Increasing the view distance on the world map?

[BloodShot]

After trying Felix's WM enhancement, and playing some FF8 and observing the scenery, it got me to thinking, FF7 could benefit nicely from having a view distance extension + a fog over long distances. Do you think this would ever be possible, perhaps by implementation with the custom opengl driver?

[syntax error]

I remember from PSX that the world map was divided into small blocks of data.
If it couldnt read the CD,it drew black flat block-sized areas.

[Wutai Clan]

Well, it may require a lot of work to accomplish, but possible, yes.

Not sure how helpful it will be, but Morrowind Graphics Extender may have some code to help with this.(It does just this, but for a different game.) You can Google it, they have source code available. (It may offer some clues about how to add distant LOD's, etc,.)

[BloodShot]

I was never able to get MGE right, always got extreme lag despite my computer being a powerhouse. I think I know what you mean though, as wouldn't it work similar the way Aali can modify certain things about FF7 just with the driver, such as how it loads textures and stuff? I think it's a similar concept probably.

[Wutai Clan]

Yeah, it should be similar, the offsets, etc, are going to be different, and the method for hooking the game, etc,. But the method for loading LOD's should be adaptable to this game. (Basically, you will need to chop the 3d map into cubes, then force the game to load those in the appropriate areas, probably not that simple, but that's roughly how I think it could be done.)

MGE ran great for me, I didn't have the power to really enjoy it, but it ran fine with reasonable settings. The newer versions are much better, if you haven't tried it in some time, you should maybe give it another go. (There is an offshoot, that adds even higher quality stuff, it's basically a modified MGE, it's on TesNexus. So if you have the extra power, you can maybe try that too.)

[nfitc1]

Someone recently, might be krammer, but don't quote me on that, did some camera tricks in and out of battle. The world map one seemed to work although the render distance still wasn't as far as the view distance was so the land abruptly cut off in places.


MGE isn't inherently laggy, but when you increase the view distance you increase the number of actors in memory. When they all run their AI and scripts it can get a bit slow. Especially in towns like Sadrith Mora with a lot of characters outside. Many of whom are wearing enchanted stuff.

[BloodShot]

/\ Well with MGE I don't think that was the case because I got lag even If I had it on the normal view distance for Morrowind.

On topic - Even if we can't increase the view distance I'm sure a distance fog for the world map could be implemented. Even that would probably improve the look of it by a lot.