Query about ofp lighting and texture quality...

[BAM 0]

Whilst playing OFP for the past 2-3 years or so, there has always been one aspect of the graphics that I occasionally wondered about. It is mainly to do with how "jaggy" the lightsouring is at edges of the light. This isnt easy to explain in words (party due to the fact im not good at explaining stuff!) so I have included a pic to get across what im blabbering about:

Looking at the yellow lightsource around the fire, and the light beam at the top left of the picture, you can clearly see what im on about. I know the Posideon (is that correct?) engine is 7 years old or so now, but I was wondering if there was any way of increasing the "resolution" or decreasing the size of the "lightmaps" or whatever such that you could get smoother, less jagged lighting?

I have seen this jagged effect in other standard textures too, in areas on the map where two different terrain textures meet and blend together, as demonstrated by the coastal area in the pic below:

With all the utterly incredible enhancements made to the appearance of OFP through user addons and mods, this is one thing that still really stands out as looking poor.

Now that I have shown what im talking about, is this a standard "feature" of the OFP engine, or are there any graphics settings I can tweak to improve the situation?

I wasnt sure whether or not this should actually be posted in Troubleshooting, due to the fact that I dont actually know if I have a problem with the graphics or not, so maybe some of you gurus can tell me ;)

Oh btw im using a GF4 Ti4400 with Detonator 56.55 drivers if thats of any concequence.

THANKS, and look forward to seeing what others opinions are on this little query.

Many thanks,

BAM:)

[Heatseeker 0]

Well... its no splinter cell for sure but considering the size of the islands and everything else i can live with it.

And regarding user made stuff the lights in Tonal island from BAS look better than the stock ones .

Almost forgot... the lights in OPF have to iluminate large areas sometimes so i think thats the cause why they are not so smooth.

[Guest]

Lighting of terrain is done by terrain detail level. Have a play with change your settings (very low, low, normal etc). You'll see the terrain lit up differently.

[canukausiuka 1]

Quote[/b] ]Lighting of terrain is done by terrain detail level. Have a play with change your settings (very low, low, normal etc). You'll see the terrain lit up differently.

That's the case

Also, you might want to try the high-res islands.  They may help the ground texture issues (I dont know for sure... I'm too lazy to be bothered)

[Guest]

No, it doesn't. The texture quality is different from the terrain detail level.

[jgk6 0]

Just my US$0.02:

OFP compares very favorably to other games with similar view distances (If you run your distance slider out to 2000m and beyond). It all looks very good in motion.

For example, WW2OL is built on something like a 400 meter mesh. Fly along a coastline when the sun is low and you'll see huge squares lighting up.

IL2 has beautiful lighting but nowhere near the ground level detail OFP does.

[BAM 0]

Hi all, thanks for all replies.

I am already using the highres islands and resistance objects combined.

My terrain detail is set to high already.

I had a play around with the flashpointpreferences.exe and the only thing I think could have possibly made a difference (but didnt) was the terrain texture size - by default I had it on 4096x4096 but even when I put it down to 64x64 it made no difference:( I was hoping that this may have possibly made those jaggies much smaller due to terrain being constructed by many more much smaller polys, but alas no:(

Could there possibly be any hidden settings to play with, such as from the flashpoint.cfg file? Anyone?

Thanks,

BAM:)

[Guest]

Terrain texture size is the resolution of the textures, terrain detail size is the resolution of the (for want of a better word) polys. It's the polys that matter, not the textures.

[canukausiuka 1]

I have seen this jagged effect in other standard textures too, in areas on the map where two different terrain textures meet and blend together, as demonstrated by the coastal area in the pic below:

[imghttp://www.hectorheathcoat.freeserve.co.uk/jaggylights2.jpg[/img]

This is what I was figuring the high-res textures would fix, not the lighting itself.  Just the blur between the sand and grass, for instance.  I don't have any pics to compare though, so its really just a guess  

Remove image tags when quoting please.

[korax 4]

Nevermind... (read something wrong)

[llauma 0]

I have seen this jagged effect in other standard textures too, in areas on the map where two different terrain textures meet and blend together, as demonstrated by the coastal area in the pic below:

[imghttp://www.hectorheathcoat.freeserve.co.uk/jaggylights2.jpg[/img]

This is what I was figuring the high-res textures would fix, not the lighting itself.  Just the blur between the sand and grass, for instance.  I don't have any pics to compare though, so its really just a guess  

Remove image tags when quoting please.

It has nothing to do with the texture resolution. The sizes of the ground textures are the same no matter resolution.

The reason why it looks like this is cause it's been automaticly done by Visitor. If you take your time you can make a blending that involves more textures but you need to do that manually.

The amount of textures would become huge so just stay on the ground and you won't notice the sharp edges.

[canukausiuka 1]

ok, cool. now I know