Object drawing distance tweak

[KeyCat 131]

Kju you rock! Will try it out as soon as possible...

/KC

[fincuan 0]

After an afternoon of mixed MP with this one I'm highly pleased. I didn't conduct any scientific tests yet or take any screenies(too busy playing!), but the intial impression is that the mod really makes a difference. I mainly concentrated on watching how buildings behave, so I won't comment on units yet.

The most obvious difference was this: With sub-3000 viewdistances the "before" situation was that you'd have buildings suddenly pop out of the ground, ground which had already been visible for a long time. Using the mod you have the ground and the buildings fade out of the fog at the same time. This might not sound like much explained like this, but it looks very good ingame. I'll try to grab some video or screenies later on.

On my crappy rig the effect on performance wasn't really noticeable most of the time, maybe a few fps here and there, but there was slight stuttering that wasn't there before when flying at high speeds with the viewdistance over 4000-5000.

[Tankbuster 1747]

Tried it ingame, really like it. I haven't tried it with a fast jet but it makes even helo flying better.

[Alex72 1]

Oh yes it is amazing to see villages and other ehum objects all around you at far distances. The game just feels more juicy/present with this tweak.

Awesome work. Hope BIS implements it into the core.

Alex

[kremator 1065]

OK have done some testing with vehicles as well. Not sure if its sorted for that yet, but at least it will give us a benchmark.

For information using ION_Viewdistance to get VD up to 50km.

T72 tanks appear (as a tiny dot - so you can acquire them without TAB :) ) at 3103m at any VD ABOVE 6000m. It is also around this distance that the trees start to pop into existence with the fog.

So I have my system now set up with a constant VD of 6000m and I haven't seen that drastic an FPS hit at all (I'm still getting my microstutters with Win7 + 1.04 but hey :) )

[oktane 0]

This is awesome work.

I didn't notice an appreciable FPS drop and my old 8800GTS is running at the borderline so if it had, I would have noticed.

Really makes flying cool, much less pop-in noticed.

[csj 0]

This addon has improved my A2 gaming experience, nice work.

I do not have a fast rig and my best playable vd setting is 3km,

so the more I can see at that range the better.

FPS is same - I would say atm it is even more stable staying at 20 to 28

instead of 8 to 28.

:ok:

with

without

[Rogue_Trooper 10]

I would assume its installed using the normal method?

[kremator 1065]

Yup.... stick it in a modfolder and add to commandline and enjoy the scenery !

[Nazul 10]

kju, everything you do seems to be a major advancement, well done!

[breacherman 10]

can someone tell me where to extract these pbo files too? theres no read me, I d0nt get how everyone else appears to know where to extract the files...i feel stupid :(

[rowdied 44]

can someone tell me where to extract these pbo files too? theres no read me, I d0nt get how everyone else appears to know where to extract the files...i feel stupid :(

You have to create a folder in the arma2 folder and put the files into a folder called addons in the mod folder.

C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\Objectdrawingdistancetweak\addons

Then add this mod folder to the arma shortcut on your desktop.

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2.exe" -mod=@sap;@landtex3;demo;pmc;Objectdrawingdistancetweak -nosplash

[nikita320106 0]

ingenious thing)

thanx alot

check later)

[-TO-Khaine 10]

Might just be me, or a lucky stroke, but after installing this mod, my performance increased quite alot. And the game experience is much better with the increased amount of objects as well.

Definitely a good addon.

[Tankbuster 1747]

This is such a free lunch. I mean, pretty much everyone here is saying it improves the game without any real drawbacks, you have to wonder why BIS didn't have this in the day one release.

I think it needs to go even further, I'd like the objects to be drawn OUTSIDE the draw distance fog ring so that they never actually pop in, the simply fade in through the fog.

[stevevcb 3]

The draw distance has been my only major issue with ArmA 2, so I was dead chuffed when I stumble across this. Works fairly well, no discernable performance hit either. Only thing I noticed was that trees don't seem to draw as far out as the buildings do.

[Tankbuster 1747]

The draw distance has been my only major issue with ArmA 2, so I was dead chuffed when I stumble across this. Works fairly well, no discernable performance hit either. Only thing I noticed was that trees don't seem to draw as far out as the buildings do.

Ah yes. I meant to mention that too.

[ziiip 1]

Finally! I've been waiting for this since ArmA1.:D

[3_PARA_Telson 10]

It seems to work fine and no drop in framerates

Well chuffed Nice work Kju

[p75 10]

Another great one, Kju, will give it a go!

[Fortran 1]

Fantastic addon! Goes perfectly with my F-117A so I can see what the hell im dropping bombs on from 2000 up in the air. Is there any way to access or manipulate this value dynamically Kju ?

[Thunderbird 0]

Only thing I noticed was that trees don't seem to draw as far out as the buildings do.

Being not at home, I can't help you in details. But as far as I can recall:

If you unpbo the concerned Addons done by Kju, you can increase the values of the concerned "type" of unit (Vehicle or Statics... etc).

if it is "xxx=100" then put instead a higher value. you'd have to play with the values until you reach a "satisfying" result.

However, I think that BIS hardcoded the "command" in question by establishing a sort of "highest value", so putting very high numbers might not change the result in-game, but I still have to get deeper within this field to confirm my statement.

Regards,

TB

[Defunkt 431]

=========

= Your job =

=========

[...]

Tell us how to make it work for roads, stones and vegetation.

These are not defined in the ArmA II configs. Doing so myself didn't work so far.

I took this to mean the property appears to have no effect on trees et. al., certainly didn't seem to have for me.

EDIT: Hmmm... but that might just be because they're set to 100 rather than 1000 as is for vehicles and statics.

[.kju 3245]

To be precise. The tweak does NOT (YET) work on world placed roads and vegetation.

The reason most likely is that they are not correctly defined in the config OR

one needs to rebuild the world for it (unlikely) or a different reason.

The two addons for roads and vegetation allow you to place these objects in the editor.

For these manually placed, it does work again (only tested roads..).

> manipulate this value dynamically

The config can not be modified during runtime unfortunately. So no.

=======

= Plans =

=======

• Make it work for vegetation and roads.
  
• Sign the addon.
  
• If people try different values for featureSize and find any positive change,
  use those.
  

Edited August 15, 2009 by kju

[rowdied 44]

I tried changing the values for roads and trees but met with no success.

Great addon, by the way, I have less lod pops and it does run smoother even when at 20fps with lots going on.