in my map, objects are only visible if they are about 20-30 feet away...once you walk toward them, they sort of fade in out of the gloom...it hasn't looked too bad before, but now that i'm making skydomes, i have to figure out how to do this.

does anyone know is there an easy way to control the fog or w/e it is, so that you can see stuff from a long way away?

The reason this is happening is that the models you're using don't have low-rez textures.

In order for the game to have the functionality to display far-away models, it has to use a low-rez texture.


I don't know how to fix this however, this was just a diagnostic post.

wait if thats true then how do you see the sky in most maps? i mean if it doesn't have a low-rez texture...

I don't know for sure, but one would think it is simply because the sky is a special type of entity. The pertaining files function only as a sky, and cannot be used for anything else (like a placed object).

ok thanks...but lol the question still stands

how do you add a low rez texture or w/e so that you can see the sky dome from a long way away? i'm sure some people must have figured out how

If I'm understanding your problem correctly what you can do is change the nearscene/farscene properties in your world's sky folder. I used to have a link to a really good topic explaining it in the BF1 forum but when the site moved the link stopped working and I couldn't find the topic again, so all I can really tell you about it is that this seems to work best:

NearSceneRange(90.0, 440.0, 120.0, 480.0);
FarSceneRange(300.000000, 1500.0);

I'm not sure how well that would work on skydomes, since you'd probably need to see them from an extremely far distance, but it's worth a try.

wait...so what are you saying?

are you saying that instead of making it so i can see my skydome from far away, i just make it so i can't see my sky unless i'm up close?

EDIT: I need help! I tried adding those values to the ODF and it is doing nothing whatsoever.

Sorry, I wasn't quite clear enough. I meant you need to add those to the .sky file in the "world" folder where all the textures and such go.

thanks, eggman it looks like that works...to a certain extent

i made a skydome that was 8 times normal size--you normally couldn't see it, but when inserted your values into my SKY file, you could see it

however, when i made it 16 times its normal size (i know, its big), i couldn't see it again

what would i adjust with those values to make it work...NearSceneRange or FarSceneRange, and which numbers?

http://www.gametoast.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=236

Finally, I found a working link for the thread about it! Hopefully that will make things a bit more clear.

thanks for the link, eggman...

for some reason though, no matter how large i make my FarSceneRange, i still have to walk toward my skydome when it fades in...adding to the problem is the fact that if i get too close to it the skydome disappears.

lol there has to be some way to solve this, because people have managed to do skydomes before...

If you're putting any model in and scaling it up to eight or sixteen times its normal size, you're going to have a hard time seeing it. Scaling anything up by more than about a factor of 3 causes it to disappear at angles. And no, there's no way around it.

Why would you need a skydome that big anyway?

Maveritchell wrote:Scaling anything up by more than about a factor of 3 causes it to disappear at angles. And no, there's no way around it.

OY
i didn't know that...i was kinda depending on my map having larger skydomes then that

when you say "there's no way around that", is it possible to make an odf that has the same texture but is bigger, so when you scale it up it will be larger?

.Odfs aren't any "size." Only meshes (which are the models) have size, and yes, if you wanted to model it, then theoretically you could make one as large as you want.

Honestly, I'm not sure what you're trying to do. If you're trying to modify the sky not using the .sky file, then you should just be working with the .sky file. If you're trying to make mini-skydomes, then they're only going to be as large as the skydome .msh will allow. If you want it larger, you'll have to model it yourself.

sorry, i should've been clearer...

i'm trying to make a map with multiple mini-skydomes, and one of them has to cover a semi-large area, which is why i'm trying to scale it up so much...a mini-skydome with a scale of 3.0 really isn't that big for my uses

Maveritchell wrote:Scaling anything up by more than about a factor of 3 causes it to disappear at angles.

not to sound like an idiot, but when you say "scaling up by more than a factor of 3", do you mean 3, 6, 9, etc? or just 3

Scaling it up by more than a single factor of 3: That is to say, if you make it any larger than about three times its normal size, it's going to disappear. That is, unfortunately, a fact we have to deal with. If you really need a larger skydome, I suggest you model one. (It's just a sphere, so it's not too hard. Just make sure you get the texture on the inside.) (Remember, 2 grid squares = height of trooper.)

yeah, the problem is i don't know how to use XSI yet, and i've got soooooooo little free time right now...but anyways thanks