Invisible war over distance.

[Heatseeker 0]

In a mission with view distance set to 1500 meters objects arent drawn behiond 800 or so meters, this CDF T-72 MBT is 834 meters away and is being targeted by a portable Metis launcher, he doesnt stand a chance..

After destroying the invisible tank it produces visible fire and smoke wich confirms a successfull hit.

This invisible tank was surrounded by invisible friends who, in less than a second, returned accurate fire on my soldier (wich was in the forest i might add).

Result and conclusion:

After destroying the invible tank this russian AT soldier got killed by other invisible enemies, he participated and died in the invisible war.

[ViperNL 10]

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And this concludes my invisible solution. :D

[Wynthorpe 10]

Yeah ive had this on a server i play on (GOL), for some very strange reason they set distance to 1500m, which is rediculous! i want to see the full 1500 (Which is far to low for anything IMO) not 800 :(

[Heatseeker 0]

This problem is scalable, by increasing view distance to 3000 meters the invisible tank and his nearby friends showed up but by increasing the engagement distance by just 100 meters (from 800 to 900 m) my war became invisible again.

* Sorry, bad testing on my part..

This is a problematic situation since using very high view distance is associated with two problems:

1. Bad performance on lower end PC's.

2. Bad MP gameplay (a.i. units moving far away warp).

Perhaps adjusting the fog level can be used as a workaround.. * It cant..

Yeah ive had this on a server i play on (GOL), for some very strange reason they set distance to 1500m, which is rediculous!

Actually its not, it might not be so pretty but its smart, because the netcode warps moving a.i. units that are very far away, wich results in bad gameplay.

edit:

My tests were done with a RU AT specialist wich is a low profile target, imagine how bad the gameplay will be when your vehicles are atacked by invisible tanks, shilkas, etc operated by a.i..

Edited July 12, 2009 by Heatseeker

[Wynthorpe 10]

Still annoying that you cant seem them and can be killed by them, this makes view distance pointless, why have they bothered with it?

[interox 10]

Shoot the muzzle flash or the smoke! :)

[Yapab 10]

We had something like this occur last night in the demo and doing one of the seize missions in coop.

Someone was shooting us from what seemed like a close distance but we could NOT see them... we could only see the muzzle flash! I thought it might have been a bug....

Hmm so many annoyances coming out with this game.

[Curry 10]

Old OFP engine ftw. Sometimes playability is more important than eye candy.

[S!fkaIaC 10]

This issue and similar is an evergreen since OFP.

No-Fix forever.

[whisper 0]

Objects in OFP were rendered up to 66% of view distance, looks it's a bit lower for A2

On top of that, A2 looks like having a hard setup object rendering limit around 1.5-2Km whatever the VD used.

So up to 2km, I'd suggest raising the VD (I don't think it impacts perfs that much, tbh, it's after that distance that PC begins to really suffer), sthg like 2.5km

[Alienfreak 0]

Especially funny is that the AI also engages over distances greater than your rendering distance ;)

[Heatseeker 0]

Yes, like stated in the first post..

The solution would be to make it so that the a.i. doesnt engage behiond the real view distance, in this case (1500 meters), 800 meters object draw distance.

And ofcourse to prevent auto targeting weapon systems (metis, javelin, ect) from locking anything above the real view distance too.

[Alienfreak 0]

Its by far too useful to fix it within 8 years ;)

[blackettle 10]

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and this concludes my invisible solution. :d

whahahaha!

[Heatseeker 0]

Its by far too useful to fix it within 8 years ;)

Actually it wasnt broken in OPF if you used the default view distance of 800 meters or so ;) .

The problem was introduced with resistance when the interface to increase/decrease view distance was added to the options.

[KJT 0]

Objects in OFP were rendered up to 66% of view distance, looks it's a bit lower for A2

On top of that, A2 looks like having a hard setup object rendering limit around 1.5-2Km whatever the VD used.

So up to 2km, I'd suggest raising the VD (I don't think it impacts perfs that much, tbh, it's after that distance that PC begins to really suffer), sthg like 2.5km

Render distance in Arma2 is 40% of view distance.

-KJT-

[THEBLITZ6794 10]

Render distance in Arma2 is 40% of view distance.

-KJT-

wtf. can we edit that at all?

[Alienfreak 0]

We cant

[Mojo 0]

We cant

yet...

[.kju 3241]

So much wrong info in here..

setViewDistance 1800 => object viewable distance 1200 = 66% of sVD.

In A2 terrain is drawn further - probably full sVD. Some special objects are drawn further than 66% too.

Radar or locking distance is full sVD. Unless config values tweak it higher or less.

Terrain and objects affect radar too.

Don't like it?

Disable locking and tweak AI recognition and engagement ranges.

[Alienfreak 0]

yet...

We can't since 2001. So just wait a few more years and we will probably be able to :)

---------- Post added at 11:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:20 AM ----------

And you can acutally target targets OVER your sVD.

[KJT 0]

So much wrong info in here..

setViewDistance 1800 => object viewable distance 1200 = 66% of sVD.

In A2 terrain is drawn further - probably full sVD. Some special objects are drawn further than 66% too.

Radar or locking distance is full sVD. Unless config values tweak it higher or less.

Terrain and objects affect radar too.

Don't like it?

Disable locking and tweak AI recognition and engagement ranges.

Well I have not tested with low view distance values but with ~ 3000-5000 meters view distance the draw distance is only 40% of it (and in Arma it is 60%). Maybe draw distance behaves differently with lower view distance values which is logical.

And yes some objects like big radio link towers are rendered differently but they are not so many.

Two pictures here clearly shows the difference between Arma and Arma2 draw distances.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1312714&postcount=8

EDIT: I did quick test with varying view distance values (1000-5000 meters). I measured draw distance by pressing space bar when pointing farthest tree/bush I was able to see at two different directions (so there can be couple % error - maybe blue curve should straight). So my earlier estimation was not quite correct between 3000-5000 meters (it is more like 45% average).

EDIT2: I should emphasise that my observations are only for object draw distance (like trees, bushes and houses). Vehicles might have different draw distance. And terrain draw distance is same as the view distance (or pretty close to it). But the point with objects and vehicles is the same - their draw distance could be longer especially at longer view distances. It looks bad when cities and hilltop trees pop up quite close to you. Maybe when Arma2 performance gets better with future patches it will be changed.

-KJT-

Edited July 14, 2009 by KJT

[S!fkaIaC 10]

Thats why I requested a "Tree-layer" because vehicles are rendered in greater distance then trees. Result: in far distance you are in fact without cover.

[MehMan 0]

Did you test it with object detail set on high? The object detail setting affects object draw distance and LOD changes.

[KJT 0]

Did you test it with object detail set on high? The object detail setting affects object draw distance and LOD changes.

I did these tests with high object detail and normal terrain settings. I did earlier some tests with different object/terrain detail settings. Object detail (and terrain) setting had NO effect on object draw distance - it changed object density (but not much) inside the draw distance - like it added couple extra bushes at some places. So object detail setting mainly affects level of detail of already visible objects.

-KJT-