*Update - quickfix* v2
This addon edits Call of Chernobyl's view distance *almost* back to vanilla stalker's distance.(from 1000 to 600)
Aims to bring back the "air perspective" and bit more mystery and intrigue back in to stalker. My personal mod - shared
*Update*
After very appreciated feedback where, as always, community was able to test this incredibly fast and wide and un-earthed some not so optimal visual consequences of this here endeavor of mine. I decided to do something about it!
There is one weather that still "ignores" any visual distance settings, and stubbornly keeps the 1000, no matter what, and I suspect that main problem of the un-pleasant "map cut off by skybox" effect has to do with distant landscape, being part of the skybox texture. I will investigate and experiment further.
And so to lesser your eye bleeding, while I try to fix the mess I created =D, I give you quick fix that pushes the well meant 350 (vanilla like) view distance to sort of a compromise of 600, which still is not the 1000, but...
Well we test it and we'll see =D
So thank you for your patience and for your swift feedback, stalkers!
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I like Atmosfear weather It is great addon, however it has side effects.
On the Shoc and Cs maps which are somewhat smaller (not swamps), than the CoP maps, the weather system pushes the fog/skybox blending too far, usually behind borders of the maps, which in turn allows player to see everything in the same clarity, but it absolutely murders the artistic feeling of the maps.
That is not how real environment behaves. Things in the distance get lighter and lighter as the amount of air you are looking thru gets higher and higher. This effect is called "air perspective" (atleast translated from czech). And since stalker does not have 100km view distance as real life, this effect has to occur on way shorter distance, to fool the eye in to beliving (yes this is for immersion)
Me as an artist, I really miss that in stalker CoC, because seeing naked hills in the distance, with same intensity as terrain right next to me, kills visual appeal of the maps. In addition the lack of overall haze and fog (except for foggy weather) kills the atmosphere of the maps. All of the sudden the mysterious sounds are coming from where exactly? the bushes? I don't think so.
In conclusion I felt like shortening the distance back to what it originally was, resonates with intentions of GSC artists and makes the levels more mysterious and juicy, as they originally were. Also for people with lower spec PCs this could solve some performance issues as well, without touching the amazing Atmosfear weather system
If you feel like this is something for you - enjoy!
This is a great idea, well done.
Thanks, i hated the atmosfear getting very fear atmospheric
a gay pun, btw good job
Your joke gave my AIDS cancer =D
thanks
It's looking good,but will i have fps drops ? Also do i need to start a new game ?
No need for new game, There is nothing that should make FPS drop. It is independant problem, CoC does occasionally suffer that. Nothing I can do about it.
Yeah i know i get some some fps drops from time to time it's no big deal, maybe it's because i have the Full Simulation A-Life.
Oh yea the AI is quite heavy, It is very complex. Arma3 of all games suffers similar thing. Once the simulation kicks in more globally the computing demands skyrocket!
Yeah but without the Full Simulation A-Life the zone feels a bit empty.
This looks great when it works as intended.
Yea =/ I didn't test it enough. Those damn skyboxes with horizon on them threw wrench in to this. I could try and edit the horizons out. But Im not sure if that would help it either. =D Ty 4 feedback
Great idea but looks like it isn't not working I.imgur.com
EDIT: Sorry I didn't see your replies, I see you're already working on it.
Yea this is also weird. I've noticed before that despite shortened distance it still occasionally "ignores" it. Probably because some weather conditions use other settings, than those I tired to mess with. Ty 4 your feedback
Hey CzechDeath how is your work going with Weather distance vanillized any news ?
=D well So far best option I came up with, was quick temp solution of making distance 600 instead of 360. I have failed to find why and how some weathers remained clear. Next step ditch the horizons from the skybox - needs testing to see if it looks kay or gay =D
Stay tuned stalker. Throw tomatos - keep the rocks for later =D
Not bad, some pretty good stuff you got there.
I'll definitely look into this later, hopefully it won't be too hard to add one more weather type for smaller levels.
Oh wow that would be epic =D
I just download it i'll see how it goes and give you my feedback.
Good hunting Stalkers.
