The "Haze" in ArmA

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Is there a way to get rid of the ever-present haze in ArmA? Even setting view distance to 5000 doesn't banish it, and neither does setting the fog values to 0, nor the overcast to 0.

I've been searching this topic for a while because in some long-distance laser-target missions, it's a bit frustrating not to be able to see targets from the top of a mountain because of the haze, even on an otherwise crystal-clear day.

Or was this sort of a game engine "cheat" to allow further view distances without really having further view distances?

[MehMan 0]

Put post processing on low.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

It is on low. That gets rid of the Field of depth blur, but not the haze.

[-CS-SOBR-1st-I-R- 0]

Turn down or turn off Antisoptropic filtring

[Jaspion 0]

In the real world, even on a clear day you can see more 5 to 10 kms.

[MehMan 0]

Antisoptropic filtering will only make it better. Turn off Anti Aliasing, I've noticed that really gives a haze.

[MamiyaOtaru 1]

In the real world, even on a clear day you can see more 5 to 10 kms.

I'm assuming you meant to say you can't see more than 5-10km, but either way, yes you can. When I lived in England on a good day I could see a cathedral that was 30 miles (50km) away. That was a (admittedly large) building. Here in Wyoming it is no problem at all to see mountains 60 miles (100 kilometers) away. We do have some particularly dry and smog free air to be sure, but it's not that unusual.

Now, a game has to have some limits. Would be nice to see across Sahrani though, even at 1 fps, for some screenshots Anyway, there are plenty of technical limitations that can be invoked without claiming the limited view distance is "just like real life."

[Heatseeker 0]

I thought the blue/white haze was yet another nvidia driver related problem?

[dm 9]

On a clear day (depending on the HAZE - caused by a combination of environmental effects) it is possible to see up to (and even over) 100km.

However, in the game world, rendering that much detail in real-time is nigh-on impossible at the moment.

ArmA absolutely smashes the view distance of ANY other FPS/soldier based game out there, maxing out at 10km. We wont get much beyond this until the next generation of graphics hardware and software is mainstream and stable. Until then, we're stuck with the "haze." But I, for one, don't have a problem with that, especially if that haze is 10km away

[jerryhopper 286]

- i preffer haze above indica...

next to that, lower the graphics should get rid of it for sure...

but, how low do you really wanna go?

[Millenium7 0]

no we are not, this is an artificial limitation implemented by BIS. Theres the actual draw distance which i'm guessing is the view distance setting, beyond this it just simply cuts off theres literally nothing to see except a solid backdrop colour, and this is ugly so they use fog to cover it up. This limits your actual visibility, try it place something 5km away with a 5km view distance and you will not be able to see it zoomed in let alone under normal circumstances. 5km view distance is actually about 3-4km of visibility

Now onto the technical side, assuming BIS just uses the convential fog system which the graphics card handles you can't control the strength which is annoying and theres not a lot they can do except move the fog distance further. But this could expose the backdrop of nothingness because you can't set the fog to start at X and end at Y with a strength of Z. I'm not an expert on special effects so don't know how other games do it but if BIS can do away with the simple 'set fog on' system and use their own which allows minimum/maximum distance, varying strength and possibly positioning then you could have a much nicer effect (such as heavy fog hovering over a swamp, varying fog in forests, towns etc) and greater visibility, obscuring only the very edge of the view distance rather than a large % before it as well

[Scrub 0]

If volumetric fog is not yet implemented in NIM weather addon, it could be.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Yeah, in OFP if you had a 3k view distance on a clear day, then it was really clear up to that point and you could laser from a mountain top for jets.

Even at 5k viewdistance, the haze limits things greatly, so you can't see things clearly even at 2K.

I tried disabling AF and AA but it didn't help things. Kinda makes mountains useless for vantage points if you have trouble seeing clearly the valley below.

Now at the highest view I can make things out a little more clearly, but the FPS loss is pretty bad.

[MrZig 0]

Yeah the haze is really bothersome.. Should be toned down a little, or a lot. Especially on a non-industrial-city type place (this isn't Boston).

This is an image I took from the mountain near where I live.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Zig, can you circle your house so I'll know which one to laser target?

;P

[Maddmatt 1]

The haze does seem overdone, it would be nice if it was lowered.

I'm not talking about the actual viewdistance.

[enforcer1975 0]

And i thought i was the only one or one of few with that problem. My clanmates didnt mention that, didnt know if they didnt have it or they did hace far less expectations to the game than me.

[Bunkers 0]

If you guys have the 8800 series GPU this is quite a common problem. I hope this is a problem BIS is working with. I had much less of it on my old system.

[snYpir 0]

The 'haze' issue is fixed, to be included in a future patch.

Before and after screenshots at 10km viewdistance:

Binocular view:

[BraTTy 0]

Wow lead dev vbs2..nice to meet you.

Comparing to MrZig's reallife pic. The fix makes it exact realistic!

[spetznaz14 0]

When can we expect this fix?!, I mean its a pretty major thing, I dont want to wait for silly little bug fixes if it delays this...

[archsceptic 21]

Has "The 'haze' issue fix" been tested on the GF8800's at all?

Or are the view distance issues with those cards a seperate problem?

[Hudson 0]

Here are a couple of screenshots taken using a 8800GTX. The first screen is version 1.05 build 5136. The second screen is from the beta build 5142. Both shots are at 5000 meter view distance...

[judge&jury 0]

will this fix incur a performance hit for the same viewdistance?

[Maddmatt 1]

Can anyone say about how far away the next patch is? Also, is the texture loading improved? Can't wait for the patch .