This simple patch forces all ships and objects to use their highest quality models and textures at any distance.
Description
'LOD' stands for Level Of Detail. As the camera moves away from a ship Homeworld will switch out its model for a lower detail one to improve performance. The transition is jarring, especially at higher resolutions. Modern PCs are more than capable of handling Homeworld's simple models so this isn't necessary any more for most players.
It's a really easy mod that's been done many times before but it's surprisingly hard to find these days. If you look for information about how to do it yourself you'll just get links to long-gone forum threads. There are a few mods you can track down which do disable LOD switching but they also do a lot of other things you might not want. I spent way too long figuring this out for my own use and am releasing it so that others don't have to go through the same thing.
Installation
Place the folders in the Homeworld install directory (the folder where homeworld.exe is).
Don't want it applied across the board? Each .lod file controls the LOD for an individual ship or object so it's easy to pick and choose which ships you'd like to have always looking their best. The file names are mostly self explanatory and they're organised in folders by faction (r1 = Kushan, r2 = Taiidan, p1 = Turanic, p2 = Kadesh).
Warning
Loading old saves after installation can cause crashes. Don't start using this halfway through the campaign!
Tested with a full playthrough on the original Homeworld (patched to 1.05). It may or may not work fully on other patches. It may or may not work on Homeworld Classic from the Remastered Collection. Let me know.
DIY
Here's how you can replicate this mod.
You will need a program to extract Homeworld's .big files (e.g. WinBigw), a program to automate find-and-replace edits to many text files (e.g. Notepad++), and the file Homeworld.big which is in your Homeworld install directory.
1) Prepare an empty folder to work in
2) Using WinBigw, extract Homeworld.big to your folder
3) Delete everything in the folder except for files with the .lod extension and the folders containing them
4) Using Notepad++, press Ctrl+Shift+F to bring up "Find in Files" and set the directory to your working folder
5) Replace all instances of "LOD1" with "LOD0"
6) Replace all instances of "LOD2" with "LOD0"
7) Replace all instances of "LOD3" with "LOD0"
8) Replace all instances of "LOD4" with "LOD0"
Thank you! Is there any similar for Homeworld Emergence?
I'm actually playing that one for the first time so I haven't looked into modding it at all. Once I'm done I'd be happy to put together the mod if there isn't a good one available.
I've just uploaded the Emergence/Cataclysm version, check my files.
Thank you! Just playing now!
Enjoy! Let me know if there are any issues, I didn't test that one as thoroughly.
Thanks for this mod! Kinda unrelated to it but would you know the setting in the shp files that would make ships render at any distance? Basically I want ships to stop disappearing after moving the camera only a little bit.
I don't know how to do that but it looks like this mod does what you want:
Forums.gearboxsoftware.com