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[lowfighter]

Random 3D trees on il2 maps: pop-up distance  is very small maybe like 1500 meter. It would be great if someone knowledgeable could find the relevant code and do some experiments, say doubling this distance and see how FPS performance is affected. My feeling is that performance will not be affected too much. I would love such a mod 
Please!
BTW, how is it with CoD? Is pop-up distance for these trees increased?

[SAS~Malone]

i'm with you on this, lowfighter.
in fact, i think you and i have been trying to get this particular issue sorted almost since the mods started.
personally i have no clue, but hopefully some knowledge has been gained by someone that can help us to solve this.
i can't speak for CloD, seems i first need a new pc to get it to run any better than 2 fps, lol...

[Dakpilot]

Any experiments with this would be greatly received by the whole IL-2 community!

It would be very interesting to see how FPS would be affected if it were implemented, as an aside, some buildings on older maps have an incredibly short "draw distance" and give very noticeable pop up, wheras a few of the newer seem to suffer from hardly any pop up at all.

It always seems that this pop up at short distances, with lots of rendering happening in front of your eyes affects FPS more than ones with long draw distances.

I guess updating all the old buildings (or at least the common ones) would be a huge job ??? and one i am not qualified for.

With the Basic specs of computers/GRX cards having changed so much in ten years, maybe there is now room for these improvements?

Cheers Dakpilot

[SAS~Malone]

i'm sure there's room for this type of improvement, even on the most lowly of modern pc's.
the problem is in identifying which part of the game code controls this, so far no-one seems to have found it.

[Dakpilot]

With so many new discoveries in the last few months, maybe this old problem can be cracked 

Concerning buildings, as an example, on Niel Lowe's Darwin map

https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,8224.0.html

There is virtually no distinguishable pop up from the buildings in the City/Town  so somebody knows how to do it

Cheers Dakpilot

[lowfighter]

Thanks for support M8s!
Dakpilot, unfortunately the random trees are not "functioning" like the normal objetcs. As malone says I also think no one knows yet how to change pop-up range for the random trees. The normal objects are easy, msh converter +notepad changing the numbers in the msh file.
Let's hope some magician will try 

With so many new discoveries in the last few months, maybe this old problem can be cracked 

Concerning buildings, as an example, on Niel Lowe's Darwin map

https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,8224.0.html

There is virtually no distinguishable pop up from the buildings in the City/Town  so somebody knows how to do it

Cheers Dakpilot

[Bee]

I've been wondering about this for years.  This evening I suddenly thought maybe the pop up distance of the dynamic trees is related to the Furniture/RowOfTrees object.  This is the one that the map maker puts down in cities and towns etc and they magically convert to the dynamic trees when Forest= 2 or 3 are activated in the Conf.ini.  Maybe if the viewing distance of this object was increased, the dynamic trees would automatically follow...

Lowfighter, if you're reading this could you share the technique of how one changes the view distance of objects using the mesh converter?

[Uufflakke]

It's very annoying these trees popping up right in front of you. If that could be solved...

It also happens in COD but at further distance,/ In this vid you can see it happen here and there.
Very noticable from 1m42s to 1m50s at the right part of the screen next to the cockpit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvinIuhblxs

Another interesting thing in IL2 is the swaying of random trees now and then.

[lowfighter]

Hi Bee,

I've been wondering about this for years.

Me too 
It's amazing that this is so hard-coded that noone found the way up to now.

 This evening I suddenly thought maybe the pop up distance of the dynamic trees is related to the Furniture/RowOfTrees object.  This is the one that the map maker puts down in cities and towns etc and they magically convert to the dynamic trees when Forest= 2 or 3 are activated in the Conf.ini.  Maybe if the viewing distance of this object was increased, the dynamic trees would automatically follow...

I had the same idea some time ago and I tested and it didn't work, unfortunately....





Lowfighter, if you're reading this could you share the technique of how one changes the view distance of objects using the mesh converter?

So you use Dr. Jones mesh converter. Open with it the .msh file of the object and save to ascii .msh with same name. Place the new .msh in the appropriate folder in the mods folder. Open it with notepad and you'll see

[Common]
NumBones 0
 FramesType Single
 NumFrames 1

[LOD]
1000
2000
4000

[Hooks]
Ground_Level <BASE>

......

Change the numbers in the [LOD] section
the Levels of Detail (I think this is what LOD means) numbers are the distances at which different mesh details change when you approach the object. The last one gives the distance at which the object itself pops up. Maybe I'm not quite right about details but it works. So if last LOD is 4000 the object pops up at approx. 4000 m.
Some funny/annoying things:
1. If you change the pop-up in this way say to 6000 meters for an object and you place it in a mission it really pops up at that distance. BUT: if you build a map and the object is on the map (in the actors.static)
the object will pop up at around 3000 meters regardles of your 6000 meters wish. It is a thing hard coded...Still there are a few objects which when placed  in the map actor.static appear on much bigger distance for example the Castles of Slovakia.  Again I think something is hard coded for those objects.

2. If you have an object on the map and place an invisible plate close to it (hundred meters) the visibility of the object is increased! So what I wrote in 1. can be solved in this silly way adding plates in villages, towns etc, provided that the map is not verydensely populated and the cities are not very large..
It's a matter of tuning..

3. Some .mhs files are not converted well by the msh converter. For example your rowoftrees .mhs. There are though just a few such sad cases, most of them are converted all right. If the msh is not converted right object will not show on the map...
When I wanted to test the idea that the pop-up distance of 3D trees is given by pop-up distance of rowoftrees because the msh didn't convert well I simply replaced that .msh with a good one (say of a house) which had big popup distance and checked. But no joy.

Later more maybe

[Bee]

Hmm.  Interesting.  I wonder how the Darwin objects get around this.  When I've hardcoded them into a static.ini, they retain their beautifully long popup distance.

If the RowOfTrees/AlteredBush objects can not be increased, I wonder if the palm trees can?  Little victories and all that...

Thanks for the tip 2.  I didn't know about that one and it might prove very useful indeed!