. So i tweaked some parameters to come back with some good effects wich we can appreciate in the stock game environment.
The (atmosphere "thickness" for exemple and the "foggy" horizon line).
I have found a way to make these effects to appear in the 16km vis. mod;
but the best tweak i have found is to change the LOD value in the scene.dat file. This tweak is heasy to implement , knowing that a LOD
value of "0" make the sea around your Uboat without any details, a LOD
value of "1" make a nice detailed sea around your submarine this effect is
well known because is the standard value of SHIII but if you jump on
value over "6" the sea became nicelly detailed up to the horizon, this tweak works with the stockgame scene.dat, no more tile effect at long range. But be carefull, this tweak could be a FPS killer on low or middle-end graphic cards.

[Marhkimov]

This looks like a good tip for people who want to personally edit their 'scene.dat' file. However, it is not something that I want to change in the atmosphere mod. I'm sure that a lot of people already have machines that cannot run the 16km version... If I upped the LOD for them, well.... u know what will happen.....

But feel free to make the changes yourself! :up:

[kriller2]

Thanx! has just tried it and it works good! :D

[Hartmann]

Since i use the 16km visibilty mod, i was disturbed by some graphical
glitches. So i tweaked some parameters to come back with some good effects wich we can appreciate in the stock game environment.
The (atmosphere "thickness" for exemple and the "foggy" horizon line).
I have found a way to make these effects to appear in the 16km vis. mod;
but the best tweak i have found is to change the LOD value in the scene.dat file. This tweak is heasy to implement , knowing that a LOD
value of "0" make the sea around your Uboat without any details, a LOD
value of "1" make a nice detailed sea around your submarine this effect is
well known because is the standard value of SHIII but if you jump on
value over "6" the sea became nicelly detailed up to the horizon, this tweak works with the stockgame scene.dat, no more tile effect at long range. But be carefull, this tweak could be a FPS killer on low or middle-end graphic cards.

this value adds fog to the 16 km mod ?? :roll:

what program i have to use for open this file ??

thanks

[iambecomelife]

Since i use the 16km visibilty mod, i was disturbed by some graphical
glitches. So i tweaked some parameters to come back with some good effects wich we can appreciate in the stock game environment.
The (atmosphere "thickness" for exemple and the "foggy" horizon line).
I have found a way to make these effects to appear in the 16km vis. mod;
but the best tweak i have found is to change the LOD value in the scene.dat file. This tweak is heasy to implement , knowing that a LOD
value of "0" make the sea around your Uboat without any details, a LOD
value of "1" make a nice detailed sea around your submarine this effect is
well known because is the standard value of SHIII but if you jump on
value over "6" the sea became nicelly detailed up to the horizon, this tweak works with the stockgame scene.dat, no more tile effect at long range. But be carefull, this tweak could be a FPS killer on low or middle-end graphic cards. On a related note, do you know how to influence the distance at which the game renders trees? I don't like it when the game renders trees before land, giving the impression of forests floating in midair.

[rulle34]

Since i use the 16km visibilty mod, i was disturbed by some graphical
glitches. So i tweaked some parameters to come back with some good effects wich we can appreciate in the stock game environment.
The (atmosphere "thickness" for exemple and the "foggy" horizon line).
I have found a way to make these effects to appear in the 16km vis. mod;
but the best tweak i have found is to change the LOD value in the scene.dat file. This tweak is heasy to implement , knowing that a LOD
value of "0" make the sea around your Uboat without any details, a LOD
value of "1" make a nice detailed sea around your submarine this effect is
well known because is the standard value of SHIII but if you jump on
value over "6" the sea became nicelly detailed up to the horizon, this tweak works with the stockgame scene.dat, no more tile effect at long range. But be carefull, this tweak could be a FPS killer on low or middle-end graphic cards.

Hello Kaleunt
I tried a LOD value for 6. Looks nice, but drop framerate in closeups if you increase TC.
Have you tried other values and in that case, how does it look with these

[Crueak]

Since i use the 16km visibilty mod, i was disturbed by some graphical
glitches. So i tweaked some parameters to come back with some good effects wich we can appreciate in the stock game environment.
The (atmosphere "thickness" for exemple and the "foggy" horizon line).
I have found a way to make these effects to appear in the 16km vis. mod;
but the best tweak i have found is to change the LOD value in the scene.dat file. This tweak is heasy to implement , knowing that a LOD
value of "0" make the sea around your Uboat without any details, a LOD
value of "1" make a nice detailed sea around your submarine this effect is
well known because is the standard value of SHIII but if you jump on
value over "6" the sea became nicelly detailed up to the horizon, this tweak works with the stockgame scene.dat, no more tile effect at long range. But be carefull, this tweak could be a FPS killer on low or middle-end graphic cards.


What exactly and how do i change the values to get the horizon effect back and the detailed sea? I am using the atmosphere mod 2.0 right now! thanks

[rulle34]

Hello Crueak
You need to change the "LOD" value in scene.dat. Default is "1".

[Crueak]

Thanks for the response, already was able to change it with timetravelers file analyzer...

[rulle34]

Thanks for the response, already was able to change it with timetravelers file analyzer...

Exactly :up:
What value did you choose?
Im curious about what happen with a value between 1-6 and also with a value >6! Playtests welcome :P

[Crueak]

Thanks for the response, already was able to change it with timetravelers file analyzer...

Exactly :up:
What value did you choose?
Im curious about what happen with a value between 1-6 and also with a value >6! Playtests welcome :P

The value I chose was 6, does improve visual detail of the sea at distance and on my machine was no real noticable drop in framerates, get about 40 fps in kiel harbor with all the graphic enhancements such as atmosphere 2.0, sky clouds etc, etc, and the harbor traffic 1.46 enabled.

I also tried higher values then 6, first i tried 10, no noticeable difference, so i doubled it to 20 and still no difference. to me it seems 6 may be the max but i'm no expert so maybe someone else has had more luck with values higher than 6

[lumat83]

and where can we find "timetravelers file analyzer" ?

Please :o

[Crueak]

and where can we find "timetravelers file analyzer" ?

Please :o



You can find it here on his site, http://www.delraydepot.com/tt/sh3sdk.htm

[lumat83]

Ok, thank you :)

[rulle34]

Thanks for the response, already was able to change it with timetravelers file analyzer...

Exactly :up:
What value did you choose?
Im curious about what happen with a value between 1-6 and also with a value >6! Playtests welcome :P

The value I chose was 6, does improve visual detail of the sea at distance and on my machine was no real noticable drop in framerates, get about 40 fps in kiel harbor with all the graphic enhancements such as atmosphere 2.0, sky clouds etc, etc, and the harbor traffic 1.46 enabled.

I also tried higher values then 6, first i tried 10, no noticeable difference, so i doubled it to 20 and still no difference. to me it seems 6 may be the max but i'm no expert so maybe someone else has had more luck with values higher than 6

Thank's
I have tried 6 myself and it looked good

[Kaleunt]

Sorry to be late, but it's the week end. In my case i use a Lod Factor
of "8" without Fps loss, i have tested all standard missions with or without
TC. Maybe FPS losses are system dependant?
A LOD value of 8 seems to be the highest value to influence the quality
of the environment.
Another information: i use the original 16km visibility mod because i prefer the stockgame reflexions and water colors, so i have imported
myself the Seeadler's Cloudfix, after running some tests i was surprised
that my scene.dat file had a size of only 355k compared to the original one
of 2600k . In fact, when i imported the Clouds.obj file in my scene.dat file
Pack 3d didn't repack all TGA textures(Fog.tga,N00.TGA,Sun.tga
and,Moon.tga), i needed to repack all tga via DatExtract to come back to the normal. So the "Atmospheric"fog came back. But this not suffisant
In the original file from Manuel Ortega some values need to be corrected
via an HexEditor to equilibrate the 16km Scene.dat file.

[Ark]

What exactly do I do with this file analyzer?

I have never used it before. :dead:

[Rubini]

Kaleunt,

Great work! :up:
I was searching for you to ask about that distant horizon fog but in this thread you already explain how to do this. I think that your post about the scene.dat file is very important. Do you already have notify marhkimov?

And if possible post a link with your corrected scene.dat, ok?

Thanks again!

Rubini.

[Hartmann]

What exactly do I do with this file analyzer?

I have never used it before. :dead:

its like a hex editor i think :roll: but be careful if you don´t know modding, you can screw easily your game files :doh:

I never did modding and its too difficult for me :88)

[Marhkimov]

Wow, this is all confusing...


So lemme get this straight. LOD was changed from 1 to 6? (or in some reports, it was 1 to 8)

In turn, that made the sea have a higher radius of detail, right?

And most importantly, all of this was possible without losing much framerate?


Am I understanding correctly?

[Kaleunt]

At all your questions,the answer is "yes".
But on another subject, please, take the time to look at scene.dat file of the Atmospheric Mod v 2.0, the file is only 355k, it is not normal. I have made some statements about it in this post and another, the corrections are easy to implement.

[Marhkimov]

Actually, the default scene.dat is 369kb.

The one in Atmosphere mod was reduced to 355kb after Seeadler made his changes to the cloud hemisphere.

I'm guessing that your scene.dat is large only because you packed the high quality textures into it. For the Atmosphere mod, we left the original stock textures inside of the scene file. Instead, we put the "Moon.tga" inside of the texture folder.


Hope all of this makes sense...

[Rubini]

Kaleunt,

Yes, marhkimov is right. The default scene.dat is 369Kb... :hmm:


Rubini.

[Kaleunt]

I agree with you, sorry. But it's a good new for me, the foggy atmosphere
appearing in my scene.dat is really a result of my tweaks.
I you are interested, i will try to upload differents 16km scene.dat file
with different Lod settings (Lod values of 4, 6 and,8) so everyone could choose the best running combination.

[Rubini]

Kaleunt,

Yes, please I want that horizon fog again! So post the link or explain how to do this. Is't only with the LOD adjustment?

Thanks again,

Rubini.

[Kaleunt]

No this tweak as nothing to do with the LOD adjustment. The LOD
increases only the quality of details of your 3D world, it's why this tweak
can affect the FPS rate, more details to render in 3D, more work for your
GPU. I can give you the hex values to correct but some of us don't like to use an hex-editor. These values cannot be modified via SH3 Analyser, they are in relation with the opacity of the fog.

[Rubini]

Ok, just waiting! :hmm:


Rubini.