PR:BF2 v1.6.3.0 Changelog

[Valmont]

Since you guys are tweaking view distance and LOD related settings lately, is there any way to dynamically increase the players' view distance and LOD the higher up they go?

There is a mod for Arma 3 that does just that and does wonders for Pilots, was wondering if something like that is possible here.

Also thank you for all the technical breakthroughs you guys have been pulling out lately in order to make this old engine feel more modern and realistic!

I guess the final frontier of custom engine improvements besides fast ropes would be to make crouch "toggleable" instead of "press and hold". =p

[[R-DEV]Mats391]

Dynamic viewdistance like that is sadly not really possible as the server wont send you any updates for objects outside of the maximum level viewdistance.

[mebel]

I do really like this LOD changes, especially the one with terrain. No more levitating models
Speaking of viewdistances - has the visibility of a player model has been discussed to counter those effects?:

- models are usually way darker than surrounding terrain, especially at a distance
- there is no undergrowth rendered at distances
- surrounding shapes are simpler, small shapes differs from surroundings

Above causes inf model to be easily spotted at ditances even though its just couple of pixels.

For me it could be adjusted by changing last LOD model textures to have more bright and washed-out colours, or making them transparent (afaik impossible).


Btw there are also some bush models that are unaturally bright.

[Valmont]

Originally Posted by Mats391

Dynamic viewdistance like that is sadly not really possible as the server wont send you any updates for objects outside of the maximum level viewdistance.

In that case perhaps the solution is to increase the Max Viewdistance while having the dynamic part for the Draw Distance of objects, buildings, vehicles and player models...

So for example, at ground level even thou your viewdistance is 2000, all the objects are draw at 500/1000 distance and that draw viewdistance slowly increases the higher you go, reaching 2.000 at perhaps 5.000 feet?

PS: All these numbers are just guess work, none reflect to the current or max numbers supported by the engine.

[[R-DEV]​AlonTavor]

That would heavily hurt object update rates. We're not doing dynamic viewdistance.

[Valmont]

Originally Posted by AlonTavor

That would heavily hurt object update rates. We're not doing dynamic viewdistance.

Well, I am not a pilot myself I just hate seeing them fighting in the "fog" all the time.

At least they have the new flight simulator game now =p

[VTRaptor]

Got a question about grass - can you make it not disappear over distance? Tall grass causes many absurd situations such as for example - Goose Green, where you have to expose yourself alot to see above it, but the enemy on the other end further away will see you perfectly as there won't be any grass on his screen. To lesser extent other maps have that problem too, when you lie prone with grass in your face, your enemy will simply not see it.

[[R-CON]​Frontliner]

Issue is that too high of a drawdistance on these is going to tank the FPS on lower end systems. Not sure if we can find a "middle ground" for this due to the wide range of PC specs, we obviously don't want to make the game completely unplayable for a chunk of the playerbase even if this change would be argueably for the better.

[PBAsydney]

Remove all grass and bushes from all maps.

[mebel]

Originally Posted by VTRaptor

Got a question about grass - can you make it not disappear over distance? Tall grass causes many absurd situations such as for example - Goose Green, where you have to expose yourself alot to see above it, but the enemy on the other end further away will see you perfectly as there won't be any grass on his screen. To lesser extent other maps have that problem too, when you lie prone with grass in your face, your enemy will simply not see it.

That's actually common problem with even modern game engines, it's hard to fix it completely afaik. But we could discuss possibilities. Reducing this long-distance rendering issue would be something that hasn't been seen in many titles before. Rendering grass on a long distance would be a huge performance hit because of the amount of polygons that has to be rendered, so we have to rely on other workarounds if they're possible.

Things I saw/think of so far that could potentially address this problem:
- putting player model a bit underground while it's prone on the last LODs - the more far it is, the more underground it is
- making player model less visible by adjusting shape and textures to blend more into surroundings on the last LODs
- rendering a simple texture just above the ground that will cover grassed area that will pop-up in a distance only
- rendering second terrain shape just a little above original one - in a distance only