Outerra forum

Anteworld - Outerra Game => Tech demo, support, updates => Topic started by: cjstepney on March 30, 2016, 02:13:31 pm

Title: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on March 30, 2016, 02:13:31 pm
My terrain isn't rendering at a high definition more than about 30m away. Sometimes the rendering "freezes" while the game continues, and the roads are massively pixelated until I turn the camera to look straight down. Really frustrated because on runways, when moving fast in a plane, it looks like this. Incredibly ugly. This is not the Outerra I knew two days ago. All I've changed is that I've added a runway here (this is PHNY Lanai Airport).

(https://i.imgur.com/klgJyJM.jpg)

I've tried changing every setting and reverting to default, nothing fixes this blurry frustration.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: HiFlyer on March 30, 2016, 02:58:46 pm
First, lets make sure you are actually completely at default settings:

Delete your eng.cfg and world.cfg then restart Outerra and see If that fixes things.

Also, have you changed anything in your graphics card settings?
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on March 30, 2016, 04:10:18 pm
No improvement. No recent video card changes (as in none since I first got Outerra)

(https://i.imgur.com/LdOTYHf.png)
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: HiFlyer on March 30, 2016, 05:09:58 pm
The only time I have ever seen anything like that in outerra myself, is when i have skated too close to OOM by turning up my settings too high. Looks like one of the devs will have to help you out.

In the meantime, you will probably be asked to post your Eng.log
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on March 30, 2016, 05:15:58 pm
That I will do.

Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: Jagerbomber on March 30, 2016, 06:50:11 pm
That's normal still for roads in Outerra isn't it?
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on March 30, 2016, 07:03:17 pm
No, because it's so bad that it's rendering so slow that when I drive it doesn't keep up with the car. The blurriness is right under the wheels unless I park and wait a good ten to fifteen seconds.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: HiFlyer on March 30, 2016, 07:11:14 pm
That's normal still for roads in Outerra isn't it?

Well, not really. And also it depends on your settings. The higher you set the detail, the further out the roads appear and the clearer they (generally) appear from a further distance.

You get the best look at 1080p detail, but it uses a LOT of memory, and you need a heck of a nice graphics card to maintain your frames and not have the scenery refinement begin to lag or stop.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on March 30, 2016, 07:51:27 pm
My frames have never dropped to even noticeably choppy levels. I have tried maxing everything out and it doesn't slow down. I have a GTX780 and 16GB of RAM. What setting specifically should I look at for draw distance? The  graphics/world settings aren't very intuitive (what on earth is a Tree BB??) so I have no idea what to modify to fix this or even change anything. I've tried changing sliders from zero to 100% and it never seems to make any difference on how Outerra looks.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: HiFlyer on March 30, 2016, 08:01:50 pm
My frames have never dropped to even noticeably choppy levels. I have tried maxing everything out and it doesn't slow down. I have a GTX780 and 16GB of RAM. What setting specifically should I look at for draw distance? The  graphics/world settings aren't very intuitive (what on earth is a Tree BB??) so I have no idea what to modify to fix this or even change anything. I've tried changing sliders from zero to 100% and it never seems to make any difference on how Outerra looks.

Look under "World" and "terrain quality metrics." That will up the terrain resolution and as a kind of side effect increase the draw distance. Under "Grass and Trees" you can also experiment with the "tree rendering range"

If you are brave, you can look Under "env" then "forest" and "forest threshold" which will cover the land knee deep in trees.........

As for tree Bb and suchlike...... leave those alone!!!  =D



Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: KW71 on March 30, 2016, 08:08:13 pm
The  graphics/world settings aren't very intuitive (what on earth is a Tree BB??) so I have no idea what to modify to fix this or even change anything. I've tried changing sliders from zero to 100% and it never seems to make any difference on how Outerra looks.

Hi!

If you see the headers of those sliders set, there is a warning:

"Internal terrain engine parameters. Do not modify unless instructed todo so, or at your own risk".

Have you tried what Hiflyer recomend you?

