Horizion and Terrain distance
by Gordon Walton · in Torque 3D Professional · 10/09/2013 (1:26 pm) · 4 replies
I have been trawling through the forums for about an hour racking my brains on how to deal terrain and water plane when visible in the distance.
Firstly, I simply see a line between Scatter Sky and Water Plane, so how can this be obscured?
Secondly, the terrain in the distance just simply appears and which bits of it are depending on viewing angle.
Is it possible to get some sort of fading going here for terrain too?
I have experimented with fog, but that level fog and scatter sky do not seem to work well, I keep getting a blue circle appearing in the sky.
Firstly, I simply see a line between Scatter Sky and Water Plane, so how can this be obscured?
Secondly, the terrain in the distance just simply appears and which bits of it are depending on viewing angle.
Is it possible to get some sort of fading going here for terrain too?
I have experimented with fog, but that level fog and scatter sky do not seem to work well, I keep getting a blue circle appearing in the sky.
#2
10/10/2013 (5:06 am)
I can only presume that the 'circle' youre seeing is when you are flying around the map in free cam mode, and youre above the fog level, how is it looking when youre down on the ground as the player ? It sounds like its just a combination of view distance and fog density settings you need to nail down.
#3
10/10/2013 (5:16 am)
I think this is a thing they broke with Torque 3.0, you have to try a bit around with fog, distance, height etc to hide this. 
#4
You are talking about the the canvasClearColor that shows at the horizon and lower when using the Scattersky. The original developers of the Scattersky felt that the "proper" level design (moutains, trees, buildings, etc.) would prevent the player from ever seeing that line. The out-of-the-box solution is to try and match the canvasClearColor to that of the distant terrain or water object. There is a Resource "hack" that lowers/offsets the Scattersky object, which helps to an extent but if you go high enough you will still see it. One option, for a programmer, would be to have the sides of the Scattersky object to extend further past the horizon.
10/10/2013 (9:32 am)
Quote:Firstly, I simply see a line between Scatter Sky and Water Plane, so how can this be obscured?
You are talking about the the canvasClearColor that shows at the horizon and lower when using the Scattersky. The original developers of the Scattersky felt that the "proper" level design (moutains, trees, buildings, etc.) would prevent the player from ever seeing that line. The out-of-the-box solution is to try and match the canvasClearColor to that of the distant terrain or water object. There is a Resource "hack" that lowers/offsets the Scattersky object, which helps to an extent but if you go high enough you will still see it. One option, for a programmer, would be to have the sides of the Scattersky object to extend further past the horizon.
Quote:Secondly, the terrain in the distance just simply appears and which bits of it are depending on viewing angle.This may be a bug that affects a percentage of people. A solution or cause has never been found.
Quote:In my opinion they were never meant to be used together. The use of the Scattersky system precludes the use of regular fogging -- without some fighting. For simplicity if you're wishing to use the level fog then use a Skybox.
I have experimented with fog, but that level fog and scatter sky do not seem to work well,
NiN-NiN