Visibility range of sails/masts/rigging or entire ships

[ZeroZero30]

Visibility range of sails/masts/rigging or entire ships

Surely you have noticed by now that certain landmarks or locales in the world stay visible even over long distances, like Oxenfurt, Crow's Perch or that huge tree in southeastern Velen.
Now what still irks me is that this isn't the case for other things of similar size or height that *should* stay visible (using simplified LOD geometry/meshes) over fairly long distances as well, in particular the sails, masts and rigging of ships harbored at Oxenfurt or Novigrad.

The following two screencaps have been taken outside of Oxenfurt, with everything cranked to Ultra. Notice how it takes just one small step forward for the sails and masts of the ship to pop into existence:

There's at least one other instance south of Oxenfurt at "Ferry Station" where an entire Nilfgaardian ship will be faded out if you get only a couple of hundred meters away from it. Which is a bit ridiculous, if you ask me.

My suggestion would be to extent what qualifies if something should be visible even over fairly long distances to sails, masts and rigging of ships or entire ships as well, so that there's at least some consistency regarding the visibility of landmarks, structures, even other fairly big ships (on the horizon for instance), that for whatever reason will stay visible no matter how far away you are from them.

Thanks for reading and considering.

 

[Prowost]

From the 1.07 changelog:
"Introduces a number of improvements in the game streaming system. Players should experience fewer blurred textures, NPC spawn times should be markedly reduced, and there should be an overall improvement in the speed with which game assets are loaded. Streaming system improvements should be most noticeable on consoles and systems with non-SSD drives"

Maybe this includes changes to the loading distances of assets as well?

If not, then the devs should really rethink the priorities of what loads at what distance.
The ship's hulk stays visible pretty much all the time while its sails, masts and rigging are faded out at such a relatively short distance?

Come on, RED. You can do better than that.

 

[HumAnimaL9000]

They went to such great effort to make objects further away still visible & I applaud them for that ..but the sails on that ship in oxenfurt are an utter disgrace !!! Something that big in size shouldn't just pop in when your'e metres away, it should be a coding law by now .. or at least an unsaid one.

 

[razien]

give us red kit to fix it

 

[symotu]

Yeah, that's pretty bad.
Shouldn't add any major overhead to have the sails rendered at long distances anyway. Some rough triangular shapes for the lowest LOD should do nicely.

 

[ZeroZero30]

The issue still persists with 1.07.
I know there are more pressing matters to attend to and issues to fix but please consider keeping the sails, masts and rigging of ships visible even at really long distances. It already works really well with other assets like the mentioned landmarks or structures like towers so why not extend this to other things of similar height and size (like sails) as well?

Thanks for reading and considering.

 

[ZeroZero30]

Here's another shot (with everything cranked to Ultra as usual) to put things a little bit more into perspective.

Notice how buildings of Oxenfurt and even Novigrad in the far distance are still visible while the sail, mast and rigging of the Nilfgaardian ship anchored in the little bay in front of the two bridge towers are missing. Hell, you can even make out a trebuchet left to the bridge towers there. Ships on the other hand, for some reason are only allowed the hull to be rendered at long distances such as this.

Is it really that much of an impact to overall performance, as someone pointed out here before, if you would have some really simplistic shapes like a triangular one standing in for the sail and a thin long rectangular one standing in for the mast there?

Oh, and please, if you ever should try to improve things in this regard don't forget about the wings of the few mills in White Orchard, Velen, Novigrad surroundings and Skellige(?). Those sure could use a boost in visibility range as well.

 

[WuKush]

Here's another shot (with everything cranked to Ultra as usual) to put things a little bit more into perspective.

Notice how buildings of Oxenfurt and even Novigrad in the far distance are still visible while the sail, mast and rigging of the Nilfgaardian ship anchored in the little bay in front of the two bridge towers are missing. Hell, you can even make out a trebuchet left to the bridge towers there. Ships on the other hand, for some reason are only allowed the hull to be rendered at long distances such as this.



