reported Implementing new higher visibilty range options in DCS World

[Mustang]

Hi all, thought I'd get something going to see if we could get new visibility options to DCS World.

The process of adding these settings are known by some users in the community but as of late I feel that these settings should be fully exposed and available for all users to enjoy in the base version DCS.

Making the changes are pretty straightforward once you know where to look - firstly you make an edit to the optionsDb.lua file and create new entries that will be toggleable in the options screen 

Next you need to make some edits to the graphics.lua this time creating new entries for the new settings and their corresponding values under distancFactor

Lastly an adjustment is made to the terrainoptions41.lua by increasing the size levels of the Instancer buffers, this is required to elimate any popping-in/out of scenery objects/forests etc (I just brute force the values by adding an extra 0 to each amount) 

Once the sim is fired up the new options are new available.

Beware of making any edits to the terrainoptions41.lua, doing so with trigger Integrity Check fail on connecting to most online servers.

 

Edited January 8 by Mustang

[bandit648]

22 minutes ago, Mustang said:

Hi all, thought I'd get an idea going for ED to add new visibility range settings to DCS World.

The process of adding these settings are known by some users in the community but as of late I feel that these settings should be fully exposed and available for all users to enjoy in the base version DCS.

Making the changes are pretty straightforward once you know where to look - firstly you make an edit to the optionsDb.lua file and create new entries that will be toggleable in the options screen 

Next you need to make some edits to the graphics.lua this time creating new entries for the new settings and their corresponding values under distancFactor

Lastly an adjustment is made to the terrainoptions41.lua by increasing the size levels of the Instancer buffers, this is required to elimate any popping-in/out of scenery objects/forests etc (I just brute force the values by adding an extra 0 to each amount) 

Once the sim is fired up the new options are new available.

Beware of making any edits to the terrainoptions41.lua, doing so with trigger Integrity Check fail on connecting to most online servers.

I love this idea but increasing the distanceFactor beyond 2.0 results in terrain object artifacts on some maps. I've noticed the issue on both the Sinai map around Cairo and Normandy in the London area. It appears to affect certain types of buildings in these areas that causes them start glitching. Some sort of LOD issue perhaps.

I haven't tested all maps but Syria and Caucasus seems to be unaffected by it.

 

[Mustang]

36 minutes ago, bandit648 said:

I love this idea but increasing the distanceFactor beyond 2.0 results in terrain object artifacts on some maps. I've noticed the issue on both the Sinai map around Cairo and Normandy in the London area. It appears to affect certain types of buildings in these areas that causes them start glitching. Some sort of LOD issue perhaps.

I haven't tested all maps but Syria and Caucasus seems to be unaffected by it.

 

Edit the terrainoptions41.lua as shown and the popping will go away, this is 100% fixable.

[NineLine]

This looks like a good idea, the team is on holiday but I will submit it to them for consideration. Thanks!

[Mustang]

Just now, NineLine said:

This looks like a good idea, the team is on holiday but I will submit it to them for consideration. Thanks!

Awesome! ED could probably fine tune it a bit better with their knowhow but yes this is great thanks Nineline 

[bandit648]

31 minutes ago, Mustang said:

Edit the terrainoptions41.lua as shown and the popping will go away, this is 100% fixable.

Yes I'm aware of the terrainoptions41.lua edit but that doesn't fix this issue.

[Mustang]

5 minutes ago, bandit648 said:

Yes I'm aware of the terrainoptions41.lua edit but that doesn't fix this issue.

Maybe trying some of the graphics.lua settings shown might help too? I've bumped many of the parameters up for testing purposes and have yet so far not really encountered any strange glitches like you're seeing on those maps.

[Hotdognz]

I would love ED to add this into DCS as an option for the user without editing lua files, it should be explored more with sliders also especially with the 4090 about to be a second gen card and the 5090 coming out this year.

ED need to start catering to the power user more in the graphics options than it does currently.

Thanks Nineline for passing this on.

Sent from my CPH2333 using Tapatalk

[bandit648]

27 minutes ago, Mustang said:

Maybe trying some of the graphics.lua settings shown might help too? I've bumped many of the parameters up for testing purposes and have yet so far not really encountered any strange glitches like you're seeing on those maps.

I just re-tested and it looks to be fixed. Sorry, I hadn't checked it since a few updates ago. I've used this workaround for view distance for many years. The sim looks incredible at 4.0 distanceFactor.

This really needs to be implemented as the current view distance settings are outdated. I'd also like to see the grass/ground clutter view distance increased. So far, I haven't found any way to do that with editing the config files.

 

[MadKreator]

@Mustang added this via Open Mod Manager package. Exactly as in the screenshots and all works well. Insane (5.0) is great! No artifacts  or any oddities  that I can see, even on Sinai( I was getting some artifacts with LOD’s when altering some of these in the past, like bandit had). Just buildings for days! Good show! 

@NineLine thank you for passing this idea on. Easy to implement, and adds a very welcomed level of depth. Along side some scenery LOD adjustments( full level LOD’s rendered farther out), this would be stunning, especially for heli pilots. 

[jnr4817]

What is the performance hit, especially in VR?

[bandit648]

14 hours ago, jnr4817 said:

What is the performance hit, especially in VR?

It's a heavy hit in VR. I generally don't go over high view distance un-modded in VR. It doesn't matter as much since visuals aren't nearly as clear as they are on a 4K display.

