I thought good to mention this in a separate thread because it's important, this is what Knokke told us recently(see asheshouse BOF 2 thread, last posts)
"The visibility parameters for various objects LODs are indeed stored in the *.msh files. I didn't check if the *.msh files in Il-2 are binary or text files, but it should be easy to open them and convert to msh/text format with MshConverter for editing the LOD view distances. "
Indeed I tested it on an il2 house and it works :!:
It's really easy to do it and I haven't found any problem or bug (as I said I tested on only one object)
Some objects which needs increasing popup distance badly: the Crimea rock, the Sudak fortress segments (used a lot on MTO), the Caen Castle segments...
I would love to increase a bit the distance for the "random trees", but I don't know where their mesh(es) are...
I point you first to the mshconverter, million thanks to Dr Jones who wrote it
(The link is inoperative)
For getting the Crimea rock mesh, go to the folder where your sfsextractor exe is, rename filelist.txt to filelistbackup.txt. Open notepad and paste
3do/Buildings/Crimea/Rock1/Rock1.msh
Save file as filelist.txt
Start sfsextractor and open with it the first few 3do sfs files, you'll find the msh in one of them...
Thanks, now what line controls the LOD visibility distance ?
I've found some .msh named under 3Do/tree/*** so I'm going to start with these.
Cheers
Nico
Great find.
I sure hope that you guys who know what you are doing will find a way to get it to us who have no clue and, if you can,....thanks.
Interesting. Some time ago it was pointed out that many IL2 buildings are much too small (ie way underscale) compared to the aircraft. This is surely another factor which makes the identification of targets difficult, quite apart from popup distance. At the time, the problem was that re-scaling would mean rebuilding all the cities by hand, but I wonder if a limited pallette of buildings - perhaps with one or two 'specials' for certain maps - could now be used for this via autopop? Combined with improved popup distances, it would make a big difference to the visual impact of towns.
Oops.. sorry - I didn't realise people didn't know about this. I've been editing the LOD/PopUp Distance of all my new objects since I started making them.
Of course, the problem is with the effect on FPS - if large cities are made of objects with high visibility distances, too many objects can be in view at the same time.
Well, it looks like i was going nowhere with my futile atempts...
Canon, you wouldn't know how to make the auto trees appear from a longer distance, would you ? This may help resolve the texture repetition some maps suffer from...
Cheers
Nico
Perhaps this technique could be used to solve the problem of the Stuka's, that expand and contract as you approach them.
Hm, I've been testing on Berlin map, modified the popup for all german buildings. Took a flight over Frankfurt an der Oder, strange things happened: the popup was not uniform in the sense that you could see distant buildings in the town BUT buildings which were closer were not drawn until later, pretty crazy, needs more experimenting with different values. The FPS was ok
I'll let you know if I find more...
Thx.