Problem with fog

[Zipuli]

When zooming in (using binoculars or 8x zoom with PERI) I can see fog OK, but when unzooming all the ground textures that should have fog effect on them turn white. Vehicles etc. are normally visible when unzoomed and effected by fog when zoomed.

I noticed this in the assault against flank (autumn) scen, haven't seen it elsewhere (for example 73 eastings worked normally)

I have 7800 GT with latest drivers... What could be the problem??

Zip

[Bluewings]

latest drivers

When I see thoses 2 words , I start to worry ...
Never *^£$*ing stable ...

Cheers . :3starSK:

[Zipuli]

I updated them after I first encountered the problem... Old ones were some months old.

Zip

[Zipuli]

Tested with my old PC with x800 Pro and works fine... hmm...

Zip

[Zipuli]

What is the "thing" that controls the fog? I mean can I change some options in the display page in control panel to somehow influence it???

Zip

[Bluewings]

Try different quality of Mip-mapping first . Some had problems sorted out this way with Silent Hunter III .

Cheers . :3starSK:

[YdnarB]

Zipuli, post an update as you find out why this is. I am looked to get a PC with that card and was curious as to its performance.

[Zipuli]

I'll be out for a week, but I let you know... Otherwise the card runs real smoothly!

Mip-mapping... can it be altered in the game, or do I need to do it manually via control panel?

Zip

[OilBucket]

Not to bash or ridicule your video card Zipuli.... but what I have been reading in tech forums is that it seems the nvidea cards drivers are just not keeping up as of the moment. Hopefully to change for ya! oh yea, I believe you would have to change your mip-mapping in your control panel/center.

[Rogue6g]

try the Omega drivers or some other 3rd party drivers. I liked the Omegas until I tried the DNA drivers(ati), but stability is key IMO rather than fps.

[OilBucket]

I tried the Omega 5.7 drivers for my 9800... did well....hadnt tried the DNA ones yet and very leery of trying anything different since when I did shit hit the ceiling and had to re-format. Maybe my prob, I dont know, but I do know it totally screwed my puter. BTW, the ones different I used was the Omega 6.2 driver but was downloaded from a mirror site. Have the 6.2 now but its the original Catalyst from ATI and havent had any probs. I have heard good things about DNA though. May try those later.

[Brun]

I have the identical problem on assault against flank (autumn). Distant ground is white. I have a 6800gt. Must a a nividia thing.

[YdnarB]

Why only one scenario though? Very strange to me. Shouldn't it across all?

[Ssnake]

Yes... maybe it IS the fact that there is stronger fog in this scenario than others. You should try and see if different fog settings lead to this phenomenon. Then we'd at least know that it is somehow related to the fog settings that doesn't work with the driver that you're using.

[Zipuli]

OK, more info:

It seems that all visibility settings (=fog) above 100m (at least up to 2000m - didn't test further) result in white terrain and no fog when viewing without any zoom (1X). 73 eastings had 100m (or less?) visibility and flank attack mission worked OK when visibility was changed to 100 m...

The white terrain seems to start at about 250 metres away from the viewer (I used laser rangefinder to test it) when not zooming in - this is same on all of the tested visibility settings! It seems that the problem doesn't show itself when visibility is 100, because the white terrain would start at 250m - you can't see that far!

When using the PERI with 2x magnification, the white terrain seems to start at around 800 metres! When using other zoom levels (binocular - 4x, 12x, 8x) the problem seems to disappear (or the white terrain is pushed beyond LOS????).

This problem is only with terrain textures - forests etc. look normal (and fogged when further away)!

When using TI the terrain looks normal (well, green that is).

With my other PC (that has x800 Pro) everything was OK...

Any chance to get this fixed via eSim or Nvidia??? Or any way to you eSim guys to test this? It doesn't make the game unplayable as I can always disable fog with the editor, but it's irritating when less visibility is used...

Zip

Anyone using similar (7800 GT) video card with other than NVIDIA drivers and has no problems?

I tried messing around with the nvidia options in the control panel - display, but no effect so far...

Zip

[Bluewings]

Zip , remember our little chat about NVidia/ATI recent drivers ? :wink: :mrgreen:

Cheers . :3starSK:

[Zipuli]

Yes indeed I remember... tried everything back to 77.77 (first driver that supports 7800 GT - ~september 2005) and same results. Newest one I tried is 81.98 and next one is 84.15 when the "#¤%&/ link on nvidia's page starts to work!!!

Zip

[Zipuli]

Even more info:

I tried many other scenarios and it seems that the only ones (so far) where the fog is corrupted are Flank Attack (autumn) and Meeting Engagement (autumn).

