Raising view distance in games?

[Arkayne]

Hey guys, got a basic question for you all. Bit of an ***** with these things, so please bare with me.

What I'm looking for is the setting in either my Nvidia settings or my directx settings which tends to raise or lower view distance in 3d games. Or, I'm looking for an application which allows me to manually tweak the view distance. I'm looking to over-ride the max view distance it's setting, and instead sacrifice other aspects myself to keep the performance.

To be a little more exact, I was recently comparing screenshots of Medal of Honor with a friend of mine, when we realized that my game was capping my view distance to about 75% of what it should be. 25% doesn't sound like alot, but I play online and that 25% is the difference between sniper death and life. I thought about it a bit and remembered that when I played Morrowind I had used a funky little application which allowed me to raise/lower the view distance on the fly with the mousewheel. Since I could do this with Morrowind, that indicates to me that there's a setting somewhere which (hopefully) will let me max out my view distance beyond what it thinks is best.

So... what I'm looking for is just a push in the right direct regarding what I can play with to try and max out the view distance and keep it that way.

Sorry for being kind of vague here. I know what my problem is but I don't know where to begin looking for a fix.

Thx..

 

[Abraxas]

View distance is a game internal setting. You need to manipulate the values in the ini file of the game, if possible (should be).
Do a search there for "distance" or specifically view distance, you might find something. I don't have MoH, perhaps somebody knows more about that.

 

[Arkayne]

Yeah, unfortunetely MoH doesn't have a menu-driven "set distance" function. The cfg file for MoH ("unnamedsolder.cfg") has some default bindings, detail levels and gamma levels, etc., but nothing that (appears) to state view distance.

 

[Nic]

If the game supports changing the view distance then you'll be able to change it from within the game. Its not something that can be done externally (unless the feature is built into the game and the settings stored in an external configuration script) as it is part of the games program code. You can't change something if the software hasn't been written to provide that feature. This is different to anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering which is a smoothing effect that can be applied to any group of pixels, and does not have to be coded into a game.

 

[Arkayne]

Well, that depends on if what's blocking my view distance is something created by the game software itself, or something created via the card or directx, no?

I'm far from an expert on these things, but it doesn't sound unreasonable to me that an exterior source would be capping the max distance created by the game software or that it's creating some type of effect which is completely seperate from the game's max view distance but that's having the same effect.

 

[Nic]

Its certainly not impossible for an external source to *reduce* the viewing distance in a game, but it is impossible (as far as I am aware) for such a source to *increase* the distance beyond that being output by the game code. Your question was about increasing the viewing distance, which I had assumed was at its normal setting currently. However, if you have a problem with your system that is reducing the viewing distance to something that is less than expected, then thats a different matter entirely.

 

[Arkayne]

Nono, I'm not trying to extend the viewing range beyond the upper allowable limit of the game. I simply compared the same view (standing in the same location, looking down a long road) with someone else via screenshots. The building off in the distance was a foggy blur to me, but to my friend it was not only clear but you could see the building behind it. To me this says that something is reducing my sight range. What I'm looking for is possible causes for this.. a setting or application which would allow me to manually force it to stop reducing the farer limits of my sight.

There's a further twist to this. Medal of Honor has this weird glitch where if you look at something in the distance directly, it'll be less clear then if you look at it on an angle. Because I can see things farther on an angle, this says that it's not impossible for my setup to SHOW that longer range, but something is reducing it.

 

[JSR]

no man

it's just the resolution you play in.......i toast low rez guys all the time................can't see distance................right papa.............................break out the sniper rifle :grinthumb

 

[Arkayne]

I set the resolution to 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024.. doesn't change the limits of my sight at all.

 

[JSR]

first of all

is 12x10 the limit of your monitor..................what kind of video card do you run...............i run 16x12.............how could size and depth perception not be affected by a change in your resolution..........even the pixel count and dot pitch are going to affect viewing clarity.........this is all called having the bigger gun...........meaning, the better graphics card, network connection, monitor resolution, cpu in general will result in lower pings, less obstruction..........in other words, i blast your skinny little *** out of the water when i play YOU in mohaa :grinthumb as far as morrowind and other RTS's it is typical to be able to use your mousewheel as a perspective viewer............yet, it relates to those types of games only

 

[Arkayne]

No idea why it wouldn't be changing with different resolutions.

I'm loading up a local server and standing in the exact same spot on the same map, and looking down a long street. There's a tank that's at the limit of my vision, and a blury building just beyond it. Whenever I tweak something I load it up and check it out.. nothing so far as raised or lowered the range.

I would have given up on this but since I *know* other people can see farther then me, and since I *know* that my own machine is capable of displaying a longer range, it's been like a thorn in my side.

I'm gonna roll back the drivers a time or two and see if that changes anything.

 

[JSR]

who knows

maybe you are just one of those guys that have to .......bend over..........when playing mohaa

 

[RustyZip]

Maybe your (or his) videocard supports (or not) fogging(?) and the other guy's does (or doesn't)... If you follow me?...

 

[JSR]

yeah

he's in a fog

 

[XtR-X]

Re: no man

Originally posted by JSR
it's just the resolution you play in.......i toast low rez guys all the time................can't see distance................right papa.............................break out the sniper rifle :grinthumb

First thing that came to mind.

 

[Nic]

Maybe your monitor isn't as good as your friends?
Are you using CRT and comparing to TFT (which has higher contrast)?
Do you have the latest game patch applied?
Are you using the latest video drivers?
Are your game/video settings the same as your friends?
Is your game version the same?
Try doing a screen capture of your game and compare to a screen capture of the game on a PC with better viewing distance. Use the same settings and see if they are the same.

 

[JackieChanIsGOD]

Hmm...
I haven't tried this personally, but you can...
Mess around with the in game advanced settings, like turning on/off volumetric fog, weather effects, dynamic lighting... messing with the shadows... maybe if you make the shadows complex, your vid card will mess up and show the shadows of people in the distance... hehe... yeah, that sort of thing... Or i dunno if directx has it, or a video card setting... but chance something with OpenGL fog....... i think...

 

[Vehementi]

The first thing you should have done was to compare video cards and DirectX/OpenGL drivers. Chances are he has a better video card which supports a newer version of DirectX.

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Battlefield 1942 has an option game.setMenuViewdistance , perharps MOH:AA has one too? By the way, if you do things like this, it'll be considered as cheating.

 

[Arkayne]

There's no menu driven setting like in BF1942, unfortunetely. And it's not cheating, because I'm not trying to raise the max view distance beyond the limit of the game - something is capping my draw distance to about 70%.. I'm simply trying to raise it back to the game's maximum.

GeForce Tweaker has settings called Z and W buffer's.. they have anything to do with draw distances?