That's the ticket.

Take note, though: as you make the environment bigger, you increase the chance of z-buffer problems. It may be that at 20km you won't find a Moon Radius setting that fixes the moon in all circumstances. It depends, partly, on your hardware, but if you do get this problem then you'll need to widen the gap between the cloud dome and the sky dome (by shrinking the cloud dome a little bit) in order to "make more room" for the moon (I had to do this in OLCE2). If you do that then, depending on how much you shrink the clouds, you may also have to shrink the fog model a bit (because it has to have a smaller radius than the cloud dome).

I see. Would it work if I use the 30 km sky dome with the 20 km sky dome and fog model? Must test that... :hmmm:

I'm only saying that you may need to do those things. First just try changing the Moon Radius as Seeadler suggested. That may be all that is required!

Well, changing the moonradius to 2100 cured the problem BUT testing in other conditions apparently it made the moon invisible (Returning to radius of 1890 showed the moon again), probably as it was placed beyond the sky dome.

Spot on, that seems to be exactly the problem :up:Now I will need to shrink the clouds and fog model, but if I understand it correctly, the fog model is what determines in the end the total visibility distance, isn't it? :hmmm: So if I want 20k visibility, shouldn't I do the opposite, i.e. make the fog be 20k and from there on the clouds slightly bigger and the sky dome much bigger to give the moon enough space? :doh:


P.S. The 30km sky dome didn't work well with the 20k clouds dome.

It can be very finicky. Did you try 2000? 2050? 1950? They could work.

Whichever of the three models is smallest (fog/cloud/sky) determines the point at which ships will disappear. You should have Sky>Cloud>Fog (or you will get problems) so yes, the Fog sets the visibility limit.

Maybe Seeadler can answer that better than I but having re-read his explanation of the hardcoded 20k limit (which was news to me) it sounds to me like it should work.

These settings seem to work well for my 20km setup in GWX 3.0 :

I also imported the Sun and Moon from SH4.

Tested it in various kinds of weather conditions and time of day. Sun, moon, and stars all seem to display properly. Fog also appears to work well, except the "Heavy Fog" setting seems to only reduce visibility to ~500 meters. Not exactly the pea soup I was expecting but this might be normal for GWX 3.0 and not a side-effect of the 20km environment.

Still have more testing to do. Hitman, what were the exact circumstances where the Moon would become invisible?

OMFG! Who died and made you, of all people, a moderator? :nope:

Square moon is gone with Graf Paper settings.
Tested in some night, dawn, sunrise and day missions with changuing weather. No vampire nightvision.

Yes I tried in increments of 50 :yep:

Hummm over 2100 caused the square moon problem in my install. Note that I had that problem in the Arctic Ocean, i.e. I have tested it in the extremes of the earth also :hmmm: Also note that the problem in my system ONLY appears when there are clouds, and it is very noticeable with heavy clouds.

Try this test mission:

Oh, and I almost forgot: Kaptain Lehman has granted permission to produce an unofficial 20k mod for GWX, so when we refine the work enough, we can make it publically available for those who hate fiddling around with files and editing the game :up:

To explain the use of the fog model, I used the SH models in my own engine as test objects.

http://foto.arcor-online.net/palb/al...6338636237.jpg
In this way the three models are placed in the SH world.
Yellow = SkyColor dome model
Red = Clouds dome model
Green = Fog model
You see there is a gap between sky and cloud dome and verry small gab between cloud dome an fog model.

http://foto.arcor-online.net/palb/al...6134313366.jpg
The players ship is centered in the middle of the scene
The texture used on the fog model has a soft transition from invisible to a slightly transparent white color and is rendered from the middle (invisible) to the edge(transparent) near at the beginning of cloud dome.

http://foto.arcor-online.net/palb/al...3734373164.jpg
From the player perspective in the middle of the scene, the fog model will make the sharp horizon, where the water surface and cloud dome meets, a bit softer and ships appears like in mist.

If you make the fog model 20k, the cloud dome should be bigger and also the sky dome (leave space for the two gaps). A good practice is to import all three models in a 3D modeller and resize them all in one pass. You must test if a 20k fog model let the ships on the horizon appear in mist or not, perhabs a 18k fog model might do it also.

Thanks for the illustrated explanation again :up:

Yeah, I tried that but apparently it is not possible in Misfit. Anyway, I can resize them individually to the desired size, so it's just a matter of noting which one I picked and keeping the proportions.

get the 1.3.8 developer version of Misfit, it has a join function in the model menu
- load via menu->model->join each model separate into the scene view
- select all models
- resize all
- select each model separate and export it

Excellent! :yeah:

I think I'm going to give Misfit a bit of deeper study & practice...it's definately not a superb tool, but it is easy and intuitive, and for my needs it more than meets the requirements :yep:

Hitman, I loaded your test mission and everything still seems to work fine. I used time compression, stopping at two hour intervals to check the view.

Here's some screen shots, settings as previously posted with the SH4 moon imported, screen resolution 1024x768:

http://static3.filefront.com/images/...rgkjqtcpjm.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/...hxdxsgzwbf.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/...aoypxeezxq.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/...rqnfzxyrop.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/...cyhkaudfkp.jpg

Stormy is testing a 20km mod I put together for LSH3 4.0 and initial results are similar to my own tests with GWX 3.0.

I hope this is the answer and you will have equally good results with this, Hitman. :up:

Cheers Graff,

will pick your values and re-test :up:

Are you using the fog model I rescaled? I will revise it because it was a quick job and I had not yet understood well how Misfit worked, I can do now a more precise job :ping: