Triangle Clouds And Jaggie Edges...

[Snacko]

Here are some screenies and my OpenGL info:
 
Thx!
 
[Render_OpenGL]

TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=3
TexCompress=0
TexFlags.UseDither=1
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=0
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=0
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=0
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=0
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=1
 
TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=1
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=1
 
HardwareShaders=1
 
Shadows=2
Specular=2
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3
 
Sky=2
Forest=2
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2
 
LandGeom=3
;LandGeom=2
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1
 
VideoSetupId=17
Water=4
Effects=1
ForceShaders1x=0
 
PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15
PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0

 

For some reason the forums reduced the size of these images...

 

 

Here you can see the it gets worse at the edges of the screen.  Right and Left.

[fruitbat]

Ahhh forgot your running triple screen.

 

Nothing that can be done, game was never designed to render that wide a FoV, which is why it gets worse as you get to the edge of the screen.

[Snacko]

I've had these clouds before I got the triple screens though..

[Tolwyn]

Well, make a backup of your conf.ini and try these settings in the opengl section. Changes in Bold.
 

TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=2
TexCompress=0
TexFlags.UseDither=0
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=0
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=1
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=0
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=0
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=0
 
TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=1
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=1
 
HardwareShaders=1
 
Shadows=2
Specular=2
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3
 
Sky=2
Forest=2
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2
 
LandGeom=3
;LandGeom=2
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1
 
VideoSetupId=17
Water=4
Effects=1
ForceShaders1x=0
 
PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15
PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0

[Snacko]

I made all of the changes you suggested and still get both jaggies and triangle clouds.  The triangle clouds appear at both extreme sides only when I am zoomed out.  (I am not using an FOV mods either..)  I am sure that I saw this when I only had one 1920x1200 monitor as well.  I have just been putting up with these for a long time...  If I zoom out to IL2's wideview and watch a cloud on my left or right.. the further it moves to the edge it changes into a trangle on it's side closet to the edge it is approaching.  Basically, it morphs from a puffy cloud into a geometric shape.

 

If you turn your head, the 'edge' of the screen can be in front of your aircraft, and so you have these clouds in front of you,

not just in relation to your aircraft.  It's in relation to the edge of the view screen.

 

Flyby:

 

 

More Jaggies:

[fruitbat]

As mentioned before, the  game was never designed with more than 4:3 in mind, so even on a basic 16:9 / 16:10 res, clouds will be stretched at the edges of the screen, as that area was never designed to be rendered.

[Snacko]

So that must happen to you too?  You are saying that you see that in your game?

[fruitbat]

Everyone does who plays in a res above 4:3 at the edges past where 4:3 would finish. Wider the FoV the more pronounced it gets.

[Snacko]

Ok, thanks.  

 

It's weird that several guys yesterday said they've never seen that.  Who has a 4:3 monitor nowadays?  Artie said he's never seen it.  I'll ask what kind of monitor he has next time I see him..

[Tolwyn]

Hi. I'm Tolwyn. I fly with you guys on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

 

 

Ok, thanks.  

 

It's weird that several guys yesterday said they've never seen that.  Who has a 4:3 monitor nowadays?  Artie said he's never seen it.  I'll ask what kind of monitor he has next time I see him..

[fruitbat]

lol

[Crash]

Who?

[Snacko]

OMG Tolwyn!

You must be married with children?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 with Tapatalk 55.07442

[Snacko]

Any more ideas to fix the jaggies Tolwyn?

I could force the video card to do AA..?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 with Tapatalk 5.

[fruitbat]

Are you nvidia?

[Snacko]

yep.

[fruitbat]

Make sure you set the nvidia control panel for the il2fb.exe rather than the il2.exe.

 

Then use these settings. The mix of 16xQ Csaa and Supersampling gives the best results, as long as your card can handle it.

 

[Snacko]

Thanks.  I always new that I could force it with the video card.  Those settings gave me 25-30fps in a dogfight test mission.  So I set it to 8x CSAA and 2x for now and am getting 55-60fps.  

 

But I thought Tolwyn said we could get rid of the jaggies with just the IL2 settings.  I have never been able to do that, so I wanted to give it a try..  Thought that might be more fps friendly to have the game fix something rather than force it?

[fruitbat]

news to me if you can.....

 

anisotropic filtering yes, but aa don't think so, and even if you can, certainly nowhere near what you can do with nvidia.

[FoolTrottel]

(...)

But I thought Tolwyn said we could get rid of the jaggies with just the IL2 settings.  I have never been able to do that, so I wanted to give it a try..  Thought that might be more fps friendly to have the game fix something rather than force it?

No, that's not what he said.

Tolwyn said we should not need using it at all.