"Delete your eng.cfg and world.cfg then restart Outerra"

Is the best way to get your default settings back.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: HiFlyer on March 30, 2016, 08:32:57 pm
By the way.... for me at least, resolution matters A LOT!!! I believe I (and my poor 770gtx) are very GPU bound, and lowering the resolution (and AA!) does wonders for frame-rate.

To get the best out of Outerra, sometimes a little juggling of settings/resources is necessary.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on March 30, 2016, 09:14:37 pm
The  graphics/world settings aren't very intuitive (what on earth is a Tree BB??) so I have no idea what to modify to fix this or even change anything. I've tried changing sliders from zero to 100% and it never seems to make any difference on how Outerra looks.

Hi!

If you see the headers of those sliders set, there is a warning:

"Internal terrain engine parameters. Do not modify unless instructed todo so, or at your own risk".

Have you tried what Hiflyer recomend you?

"Delete your eng.cfg and world.cfg then restart Outerra"

Is the best way to get your default settings back.

Yep, saw it, tried it, didn't touch the internal params, reset to default, deleted the cfgs, still stuck with an ugly blurry mess that has uninspired me to get VR goggles and has made me lose a bit of faith in Outerra in general.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: Jagerbomber on March 30, 2016, 10:49:18 pm
 :facepalm:
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cameni on March 31, 2016, 01:01:04 am
No improvement. No recent video card changes (as in none since I first got Outerra)

(https://i.imgur.com/LdOTYHf.png)

So this is what you get right after deleting the cfg files and not touching anything?
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on March 31, 2016, 11:41:24 am
Correct. I even put everything into an OTX file, fully uninstalled Outerra, deleted all related files (other than the OTX file), then started from scratch. Same look. I'm wondering if this might be an NVidia driver issue.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cameni on April 01, 2016, 03:02:47 am
Can you post eng.log from a bit longer session? Also, the screenshots you posted have non-default resolution, can you also send the cfg files? You can email them to support at outerra.com
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on April 01, 2016, 03:08:46 pm
Will do. Also encountered a terrain issue near Banff, Alberta, which allows vehicles to fall through the very peak of a mountain and craters behave oddly. I'm sending along the eng.log and eng.cfg and world.cfg.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cameni on April 03, 2016, 02:06:01 am
Hm, there's nothing special in the log except that certain generator tasks start taking up half a second each, when they should usually be 40-60ms.
Can you try to reset Nvidia graphics settings in their control panel?
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on April 03, 2016, 12:26:31 pm
I'll give that a shot.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on April 03, 2016, 12:45:33 pm
Solved. Reset all settings to default. My onscreen fonts no longer look too good but I'll play around and figure out what I had screwed up. Thanks for the suggestions, glad to have a usable game again :) Cheers.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cameni on April 03, 2016, 12:50:36 pm
Hmm, interesting.
Do you have a high DPI display and a different value of display scaling than 100%?
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: Jagerbomber on April 03, 2016, 11:36:32 pm
I haven't been messing with this, but I use 125%. (currently)
Title: Still broken.
Post by: cjstepney on April 04, 2016, 02:42:11 pm
I was wrong. It solved the whole blurry textures problem but the issue with roads not fully rendering even right under the vehicle is still providing a HUGE problem. I had basically disabled trees. You will see the jagged edges of the terrain in this picture.

(https://i.imgur.com/WGHyviE.png)

Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on April 04, 2016, 02:44:05 pm
I am also having an issue where the top two hundred feet of a mountain are never solid, vehicles pass straight through them. As before, the only way to get terrain to render in full resolution is to look straight down for a split second and look back up, and everything is all rounded and detailed.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cameni on April 05, 2016, 07:10:20 am
This can happen in mountainous regions, especially if you boost terrain quality setting too much.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on April 05, 2016, 10:16:17 am
This continues to happen when I reduce all the settings to "Nintendo 64 Mode." I have a fairly good video card that should at least be able to handle minimum settings. NVidia GTX780. I'll also add that this even happens in the Hawaiian Islands where there is mostly non-detailed ocean floor and small areas of land, lots of which is flat. It is still solved by looking straight down for a split second. Again, is this normal in any way or is this something that only I have experienced? I'm talking about the looking straight down to force terrain to render. When I look straight down, all the terrain for miles around gets beautifully rendered and stays as such until I reach the edge of it. When I reach the edge of it, I have to once again look straight down for a tenth of a second or so and hey presto, quality terrain. To me the logic doesn't work out. Thanks for all your help :)
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cameni on April 05, 2016, 11:37:00 am
No, it's not normal. Something like this sometimes happens in mountains when there are lots of requests on terrain tile generator, and internal limits for terrain tile cache are reached. Looking down can help in that case, as remote terrain goes out of view and can be reused for nearby tiles. But this doesn't happen on most of the land, and it self cures when you move to a less demanding location.

Please go edit eng.cfg and set debug_keys = true there, and then when you experience this issue, press alt+5 to show tile stat window. Might be that with debug_keys it will pop up by itself too. Just make a screenshot.

I didn't see any injected modules in the log, but there still may be some hidden - are you using any kind of graphics utility, for things like capturing video, screenshots, displaying fps overlays or any similar thing?
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: HiFlyer on April 05, 2016, 09:28:03 pm
This continues to happen when I reduce all the settings to "Nintendo 64 Mode." I have a fairly good video card that should at least be able to handle minimum settings. NVidia GTX780. I'll also add that this even happens in the Hawaiian Islands where there is mostly non-detailed ocean floor and small areas of land, lots of which is flat. It is still solved by looking straight down for a split second. Again, is this normal in any way or is this something that only I have experienced? I'm talking about the looking straight down to force terrain to render. When I look straight down, all the terrain for miles around gets beautifully rendered and stays as such until I reach the edge of it. When I reach the edge of it, I have to once again look straight down for a tenth of a second or so and hey presto, quality terrain. To me the logic doesn't work out. Thanks for all your help :)

I suspect its something on your end. We just have to find out whut.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm7ebyu8BbE
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on April 05, 2016, 09:58:49 pm
I think I have figured it out - it's texture resolution. The terrain quality can be maxed out. Everything can be maxed out. Everything. Except texture resolution. It has to be set at the default or the world won't generate properly. My graphics card is bordering on slightly old right now, and within two years I'll be replacing it. For now, I'll survive with this.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: Acetone on April 06, 2016, 04:43:52 am
I think I have figured it out - it's texture resolution. The terrain quality can be maxed out. Everything can be maxed out. Everything. Except texture resolution. It has to be set at the default or the world won't generate properly. My graphics card is bordering on slightly old right now, and within two years I'll be replacing it. For now, I'll survive with this.

Your GTX780 is largely powerfull enough for OT, not everything maxed, but with normal/high settings you should be ok :)
Your texture problem is really strange, I have a real perf impact if I push textures to ultra, but no bug like that...
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: KW71 on April 06, 2016, 09:24:43 am
I think Acetone is right. I have a 780 too, and I had no problems pushing the texture settings to ultra... But I don't see the point on doing it... I would highly recommend you leave the terrain settings alone (included terrain quality metric and max texture resolution). Outerra looks amazing with default settings.

For example "shadows low dither" looks really nice and, IMHO, some times even better (small objects shadows, like the buttons in the cockpit, are more defined) than "high dither" or "very high".

The only settings that I use to touch are:

Resolution.
Full screen (Most of the games works better for me in full screen).
V-sync (full refresh).
Anti-aliasing.... sometimes (FXAA is good enough at 1920x1080).
AO to high.... (mater of tastes).
And in world settings, if I'm going to roam at ground level, I push the grass distance to something like 90.
Title: Re: Everything is blurry.
Post by: cjstepney on April 06, 2016, 11:34:42 am
I'm having better luck now using those settings. Thanks for the input, I'm glad there is a good community around this.