Here is a photo from Chernobyl (North) side Imgur.com Imgur.com
You can see chernobyl, from chernobyl ! Reality is folding on it self! ยด=D
I always hated a shorter view distance as when I played STALKER it always seemed as if I was in a bubble, and I mean quite literally, a bubble. As I walked forward 20 feet i could see another 20 feet ahead of me but NOTHING else beyond that while behind me I could see 20 feet less, I walk to the left 5 feet and the same. Then it really killed me when I used binoculars and in the distance could see half a rock, and as I walked toward it (still seeing through binoc) the other half is easily visually there. Like I said, it was like I was in a bubble. Major immersion kill for me, so I always played with max visual distance (from SoC to COC[in order]) even if all other settings were low (POS laptop). But after reading your "Description" I feel like revisiting this setting and DLing this mod.
Question: Are things visually presented in a way where there is a hard cut-off in visual distance, or is it more like things get harder to see as the distance increases but you can still make out (for example) a tree beyond any other discernible objects/beyond your primary visual (don't want to call it "bubble" but...) bubble?
One more question: Will NPC's be able to see you at distances you won't be able to see them in? DOES fog impair the vision of NPC's?
Well Your description of a "bubble", reflect precisely how games(any) actually handle such things as visual distnace/fog. Usually it is handled by engine using radius around the camera (player in this case) The bubble effect can be more prominent, many times by the way skybox wraps around said camera and that can further be worsen even more the higher fov one uses.
But in general bubble is spot on thing, I'm not even sure if it can be avoided. If you take even games with HUGE visual distance, like ARMA3 when you fly at high enough altitude, with high enough fov you again get the bubble effect.
As for your questions> the visuals should not do any hard cut-ouffs, except for when it does not work as it should. Meaning that distant landscape, buildings and trees ETC, should smoothly drown in fog and simultaniously blend with the skybox. Atmosfear uses skybox that has horizon on it, which visually complicate things for this to look good always (unfortunately) as provided in feedback above.
The other question > I did not edit NPCs, so they remain the same, so far, nobody really attacks at distance larger then 200?units? not sure what xray actually uses. Nobody sniped me from distant fog without me seeing him first.
The air perspective(I'm glad you've red that description) should even help you to see enemies in the distance tad better, not clearer, but silueted against the fog behind. Which sometimes in vanilla conditions is bit hard. When say at agroprom you are getting shot at by military running around on some distant hill, and he just blends right in, because everything has the same intensity.
lastly Keep in mind that this is WIP. It is not finished nor optimal.
Hello! I think I might've found something you might like CzechDeath. There's a Reshade called the Immersive Reshade, and while I was looking through the options I saw that there was a unused setting called "DepthHaze". It does what you seek out to do in your mod, by adding slight haze and fog as things are farther away. It also looks really good! You can turn off all the other parts of the Reshade, or the parts you don't like if there's bits you like, and leave the DepthHaze on in your own preset file - As well as that, you can also possibly just get rid of all shader files in the folder "/bin/reshade-shaders/shaders" in the mod that aren't "DepthHaze.fx" and upload that. Although, you'll probably need to credit the author of the orginal mod, even if it is a Reshade preset.
Immersive Reshade: Moddb.com
(Bad) Comparison of Last Day with DepthHaze on, and DepthHaze off: Imgur.com
I'll try get a better image when I can.
Edit: I've updated the album with better pictures, and another setting I've found called AdaptiveFog. It does what you think it says it does, and like DepthHaze, can be personally tweaked by changing the values in it's .fx file.
Noice! %D thank you
Can you make sun rotation vanillized?, because atmosfear 3 have a unique preset of the sun and i do not like it, can you make the run rotation like CoP,CS? or SoC? maybe?
Is this addon compatible with trx global weather?
This looks like an interesting add-on, have you managed to fix the issue with larger CoP maps?
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Thanks, i always wanted this. I prefer the foggy mysterious feel. Didn't like the coc's blurrrd far background without fog.
Hello!. Interesting mod.
Maybe you need to lower the horizon textures, instead of removing them? to adjust for the reduced visibility? is that how is supposed to work right?