Terrain horizon problems

#1 What is your visible distance setting? What is your fog distance? I notice no fogging is occuring in this screenshot...

#2 Hi Ben

My visible distance is 500
Fog distance is 5000
I have turned of the fog ( at least that was my intention ) by
setting fogvolumes to (0 0 0)

#3 Visible distance 500, fog 5000 of course you will see no fog, it is 10x as far as your visible range..

Set your fog to 450 or something.

#4 FogDistance and fogColor represent a different fog than the three fogVolumes. I believe fogDistance and fogColor control the fogging used to hide visibility clipping. This fog is applied to any geometry that approaches the fogDistance number in distance from the viewer.

the fogVolumes are height-based fog layers. Their three values are: distance from viewer, lower vertical extent, and upper vertical extent respectively.

Your settings as described effectively turn off all fog, though I can't say there aren't any adverse effects by having the fogging distance further than the visible distance. Try placing the fogging distance just before the visible, like 490.

Luke

#5 Westy and Luke D

My intension was to have no fog :) But have a 'little bit' of fog
was a good solution. A lower fogging distance than the visible
worked fine.

Hmm... Guess I have to learn basic's before asking.
Perhaps it's a good idea to learn TGE first and the
move over to TSE

Anyway. Thank's for your patience with a newbie.

/roland

#6 This is a resurrection, I know. But, reason to what Roland posted above is something similiar to the ScreenError stuff that was in TGE.. so it's not a bug with the visible distance, that is.

#7 Does TGE exhibit similar brokenness with the same settings?

#8 If ScreenError is set to above 10 (can't remember which one of the two screenerrors that did this, but I don't think it's the TS::ScreenError one), in our older HEAD build of TGE - then you get the same results.

Edit: If your visible distance is far, and the fog is closer than the distance.. then the effect won't be seen as much, though.

#9 Hmm. That's pretty weird. I thought the terrain had its own error metric.

I'll keep an eye out in the new terrain engine, to hopefully avoid this issue.

#10 I'm not sure that we're thinking the same thing Ben. Error Metrics does make the terrain calculate "less" exact right? When approaching these hard edges, they kinda "transform" into the real quad and look good when you come up close.. but from a distance they look odd, and the players that stand on it gets cut trough.

If this is what Error Metrics is, then that's what I'm seeing.

#11 Afaik, this problem is entirely due to the terrain popping in and out of the far clip plane, which visibility defines : TGE assumes your fog is going to start to fade things before you hit the visibility mark.

the terrain metrics might affect this, but won't solve it.
Think about it for a second : you can't render an infinity of polygons (and never will be able to ;)), but TGE's terrain tiles to infinity, hence you need a cutoff point, which usually is the far clip plane defining your viewport , unless you're doing a bunch of culling before sending things on to the renderer.
Hence, the need for distance fog, to hide the polygons that get cut off by the clip plane. You can get the same kind of effects with the near clip plane, by positioning an observer camera near a player (it's easier to see with a fairly involved shape that has irregular silhouette, like a player model) so that you end up clippiing part of the model : it looks even sillier than the terrain issue., since you can see parts of the model, then big holes, then an arm popping out of the hole, etc.

All rendering engines/layers have similar issues, in one form or another, since defining a viewport without a near and far clip planes, is well, not exactly well defined :)

HTH