clouds and terrain

[earl1937]

  spent about an hour flying 17's and KI84....clouds are great, no frame rate decay when flying in the clouds or near them.....only problem I had was I was not able to seat myself correctly in cockpit! Was way to close to instrument panel and couldn't see all of instruments....runway texture good, trees look more like trees and generally speaking, is a vast improvement over present game.
the only thing I saw which needs some attention, and not sure what needs to be done, but the contrast between terrain and bases seem hard to make it out until you are right on top of the base... I would think adding more asphalt around bases and town would be helpful.

[The Fugitive]

check your FOV (field of view) when you first load the game. It may be set to small. Under the video setting when the notepad first pops up on load up, check and bump it up a bit.

[FLS]

Earl when you start the Alpha go to the video settings tab, change the field of view from auto to custom, and set it to 106 or whatever you prefer. The Alpha uses a field of view of 80 degrees instead of 106 like the current version that you're used to.

[Chilli]

Forgive the slight hijack, but I thought this post was more inline under this thread than Patch thread:

snip

What I find slightly disturbing is the "forests": There's more trees in a park than in the AH woods. One shouldn't be able to count individual trees from above, and that should be true as well here in the north as in the Pacific looking areas. Of course there's the issue with GV's, but isn't there a way to make them look like forests from above?

HiTech already said that SpeedTree owns the rights to the trees, so we are not able to alter them, but the number of trees, I believe is dependent upon benefit vs. pitfall in terms of framerates. 

I had also pondered if there could be a solid block of trees rendered as one object, to make a forest.  Maybe encircle them with a fence that would not allow GVs to enter.  In this case, to avoid any infringement on copyrights, these objects would be classified as "structures" and connected to that system of rendering.

Basically, forests would be geometric shapes that have a cloud shaped tops and edges, with impenetrable "fenced" borders.  Maybe something like that in a future update.

OR, have separate tile sets, like we currently have hires textures, for those who are able to handle the framerates.

[Easyscor]

What the heck, where did Bizman's post go that you quoted?

(Running away to look for it.)

[Bizman]

Chilli et al: A simple solution would be to have a terrain tile looking like an aerial photo of a forest, dark and detailed enough to hide the individual trees. Bump map? I don't know much about these things, but in my opinion patchy moss viewed at human eye height looks a lot like a forest viewed from aviation altitudes.

[Easyscor]

That does work. avapalau uses ground textures to that affect because the palm trees are far worse frame rate killers the fir trees. I've never understood why that is.

[earl1937]

check your FOV (field of view) when you first load the game. It may be set to small. Under the video setting when the notepad first pops up on load up, check and bump it up a bit.

you were correct! My FOV was set at 86 and when I moved it to 106, everything fell into place as far as a one eyed old man can see. That brings up a question, while I know very little about writing "soft ware" and such for this game, "why would they automatically set the Alpha arena to 86 instead of 106 like it is in the MLW arena? I am sure there is a good reason and maybe someone can explain it.
The only thing which I saw which needs some attention, is the contrast between bases, towns and surrounding terrain! It is very difficult to make out a target until you are almost on top of it! I wouldn't have a clue what to suggest, just trying to point out what it appears like to a novice which may try out our great game!
I can't wait until the Alpha arena becomes a part of the regular play, its going to change some people's mind who are considering leaving the game. Hi Tech and staff are on the right track in improving the game!

[Bizman]

"why would they automatically set the Alpha arena to 86 instead of 106 like it is in the MLW arena? I am sure there is a good reason and maybe someone can explain it.

Hitech once said that it's because other flying sims seem to use similar settings. As for what is the "correct" setting is more of a personal matter. In another thread HT said that the ideal would be like looking out through a window the size and distance of your monitor. He also gave a formula to calculate it.

As for the contrast, there's the gamma slider under clipboard/options. On my monitor it didn't do much, I left it at default. Your monitor, on the other hand, has probably a bunch of buttons where you can at least set brightness and contrast to a desired level. Many monitors also have presets for "movie", "photo", "game", "text" and whatnot and they can have a dramatic effect. If your monitor has them, give them a try.

[earl1937]

Hitech once said that it's because other flying sims seem to use similar settings. As for what is the "correct" setting is more of a personal matter. In another thread HT said that the ideal would be like looking out through a window the size and distance of your monitor. He also gave a formula to calculate it.

As for the contrast, there's the gamma slider under clipboard/options. On my monitor it didn't do much, I left it at default. Your monitor, on the other hand, has probably a bunch of buttons where you can at least set brightness and contrast to a desired level. Many monitors also have presets for "movie", "photo", "game", "text" and whatnot and they can have a dramatic effect. If your monitor has them, give them a try.

Thanks I will try that and I have most of them, but still not much contrast in the terrain and things

[FLS]

Earl I don't think that will help. Remember you also tried it for AH2. Be sure you can set anything you change back to what it was.

[Chilli]

Like Earl, I too have problems with the "haze" in alpha.  I can barely see past my control panel if I am flying anywhere near looking at the sun 

I have changed the monitor settings, the graphics card settings and the game settings.  So far the best luck has been with the graphics card settings.  The downside is unlike earlier alpha versions, the game won't run in window mode, so I can't adjust while viewing.

The worst complaint that I have about AH3 is that anything near white or light grey, REFLECTS light and really does make it hard to play.  Turning it down to where it doesn't, renders other areas like dashboard, control panel, and important structures too dark to have any realistic feel (even worse sometimes just blacked out entirely).

[bustr]

Disable bloom.

[Chilli]

Disable bloom.

Sorry, but my case must be extreme.  Bloom does not help.  If I disable post processing it does help with lowering the haze.  Thanks, I forgot to mention that.  All the other check boxes still make no difference with that experience.

[USRanger]

Same problem here Chili.  The terrain is almost whited out when I set the time for 12:00.