I tried for example the HoH I scenario and tried visibility from 1000 - ... - 2500 and no such bugs. Again, tried Flank Attack and Meeting engagement and the bugs are still present. Tried "point of something red autumn"(?name?) scenario and only bug I saw was a ghost forest of some sort (reported elsewhere also, I think).

So it seems that something in those 2 autumn scenarios corrupts the fog for me. Flank Attack (winter) seems to work OK, for example. Could it be the autumn terrain tiles etc.?

I'll have to try with maximum visibility too just to see is it about the fog afterall! Still, when zooming in the white tiles seem to move further away, which brings to my mind the propability that something is wrong when viewing the terrain tiles far away - afterall they are "closer" when zooming in. Something wrong when the terrain detail is dropped???

Zip

[Zipuli]

OK, tested it and the problem doesn't seem to be the fog, but something about the LOD of the ground textures... when you look at them closely it's ok, but when zooming out the fartherst away tiles turn white - or disappear? Mip-mapping options had no effect on this.

Is it possible that the "theme" (or something like that) of autumn has some issues with my card/drivers? Is it possible to turn those autumn scenarios into summer ones with same visibilities to see what happens? How?

Thanks!

Zip

[LtHenkel]

Hi Zipuli,
the probem has nothing to do with driver issues. After experimenting for a while I now think the scenarios with modified themes work well as long as they are used on the computer where the theme was replaced within the scenario. As soon as the sce is copied or moved to another computer, even if the identical theme files are in the "themes" folder, SB somehow does not load the textures correctly. As far as I can see it only affects the distant textures, about 1500m away... :cry:

And now for the workaround: 8)
Enter the scenario editor and open the scenario you want to play.
Then click "MAP" and "REPLACE THEME", choose the theme named "Winter" or "Autumn" and click "OPEN", then save the scenario. When you load it now it should work fine...

Please give me feedback if this approach works...

[Zipuli]

LtHenkel,

I did what you told, changed the theme to autumn and everything works OK now! So afterall it was the game, not the drivers.. I hope this gets fixed, but of course now that I know what causes it it's easier to fix it myself.

Thanks!

Zip

[Ssnake]

This is, most likely, caused by a theme file that is referencing a texture that is not included in the standard release. Those missions should have their themes updated (in the mission editor) with a theme that we know will work. (That is, a theme that uses only textures that are included in the standard release.)

[YdnarB]

What's the easiest way to tell if a theme is using a texture that was not in the standard release?

[LtHenkel]

This is, most likely, caused by a theme file that is referencing a texture that is not included in the standard release. Those missions should have their themes updated (in the mission editor) with a theme that we know will work. (That is, a theme that uses only textures that are included in the standard release.)

No, I don´t think so, because if you replace the winter/ autumn themes in the sce´s concerned with the respective themes included in the release version (which are by the way identical, as I didn´t change anything) it works!
And because it works the way I described above, the textures are there or are they not???

[jlh]

This solution worked for me. I was having trouble with the "Flank Attack Winter" scenario. The problem I had was that the hills in the medium and long distance were green - no snow in the unmagnified view. In the magnified view they were snow covered. Changing the theme in the mission editor fixed it.

BUT WATCH OUT. While looking for the appropriate winter theme, I used the "MED_Europe_Winter.thm" It caused the program to crash to the desktop for me, and it got so that I couldn't even open the scenario in the mission editor to change it out of that theme. I did this twice with the same result. It crashed every time I tried to open it.

I ended up successfully using another winter theme. I had to twice throw the scenario file away. Luckily I had made several copies of the scenario before I started messing with it.

[jlh]

I know this is off of the original subject but I tried that "MED_Europe_Winter.thm" theme again on another scenario (just to see if there really was a problem) and it caused my system to crash again on trying to play it. (Had to throw away the scenario file.) If someone uses this theme without a problem, let me know.

[Zipuli]

Where are the scenarios that came with the game located in? I made a few test scenarios of the Flank Attack and saved the files in the original place (it seems) and I can't find the place to delete the files I don't need anymore...

Zip

[TopKick]

Read page 3 and 4 about file structure in the manual.

[Zipuli]

Ahh, they were hidden! Cunning! Thanks!

Zip

[Zipuli]

It seems that replacing the theme in mission editor works only for a little while. After few missions in other scenarios that have different themes the white terrain (green terrain in winter) problem reappears and doesn't go away until theme is again changed (or re-loaded). Only tiles where undergrowth is not visible seem to suffer from the problem??? I am not sure, but looks like some sort of LOD problem???

Zip