 

[cfrag]

While I find this interesting from a technical standpoint, isn’t what we see at those long ranges a bit silly? Since dcs’s world isn’t curved, those images may be a flat-earthers wet dream, yes. Shouldn’t objects and terrain (better: the lower part of mountains) start to disappear? In other words: are those visuals in any way realistic? I have not researched this, just curious. 

[Dangerzone]

45 minutes ago, cfrag said:

While I find this interesting from a technical standpoint, isn’t what we see at those long ranges a bit silly? Since dcs’s world isn’t curved, those images may be a flat-earthers wet dream, yes. Shouldn’t objects and terrain (better: the lower part of mountains) start to disappear? In other words: are those visuals in any way realistic? I have not researched this, just curious. 

Will depend on your altitude. At 10,000ft the horizon is beyond 200 miles, and is over 350 miles at 30,000ft. 

So if you fly helicopters, then yeah, but if you're going high - there's a lot more you might still be able to see?

[MadKreator]

Even cranked up to 5.0 it’s not like there’s buildings visible 30 miles away or anything. Yes it extends the range, but what I notice most is there is more density, if you will, at farther distances, so the buildings “popping in” is reduced. It’s not as dramatic of an effect as one may think. It just feels a bit more “full” but not to the point of unrealistic.  … imo

Edited January 2 by MadKreator

[pegasus1]

I added this this morning, apart from a crash at map load to to incorrectly entering a line of code, once corrected this worked a treat.

Its frustrating that DCS isn't really rewarding those of us with top end hardware. 

[swartbyron]

I think ED reluctance to increase the view distance is the huge impact on performance and the number of complaints they will have to deal with by users who expect miracles even from the latest hardware. This is defiantly NOT for those who fly in VR!

That said the view distance is defiantly very out dated and we need at least one extra option in the drop down menu at the very least.

The best eye candy verses performance balance for me is at 2.5, which is almost double the the default Extreme view distance.

What makes the most impact for me is the increased distance you can see the trees and makes me wish the trees had their own separate slider or drop down menu.I would love to be able to push the trees alone up to 5.0 as it would have less impact on performance than increasing the total view distance and still improve the look and realism of the terrain immensely.

Increasing the distance that we can see grass and ground cutter is anther on the top of my wish list. This would be particularity helpful on the satellite imagery maps where the texture detail is particularly poor down low.

View distance of 1.5 (Default Extreme), 2.5 and 5.0 shown on the Normandy map below. You can see how the trees fill in the gap nicely and complete the picture.

Edited January 6 by swartbyron

[pegasus1]

2 hours ago, swartbyron said:

I think ED reluctance to increase the view distance is the huge impact on performance and the number of complaints they will have to deal with by users who expect miracles even from the latest hardware. This is defiantly NOT for those who fly in VR!

That said the view distance is defiantly very out dated and we need at least one extra option in the drop down menu at the very least.

The best eye candy verses performance balance for me is at 2.5, which is almost double the the default Extreme view distance.

What makes the most impact for me is the increased distance you can see the trees and makes me wish the trees had their own separate slider or drop down menu.I would love to be able to push the trees alone up to 5.0 as it would have less impact on performance than increasing the total view distance and still improve the look and realism of the terrain immensely.

Increasing the distance that we can see grass and ground cutter is anther on the top of my wish list. This would be particularity helpful on the satellite imagery maps where the texture detail is particularly poor down low.

View distance of 1.5 (Default Extreme), 2.5 and 5.0 shown on the Normandy map below. You can see how the trees fill in the gab nicely and complete the picture.

The game definitely needs to increase its scalability at the extreme right of arc, DCS doesn't need super fast framerates as the immersion of a flight sim to me trumps all else but many people have 64+gb RAM, 4k G-Sync monitors, 4090s and X3D AMD CPUs so the game needs to take those components (and future iterations) into consideration.

[MadKreator]

I will say that 5.0 has been great… except on IRAQ. Flying near or through mountains absolutely tanks my performance. Normally on Extreme, uncapped with pretty much all settings maxed( except shadows on med and terrain shadows flat), i can get around 90-110 fps( 120 up high), so I purposely cap at 60 to give overhead for running Helios, track IR, and flying at treetop level through canyons, etc… but on Iraq with view kicked up to 5.0 will drop me down into the low 30’s/high 20’s even, without Helios or Track IR.  Iraq is a good looking map but whoa baby is she a performance hog!

- What would be nice is if the visibility range didn’t require a game restart.

Edited January 6 by MadKreator

[MAXsenna]

Thanks you@Mustang! I really appreciate this. It's excellent now, even on "insane" I cant seem to get any worse performance in Syria.

However, I do get this error in the DCS.log

 

 

[jnr4817]

Has someone made this OVGME ready with the different settings, 2.0,2.5,30, etc.?

[MAXsenna]

38 minutes ago, jnr4817 said:

Has someone made this OVGME ready with the different settings, 2.0,2.5,30, etc.?

 I've made it a mod alright, combined with the Ultra Shadows setting enabled.

[jnr4817]

How bad did your performance dip or what have you done to offset using these settings in VR. What are your system specs, what kind of windows tuning, etc have you done?

Do you mind sharing?

Edited January 6 by jnr4817

[MAXsenna]

How bad did your performance dip or what have you done to offset using these settings in VR. What are your system specs, what kind of windows tuning, etc have you done?
Do you mind sharing?

I don't use VR.
My computer is from May 2013. I do have a 2080Ti, That helps.

[jnr4817]

1 minute ago, MAXsenna said:

I don't use VR.

My computer is from May 2013. I do have an 2080Ti, That helps.

Roger that.