LODs

[Saddletank]

A question for the map makers out there.

LOD settings for buildings, I am working with some of the Gettysburg buildings from the town itself such as the court house, PA college, prison, etc that were built with LODs. The full building detail is showing in LStudio but in-game only the lowest LOD setting is being displayed.

If I change the settings for one model, then all models on the map appear to take those settings, is this correct?

On the model(s) themselves I have selected "dynamic" under the LOD tab, and on the main LOD options/distance sliders I have simply maxed out both 1 and 2 to force the building to display with full detail out to its maximum draw distance but they are not.

I'm clearly doing something wrong but I don't know what.

Any advice appreciated.

[Crikey]

I expect I'm misreading the problem but I thought that like uniforms, the LoD for buildings in game was controlled by the Options settings in game - i.e. best, high etc.

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve so apologies if I'm off track.

[Saddletank]

No, its nothing to do with in-game options. Its to do with the levels of detail settings of individual buildings - that is how many polygons/details are displayed at different distances from the camera (though in SoW there appears to only be a global setting for each map). Its a frame-rate saving device common to many computer games. From far away a house might be rendered in-game as a simple box, closer in a pitched roof might be rendered in addition while at the closest distance, chimney, porch, etc are rendered.

I can go into the Mac Map and see the LODs working correctly, yet when I use the same Gettysburg buildings in a map I am converting from GB style to European style the buildings do not display their LODs correctly in-game (though they do in LStudio), even though the Mac Map and my map use the same settings for LODs.

[Davinci]

There is a setting in the "LStudio" for "LOD" under Edit.

Load both Maps and see if there is any difference with those settings.

davinci

[Saddletank]

Done that already. There is no difference:

1) 8920

2) 9948

3) 0

4) 0

These values seem common to all the Gettysburg 2.5 mile maps which is one I am converting (PPT). I've tried changing the values which changes the LOD draw distance correctly in LStudio but it has no effect in-game. The LOD tab on each building has its value set to "none" which is also common practice in the NSD maps.

The thing is I have messed around with various settings a week ago and the weirdness started then. I then reset everything to the "stock" values I find in other maps but the error isn't reversed. I assume I have done something else, maybe something unrelated which has screwed things up.

[Saddletank]

Great news.

A friend of mine noticed there is a section at the bottom of the .ini files of the 5 early Gettysburg maps which is not found in any other map:

[MapPerf]
LOD1=20
LOD2=50
LOD3=75
LOD4=100

I remmed out the 4 LOD lines and this fixed the issue. So annoying that NSD would put something in the map initialisation that overrode everything the map builder did in the editor.

So problem fixed.

Thanks for the help guys. Put this helpful info in your "useful notes" folders or whatever.