Is it really that much of an impact to overall performance, as someone pointed out here before, if you would have some really simplistic shapes like a triangular one standing in for the sail and a thin long rectangular one standing in for the mast there?

Oh, and please, if you ever should try to improve things in this regard don't forget about the wings of the few mills in White Orchard, Velen, Novigrad surroundings and Skellige(?). Those sure could use a boost in visibility range as well.

Agreed, it's irritating that out of all things you would leave out the sail, the mast and all that. Isn't this the first you see of a ship when it's cresting the horizon?

Not having the mill wings visible for a couple more hundred or thousand or so ingame meters is bothering me since White Orchard too. Over that long of a distance they don't have to move (would be nice though) but they should at least remain visible in some form or another for as long as possible.

 

[Sajlenty]

Well, hello. Patch 1.07 over here.

If I remember correctly, last time I was playing the game it was 1.05 or 1.06. Or earlier. And I don't remember any of that to happen. Also I do not notice it on youtube videos.
I'm gonna check 660 Ti to see if it's GPU issue. Yup - it looks the same on 660 Ti. I also do not exclude fact that it might be HDD issue. Or the game itself, may reinstall it sometime soon.
Also I do not think that is RAM related. I ran Windows Diagnostic Tool to see if there will be any errors but none of that happened.

It is really, really weird. I would also LOVE to roll back my update to 1.06 and earlier to check it there but my saves won't work :/

ALSO. It's all Ultra. I even buff up DecalsChance and TextureStreaming in Hunter's Config but it didn't change a thing.

 

[ZeroZero30]

1.08, no improvements in this regard whatsoever.
It still takes just one small step and boom! - there's the sails, masts and rigging.

I would expect something like this on "Low" but with everything cranked to "Ultra"? Is it because it's baked into the assets and you can't really change anything about it unless you completely overhaul the entire world map or something?

If it's not requiring too much work, PLEASE consider doing something about this.

Thanks for reading.

 

[UterDan]

It's strange that in Novigrad where there are a lot more ships in one place it's actually not that bad. The sails and masts do get faded out too eventually (and still too soon for my tastes as well) but it's nowhere near the ridiculous Oxenfurt-levels of hiding things at such short distances.

CDPRED should definitely do something about this particular case and while they're at it increase the fading threshold of all objects of considerable size in general.

 

[erxv]

do the sails have cloth physics? if so that might be why they pop in much closer...

 

[Lexx766]

The 1.10 patch has made it even worse.

 

[pebeem]

Yeah, it's kinda awful that you can't see the sail of Radovid's flagship even from the great Oxenfurt's bridge.

 

[ZeroZero30]

Are you sure?
I thought that 1.10 because it tampered so much with the Velen/Novigrad map actually did fix the ridiculously short draw distance of the sails/masts on Radovid's ship.

You can even see it from quite far now.

Maybe you also need Hearts of Stone installed to have it take effect?

While I really appreciate that the sails/masts on Radovid's ship are now finally drawn properly and over long distances I can't help wondering why the devs didn't do the same with ALL the other ships?

Like the two ones right next to Radovid's ship

or the Nilfgaardian one at Ferry Station

or the ones stranded/anchored at Novigrad

or even the ones in Skellige I hadn't the chance yet to see if they're suffering from the short draw distance too.

Kind of inconsistent, wouldn't you agree?

 

[ZeroZero30]

So... about those other ships still (with v1.22) getting their sails/masts faded out:

While I really appreciate that the sails/masts on Radovid's ship are now finally drawn properly and over long distances I can't help wondering why the devs didn't do the same with ALL the other ships?

Like the two ones right next to Radovid's ship

or the Nilfgaardian one at Ferry Station

or the ones stranded/anchored at Novigrad

or even the ones in Skellige I hadn't the chance yet to see if they're suffering from the short draw distance too.

Kind of inconsistent, wouldn't you agree?

I hope that's still on the to-do-list for one of the future patches, or a possible EE of TW3 even(?).