[REL]ROW Pacific Environments 3.3

[tedhealy]

Probably not a popular opinion, but...

I'm not liking the new fog. It just doesn't look right on my machine, sort of grainy, specially when I move the view around. Could just be something funky on my end though. As mentioned earlier, the yellow sea mountain dew effect at sunrise/sunset doesn't look right either, specially with high seas and lots of white foam that turns yellow.

Here's what I'm getting with low fog, high seas, at sunrise.

[kriller2]

Hi Ted. I allso noticed the fog was getting allmost looking like smoke and will examine if something can be done to make it a little more light.

[kriller2]

Originally Posted by Fish40

It looks to me from reading the install instructions on the first page, that there are three options: A normal, if you will, option, a low res option, and a high res option. Am I wrong too assume this? If I'm correct, which option would come closest to Dave's original ROW, because my machine could run (presently running) this work fairly well, in all conditions. By the way Kriller, outstanding job!

Hi Fish,
Yes there are 3 options to make this mod work with all computers, but the scene.dat which controls the waves / ROW settings is the same so you can choose any one of those 3 settings, it's only some graphic files being swapped for better / lower resolution.

Thanks.

Hi. I was wondering, does PE2 change the weather behavior at all? I didn't experience this before. Since installing PE2, the weather in most cases is very rough. The seas are rarely calm anymore and fog abounds in some form varying from light to heavy.

No I haven't changed the weather, just the way it looks, so now when it's cloudy the water are getting grey as real life. The fog issue is something I will look into right away.

Digital trucker has allso been working on getting the good black smoke back in PE2, so that's allso something I need to test..

[thyro]

I think PE2 (without other enhancements/options that come in the package) seem to have a little glitch with wakes ... they seem to appear/disappear.

[kriller2]

Hi Ted.

I have been examining the fog and think this will fix it?

http://files.filefront.com/PE+2+ligh.../fileinfo.html

Here is 2 pictures with and without the fix:

Without the fix:


With the fog fix:


BTW only the light fog conditions are modified, so you will still get the heavy fog in storm.

[cherbert]

I have noticed that the Sonar Station does not work (its just a black screen). At least it is when doing the U-Boat Missions (1.5).
Is this a known problem with PE2 installed?


Chris

[swdw]

Kriller, I like the fog in the release better than your fix because it looks more like the fog I've seen on the ocean in the morning.

cherbert. That was a bug caused by the cameras.dat fle in PE2 and other camera mods imported from 1.4. This issue is fixed with the SH4_1.5_ Uboat_freeCamFix mod

Kriller, you may need to either utilize that camera mod with PE2, or manually copy the needed changes from that mod into your camera file.

[cherbert]

Originally Posted by swdw

This issue is fixed with the SH4_1.5_ Uboat_freeCamFix mod

I can't seem to find this anywhere?

[basilio]

GREAT work Kriller
I'm just curious: which file from your mod is responsible for the (no-more-missing)ATI cards sunglare?

[tedhealy]

Originally Posted by kriller2

Hi Ted.

I have been examining the fog and think this will fix it?

http://files.filefront.com/PE+2+ligh.../fileinfo.html


BTW only the light fog conditions are modified, so you will still get the heavy fog in storm.

I'll give it a try right now, thank you much.

By the way, I don't want to rock the boat here. If my opinion is in the minority, please ignore me and do what you do best, improve SH4.

[kriller2]

Originally Posted by basilio

GREAT work Kriller
I'm just curious: which file from your mod is responsible for the (no-more-missing)ATI cards sunglare?

Thanks Bassilio, I found out a way to make the sun have a halo around the sun by editing this file "data/textures/tnormal/tex/sub sky_pac.tga", which controls how the sky is showing around the player, it's not as good as a real sunglare, but better than nothing.

[tedhealy]

Just did a quick circuit around and I like the new light fog. It sort of looks like a haze now.

If the previous heavier light fog had occurred infrequently, then I wouldn't mind it so much. It's just that it happens with good visibility and those conditions are common and can last for days or weeks, so you'll have this smoky black fog for days on end and for a majority of the patrol.

Now it looks more like a haze than fog and I like it better. It's just enough that it would hamper how far you can see without decreasing visibility too much. That makes the actual heavier fog in poor visibility stand out more and more realistic to me.

Anyways, just my 2 cents. I can always turn off volumetric fog in the options if I don't like it, so do what you think looks best.

[DrBeast]

For starters, let me once more commend you on a job incredibly well done!
Now...I regret to inform you that the slowdown persists on my rig when I torpedo a ship. I tried your More FPS version, but to no avail. I tried reducing 3D sounds and Particle Density, no dice. I tried running the game without AA and AF, same difference. So I went on a troubleshooting spree, hell-bent on finding just what in PE was causing the slow-down. At first I loaded the last version of ROW Textures with sun halo, and noticed it gave me a slowdown too. So, using that as a basis, I started pruning down the textures until I ran into the culprit: reflex_pac.tga. Happy to have discovered that, I compared that file (well, the one in PE, actually) to the stock file, and discovered that yours is 1024x512 while stock is at 512x256. Easy, I thought, I'll just resize yours to those dimensions. Which I did. And installed PE2 with the resized file. And hit a brick wall...the slowdown was still there!!! After three hours of battling this problem, I threw in the towel and took a looooong flight from Wellington Intl to Brisbane Intl in Flight Simulator X...almost fell asleep at the joystick half a dozen times, so as soon as I had landed I went to bed, exhausted, at 5:00.

I don't want to end this post with a string of complaints, so here's what I loved about the mod: the slowdown when aiming the camera at the bow wakes is gone, and it runs a bit faster when underwater (without More FPS version, to boot!). I'm generally getting a fairly constant FPS rate regardless of weather (20-25 FPS when using outside camera), and I find that truly amazing...heavy fog and rain and my FPS refuse to drop below 20! I'm an extremely happy camper to be getting this performance on 4xAA and 8xAF! If only there was a way to get rid of that game-breaking slowdown...

[Digital_Trucker]

Beasty, it sounds like your problem might lie somewhere in the particles.dat file. You're running 1.4, right? If so, try deactivating PE, taking out the particles.dat and reactivating (make sure to save the particles file somewhere) and see if that helps any.

[DrBeast]

Originally Posted by Digital_Trucker

Beasty, it sounds like your problem might lie somewhere in the particles.dat file. You're running 1.4, right? If so, try deactivating PE, taking out the particles.dat and reactivating (make sure to save the particles file somewhere) and see if that helps any.

What's REALLY driving me nuts is that, when I was troubleshooting with ROW Textures, I was also using NSM4 and my ROW Special Effects for NSM4, and those have a modified particles.dat (which, in fact, are earlier work than the one shipped with PE2...guess because of 1.5 incompatibility reasons). As I stated above, when I removed reflex_pac.tga the abnormal behavior stopped! But when I tried PE2 with my resized reflex_pac and NSM4+ROW SFX for NSM4+Some missing textures that will create a blocky fire effect if not present with ROW SFX, the slowdown was back!