Draw Distances

[Garrish]

Please SCS, allow us to have more distant drawing of everything including terrain. I, personally, would love to have the option to even increase the draw distances of everything in a config file. Lower settings can be used by people who have computers that can't handle it. Not having control over load distances is not optimization, it's just a restriction.

If there is already a way to increase the draw distance for everything including terrain, I would appreciate information. I like using the Coast to Coast map mod and some places just don't load. Even without the map mod mountains pop into view out of nowhere and so does vegetation, buildings, ect. I don't like the LOD effect as it just blurs distant objects, and in real life things that are far away aren't blurry unless I don't wear my contact lenses.

[MattFarmzFS22]

Totally agree! The draw distance being extended would also help with those "Fantom AIs" that 'Spawn" ahead of you at a dead stop or when you're passing and they just "appear" in front of you in their lane when lne you're half way past the vehicle you are trying to pass.

[ttower]

I belive this is due to limitations with the game engine. The engine cannot render something that far away yet, though I do believe SCS are working on improving it, as they stated that somewhere around when NM was released.

[Garrish]

One can hope, they allow players to expand the draw limits themselves. I don't know that it's a game engine limitation though. I finally found a thread here: https://forum.scssoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=89824&start=30

Max
SCS Software
Posts: 4421
Joined: 26 Nov 2012 10:00
Location: SCS, Prague

Re: Object draw distance

#38 Post by Max » 03 Jan 2017 08:18
reinhard is correct about view distances.
view distances are fixed and cannot be changed. this is so for few reasons. one of them is amount of things that fit into buffers. second is solid map behavior - once these distances are bit changed map rendering could go completely mess as every map (even modded) is kind of optimized for (or build for) current distances. so we do not want to change them definitely.

the only thing that is worth some thinking is to make far view distance (the last one, 1400m as you correctly spotted) proportional or, say, expandable to far_plane of current camera - something like max(1400, 0.9*far_plane). main issue is that amount of spawned items grows with square of that distance and you hit any memory limits quite fast. same for cpu speed. even loading can become issue as much more items will be loaded for given time unit and as delayed they will plop anyway.

Posts in the thread explain things like the near plane, far plane, and LOD. Some people's computers are beefier than other's and can handle more. Mine is no beast, but I could definately handle a bit further of a draw distance. Multiple buildings can be combined into 1 LOD object and such as well. Another thing is that objects don't have to be exponential as you can border a drawn space so that even if the far plane grows, things simply aren't drawn because there is nothing to draw outside of a certain width from the road, in this game. Then the added content drawn is limited. I don't know how a state like Oklahoma will work, as it's a pretty flat state if the ground texture simply isn't rendered after a certain point. To get a feel for the flatness, the draw distance has to be increased and you could use small hills or tree lines to block where terrain ends, but 1400 meters is actually a short distance, when covering vast areas.

I'm hoping that the stance is not that it is unnacceptable for their game to have poor framrates no matter what. That is part of what causes licencing issues with trucks in this game and cars in others and even trains in Train Sim. In some racing sims, it's the car companies and not the game engine that limits damage shown. McClaren or Lotus don't want to have their cars displayed as scrap after a wreck so you can barely even see when struts are damaged on F1 cars, and damage is limited on GT cars as well. In a race you see cars go to shreds, some game companies state that it's resource heavy to show a lot of damage, in some cases it is, but in many cases, the company doesn't want their product shown in a bad light.

If I want low frame rates or the option to burn out my CPU, let me, then I am more inclined to buy DLC, because the choice is mine, and it gives me a chance to improve my experience. Currently I go anywhere from over 100 fps to 50-60 fps, which I am fine with, and I don't mind at all if I drop into the low 40s in a congested area with super ultra settings. I'd rather use settings to lower my resolution some in exchange for a slider that allows me to see further into the distance.

[racdavies]

Originally posted by ttower:

I belive this is due to limitations with the game engine. The engine cannot render something that far away yet, though I do believe SCS are working on improving it, as they stated that somewhere around when NM was released.

There is a vid posted in a tread over on ets2 forum which explains the draw distance effects... it could be done but i think its down to te average user system spec...not everyone runs a beast of a system with a 4k screen.

[Garrish]

Mine isn't a beast computer, I don't think it needs to be increased drastically either. 1800-2000 meter option would be more than enough, in my opinion. At least enough to trick the eye into thinking it's seeing a decent distance. With sliders to extend the range, those with less powerful computers wouldn't be excluded.