Gentlemen,

I have finally finished building my new i7, GForce 275 computer and after only the slightest stumble taming the User Account Control all is right with the world ...

... except one thing.

Not on all servers, I think, but on some, my medium and long range (wide view and normal view) FOV control settings can not find the tiny, mid to distant aircraft. They disappear. I need to go to a very close view to see them. Now, I am familiar with changing the screen resolution to a coarser rez to better pick out the dots. This is different.

One mission designer assured me that this has nothing to do with serving or designing missions, so I tried various settings in my NVidia Control Panel. That didn't seem to help. Is there something in the conf file that needs tweaking?

Thanks,


Falcon

quote:

Originally posted by Falcon_41:
Gentlemen,

One mission designer assured me that this has nothing to do with serving or designing missions,

Half of that is correct. The MISSION itself cannot control the viewing distance of planes. However, the server may be using custom icons, which includes a setting (DOT) that controls exactly that.

Aviar

If I understand Falcon_41 right, it's not the icons he can't see, but the planes themselves. There have been some problems with this reported, and I've seen it myself (or rather not seen, if you know what I mean). It seems to be related to graphics card settings and/or resolution. There are also known problems with servers that allow mods. I'd try a bit of experimentation, to see if altering the graphics settings fixes it, and experiment on different servers. There was a recent thread on just this topic : http://forums.ubi.com/eve/foru...841035787#7841035787, have a look at that too. The problem there related to a server running mods.

AndyJWest,

Don't get confused when I say 'custom icons'. Yes, most of the settings have to do with the icons themselves. However, the DOT setting does not. It determines at what range an an airplane can be visually rendered on your monitor. If it is far enough away, it will simply rendered as a single pixel. Or, as many players simply call it when playing IL-2......a 'dot'.

So, if a server sets the DOT range to 4.0, you wouldn't even see another plane until it is less than 4 kilometers from you. Hope that clears it up for you.

Also, I was not in any way diagnosing Falcon_41's perceived viewing problem. I was simply correcting one 'fact' that was told to him by a supposed mission designer.

Aviar

Andy and Aviar, thank you.

So, there is a setting to be adjusted? Is it in the server or the make-up of the mission design? I don't do missions, I skin, for what it's worth. So, where exactly is this setting?

Falcon

Falcon_41,

As I said earlier, it is custom icon settings. They have been used for many years in IL-2. I use them myself when I host coop missions. I also used them when I hosted Dogfight servers.

If you are really interested, do a search here or on any popular IL-2 site and you can probably get a more detailed explanation. In a nutshell, the settings are placed in your rcu file and must be manually activated with each IL-2 session.

This is no big secret. Many hosts use custom icons. Actually, I'm kind of surprised you have no clue about them, considering you are part of a large, well-known squadron. Ask around your squad. I would bet a number of them know about custom icons.

As far as your original problem, I'm sorry I couldn't address that. You really didn't give enough specific and detailed information.

EDIT: I found you this article:

http://mission4today.com/index..._Base&op=show&kid=76

Aviar

lol

I thought custom icons, or some aspect of their modification, was my problem.

Well, don't be surprised that I don't know how to adjust custom icons. As I said, I'm a skinner. I don't make missions, I don't serve. I let the thirty or forty other members worry about stuff like that.

Thanks for the link. I'll check and see what they say.


thx,


Falcon


EDIT: Yeah, this "dot" has to do with icons, not the one, two, three or more pixels that make up the LOD aircraft shape at medium to extreme distance.

Thanks again for the help anyway.

Could custom icons be the cause of your 'problem'? Possibly. I really don't like to give advice unless I am pretty sure I am correct. In your case, I really didn't get enough specific information.

The reason I mentioned custom icons was to correct the misinformation given to you by this mission designer. Good luck with your quest.

*EDIT: I deleted two words.

Aviar

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Aviar,

Oh, he's a darn good mission designer. If anything, there was a confusion between "dots", "FOV", "LOD", icons, icon settings or something similar.


F

It's still not clear exactly what your problem is. From what you've said so far, I'm not clear whether:

1. You're seeing dots at the limit of visibility, but as the aircraft gets closer and moves to the intermediate levels of detail, it disappears until it reaches much closer;

OR

2. You're not seeing anything outside a certain range.


The first one is an issue I've seen myself and I've never seen a satisfactory explanation for it. It may be related to mods if you're only seeing on servers running mods. Otherwise I can't guess at a cure.

The second is likely caused by the server being set with a short DOT setting. As mentioned, if the DOT icon setting is set to 2km, you will not see the aircraft until it's closer than 2km. This is a server setting and you can't change it, but you can check what it's currently set to. To check, once you're in game do the following:

• Open console by pressing Shift + Tab
  
• type exactly the following:
  mp_dotrange

The server icon settings will be displayed in the console in something like the following form:

FRIENDLY
DOT 14.0
NAME 5.0
ID 5.0
TYPE 3.0
COLOR 4.0

FOE
DOT 14.0
NAME 5.0
ID 5.0
TYPE 3.0
COLOR 4.0

There's a couple more settings than that, but it gives you the idea. The numbers represent distance in km from the viewer that the element mentioned fades in to view. The DOT element is the aircraft itself, not part of the text label.
Press Shift + Tab again to close console.

Tully,

Thanks for the reply. Sorry that my explanation is inadequate. It's a confusing problem for sure.

I have my FOV settings at or near default settings; FOV35 (close in), Normal View and Wide View.

On only one server and with that person's missions I can not see the actual ac when on Normal View or Wide View when it is a fair distance away, but well within normal viewing under all other circumstances. Centering my TiR and switching to Gunsight or FOV35 View I see the ac.

Others in the mission don't seem to have this issue and it only happens to me on this mission designer's missions. Whether this happens to all ac in the mission to me ... I can't remember. Were these invisible ac mods? I will check on that this week, but my memory hints that not all of them were mods. Is the server using mods? Yes, the missions are a mixture of v4.09 with and w/o mods.

Reminder: I have a complete new build. I've gone from (2)7800GTX's in SLI to a GeForce 275oc. This issue coincides with the switch to the new build.

I hope that clears things up a bit.

Falcon

If it's only happening on a server that uses mods, we can't troubleshoot further here. We don't permit support for mods.

Perhaps you may be able to get some help from the host / mission designer, but I'm going to have to close this thread as there's nothing more we're allowed to do to help here.