Distance Rendering

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Nerve
Posts: 2
Joined: 22 Aug 2018, 16:23

Distance Rendering

Post by Nerve »

Hey OpenMW team and community,

I've been playing through Morrowind for the first time recently with MGE XE, a few effects enabled, and a 10-cell draw distance. The only other graphics mod I have is Vurt's Groundcover. The vistas you can get in this game are jaw-dropping. Combined with Tamriel Rebuilt so the rest of the province is visible right across the water, and you've got one hell of an immersive game. While I do love Oblivion, I think Morrowind is more interested overall. Skyrim doesn't even compare. MW is the best TES game I've played, and I've tried them all (Arena and Daggerfall included).

I'm considering a permanent move to Linux now that DXVK is maturing and Valve just released Proton. I'd like to do more Morrowind playthroughs, but a huge factor in my immersion has been that 10-cell draw distance and those incredible sunsets over the Ashlands. But last I tried OpenMW (0.50), the distance rendering performance was awful. Possibly because it's not culling actors and other detail assets.

tl;dr When can I expect to see developments to allow for greater draw distances with LOD? Essentially, when can I expect parity in both features and performance with MGE XE? Thanks.
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akortunov
Posts: 899
Joined: 13 Mar 2017, 13:49
Location: Samara, Russian Federation

Re: Distance Rendering

Post by akortunov »

Nerve wrote: 22 Aug 2018, 16:31 tl;dr When can I expect to see developments to allow for greater draw distances with LOD? Essentially, when can I expect parity in both features and performance with MGE XE? Thanks.
Well, when someone will implement it. Currently we have only one developer of graphics subsystem, but he is busy with shadows.
Nerve
Posts: 2
Joined: 22 Aug 2018, 16:23

Re: Distance Rendering

Post by Nerve »

akortunov wrote: 22 Aug 2018, 17:43 Well, when someone will implement it. Currently we have only one developer of graphics subsystem, but he is busy with shadows.
Ah, so progress is still slow. If I knew anything about graphics programming, I'd offer to contribute, but I've got nothing.

Also, I think I meant version 0.44. I think I was mistaking the recent DXVK version releases for OpenMW.
Angmor
Posts: 4
Joined: 24 Aug 2018, 23:16

Re: Distance Rendering

Post by Angmor »

Actually, I find myself wondering about this as well. I'm wanting to start a character to explore Tamriel Rebuilt, and I'd like to have at least some sort of distant terrain to help get the scale and geography of it. Nothing fancy, just hoping to see some distant landmasses and where they are in relation to each other.

A brief search and this post led me to believe this feature was present in the latest build. I altered the "settings.cfg" as described, but when I loaded up the game, the default view distance and fog was still there. I'm a little confused. Is this an experimental feature that isn't part of the latest release yet? Or is there something else I'm missing?
kuyondo
Posts: 243
Joined: 29 Mar 2016, 17:45

Re: Distance Rendering

Post by kuyondo »

Angmor wrote: 26 Aug 2018, 19:52 Actually, I find myself wondering about this as well. I'm wanting to start a character to explore Tamriel Rebuilt, and I'd like to have at least some sort of distant terrain to help get the scale and geography of it. Nothing fancy, just hoping to see some distant landmasses and where they are in relation to each other.

A brief search and this post led me to believe this feature was present in the latest build. I altered the "settings.cfg" as described, but when I loaded up the game, the default view distance and fog was still there. I'm a little confused. Is this an experimental feature that isn't part of the latest release yet? Or is there something else I'm missing?
Do this
[terrain]
distant terrain = true
[camera]
viewing distance = 66666
Angmor
Posts: 4
Joined: 24 Aug 2018, 23:16

Re: Distance Rendering

Post by Angmor »

I did try that. Once with the instructions in the original post, and again just now with yours, both times copying and pasting the lines into "My Documents\My Games\OpenMW\Settings.cfg"

Ran OpenMW from the launcher, stepped out into Seyda Neen, and the view distance remains the same. I apologize for being the dense newbie here, but I am very confused. :?
mattwla
Posts: 59
Joined: 17 Jul 2017, 14:45

Re: Distance Rendering

Post by mattwla »

try finding those settings in settings-default.cfg in your openmw folder (actual folder not a save folder or anything) and change them. They should already be there but set wrong, you shouldn't need to add.

Kind of hacky but it seems to be the foolproof way.
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AnyOldName3
Posts: 2666
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: Distance Rendering

Post by AnyOldName3 »

If they're set in settings.cfg, setting them again in settings-default.cfg will still lead to them being overridden. I'd remove them from settings.cfg before trying to change settings-default.cfg. Also, if you do get it working with settings-default.cfg, report back here, as it shouldn't really be considered a permanent solution.
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Ravenwing
Posts: 335
Joined: 02 Jan 2016, 02:51

Re: Distance Rendering

Post by Ravenwing »

AnyOldName3 wrote: 29 Aug 2018, 00:44 If they're set in settings.cfg, setting them again in settings-default.cfg will still lead to them being overridden. I'd remove them from settings.cfg before trying to change settings-default.cfg. Also, if you do get it working with settings-default.cfg, report back here, as it shouldn't really be considered a permanent solution.
To be clear, because I think this can be read a couple different ways if you don't know what's going on, settings.cfg will overwrite anything contained in settings-default.cfg. If adding the appropriate settings in settings.cfg doesn't work, either you've done something wrong, or there is a bug. At no point should it be necessary to change anything in settings-default.cfg. The default file is there as a backup so that if you modify something in the actual settings and it messes stuff up, you can just delete the entry and it will safely return to something that we know works.
Angmor wrote: 26 Aug 2018, 19:52 Actually, I find myself wondering about this as well. I'm wanting to start a character to explore Tamriel Rebuilt, and I'd like to have at least some sort of distant terrain to help get the scale and geography of it. Nothing fancy, just hoping to see some distant landmasses and where they are in relation to each other.

A brief search and this post led me to believe this feature was present in the latest build. I altered the "settings.cfg" as described, but when I loaded up the game, the default view distance and fog was still there. I'm a little confused. Is this an experimental feature that isn't part of the latest release yet? Or is there something else I'm missing?
The feature is definitely present in the latest release. Distant terrain should mostly give you what you're looking for, but TR also uses some statics to make terrain have shear cliffs and other cool formations, so it won't look quite right. Once we support distant statics, the overall effect will be much nicer!

Also, I know you said you're copy-pasting, but just in case, makes sure you're setting it to 66666 (or anything very high) and not 6666 (the default). Make sure you aren't touching the slider in-game, because this may reset to the default value. (Not sure on this, but I feel like I remember hearing about it at one point)
Xenuria
Posts: 45
Joined: 26 Feb 2017, 22:35

Re: Distance Rendering

Post by Xenuria »

There are some rather daunting problems currently with the way OpenMW handles end user hardware resources.

On the one hand the client is VERY stable.
https://youtu.be/gO43bO31ht0
In this video I load ALL grids and set view distance to the max.

On the other hand the client has serious bottlenecks and limitations when it comes to 64-bit address space as well as multi-core processors. The Physics subsystem isn't set up properly yet for multi-thread but unless you are going to certain areas of Tamriel Rebuilt that is the least of your worries. The biggest bottleneck is going to be DRAW and CPU. Several people here will be quick to chim~ in and say that the entirety of OpenMW is 64-bit by function of the fact that you can download a 64-bit version of the game executable. This is only partially true. The biggest problems with frame rate drops when it comes to distance rendering won't go away until the game engine is better able to make use of end user hardware.
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