AA was designed to get rid of 'steps' at low resolutions (ie like 640x480)

 

At the high resolutions we are running nowadays, there's no longer speak of 'steps', but mear 'jaggies'.

Hence, acccording to theory, we can do without AA...

 

What it boils down to in my opinion, is that we are all so 'spoiled' in not wanting to see any jaggies at all.

(Me thinks there's people that'd even use a magnifying glass to make sure there are none left after the latest new HW upgrade, driver and settings tunings...) 

 

Just think about the huge task AA has to perform, for each and every pixel drawn, it has to analyse whether it is part of a straight line, and if so, it has to change contrast and whatnots of pixels around it, to try and solve the  jaggie issue. To smoothe it out, AAx4 does it probably with double the amount of work ('depth'?), even more for the x8 etc.

Now, remember, we are running high resolutions... so, for each and every pixel...yeah. Sh1tloads of work... performance will go down .... alot...

[fruitbat]

Fortunately, modern GFX cards just eat it up!

[Jabo]

Just fooling around with a bit of math here - 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600 pixels.

 

At 30 FPS thats 62,208,000 AA algorithm passes every second

 

I've seen posted performance figures of 196,317,394,651 operations per second(!) for the GTX580. To put it another way, just under 200 gigaflops (I kid you not)

 

So assuming the AA algorithm involves less than 3155 operations we should be OK.

 

Before anyone comments I appreciate that the graphics cards do a lot of things over and above AA calculations but it was an interesting experiment.

 

Jabo

[Tolwyn]

If you don't see a decrease in performance using Antialiasing, then, of course, it's personal taste.
 
And using nvidia control panel is the way to change your settings AS LONG as the extensions are enabled in conf.ini (do NOT use il2setup anymore, it's completely out of date).
 
I find turning it off helps me not only in performance, but also seeing dots in the distance.
 
In doing more research on the cloud issue, I've determined the following and I'll break it down very high-level.
 
The game, to save CPU and GPU cycles will render polyobs with less detail that the game thinks you cannot SEE. Clouds are static objects in each map. They aren't dymanic. They are always the same. So their rendering algorhythm is likely static for programmatic reason. How they are drawn/rendered is by what the game assumes you can literally see. This is known as LOD. Polygon Face Occlusion, Hidden Surface Determination, etc.
 
Now that being said, as you pan, clouds drawn in front of you that look normal, will likely "shift" into a lower LOD and looking full right, the clouds that were at your 12 o'clock that looked nice and fluffy, SHOULD look pointy and silly. Kinda like how you can focus on a plane in external view and zoom (move camera) slowly away from it, the LOD will change. In some cases, the LOD2, LOD3 for planes (the YAK comes to mind) actually appear LARGER than their LOD1 and LOD0 (highest detail) counterparts.
 
You COULD try to force nvidia to a fixed LOD bias ( http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_6.html ) and see if that helps.
 
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: LOD is the Level of Detail, and in some games you can alter the LOD Bias using various settings to sharpen details on screen. In such cases, you should set this setting to Allow, however note that altering LOD Bias can introduce aliasing (jaggedness to lines and edges) and shimmering. Since Anisotropic Filtering can also improve the sharpness of images without adding to aliasing, I recommend that you change this setting to Clamp for games in which you use any level of Anisotropic Filtering to give you better overall image quality.
 
So, at the original code's max FOV of about 105 to 110 degrees, it assumes you can't see clouds outside of this range and will render them with less detail. YOU SHOULD SEE clouds in front of you, and within the 110 degrees normally... even if you use 3 monitors; but on the edges, the clouds will/may take on a more "simplistic" shape to save rendering work through the OpenGL API (and likely DirectX as well).
 
Since you likely make up a small percentage of people using a 3rd-party application to render the game at a HUGE FOV across 3 monitors, they likely aren't going to address it (that's not saying you're a bad person, it's just not a priority... well, you may smell funny, but we still love you).
 
Since I don't have access to the sourcecode, this is an pretty good educated guess as to why CLOUDS are rendered with the funkiness as they are. You can try to tweak with the SKY settings or whatever controls cloud detail, but my guess is each setting will still be slaved to the rendering "corner cutting".

[Snacko]

At that high level I do understand what you are saying, but the main thing was the jaggies that were annoying since they are right in front of you most of the time.  So, I'm going to live with the clouds.  When I brought them up the other day only 2-3 people spoke up and said they never see those.  Nobody said that 'did' see them, so I though I had something basically wrong with my settings.

 

But how do you know that I smell funny?  In the winter I don't bathe so my skin doesn't dry out.  Hmm..

[Tolwyn]

Oh. I thought the triangle-ish clouds was from the edges. My polygon LOD theory I think isn't the answer, then.