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How to: Altering LODs of objects in game

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Post Mon Jun 09, 2003 3:00 am

How to: Altering LODs of objects in game

I have come across a find that I'm sure many people would be interested in, assuming they have good enough hardware. Actually, I'm surprised no one has discovered this already.

It is possible to change the "pop-up" distances of just about any object in the game. Heres how: open up the solararch.ini located in the "Solars" folder. There are hundreds of entries which have the parameter "LODranges", and this parameter will be followed by 2 or more numbers. These numbers describe the distance at which the particular object will switch to a lower-detailed LOD (level of detail).
The first number is always 0, and the last number is the distance at which the object becomes completely invisible. By increasing all the numbers to a very large value (EXCEPT for the first one) the lower-detail LODs will never come into play, and that particular object will always be visible and highly-detailed regardless of where you are in they system. For example, let's look at the default LODranges parameter for the jumpgate object, which has 6 levels of detail:
LODranges = 0, 8000, 12000, 18000, 22000, 50000

To make jumpgates visible all the time, you would change to values to something like this:
LODranges = 0, 999999, 999999, 999999, 999999, 999999

Simple, right? However, there are a few things to note. Like I said, there are hundreds of entries so you have to be patient to change all the values. Also, this doesn't seem to apply to tradelane rings. Not sure why, but they still won't pop up until you are close to them. Also, asteroids LODs are not altered from this file. To change the visibility range of asteroids you must open your PerfOptions.ini and alter the "Asteroids" parameter. A value of 5.0 is the most you should need in this case.

And one more important note--making all the changes I mentioned WILL have an impact on your framerates. I'm actually not too pleased with the performance results I experienced so I'm going to do some more fine-tuning to my values. Perhaps its best to just alter important objects like planets and jumpgates and leave everything else at default...anyways, play around with it. Hope this helps.

Post Mon Jun 16, 2003 4:25 am

I know it may be very painstaiking to change all those LODrange files, but a shortcut would be to get a wordprocessor that allows a "replace with" function. If you want to increase (or decrease) the LODranges on all objects, that may be a very useful shortcut.

But you'll need to decompile the ini file first with BINIQDU or something...

Post Mon Jun 16, 2003 6:32 am

That's cool. I'll mess around with that for a while!

The Monkeys are coming. Beware!

Post Wed Jun 18, 2003 6:15 pm

what i am wondering is if you can use this on ships aswell..

because it would be a good thing to make a new scanner increase it range and give it to the admins this way admins can easy track people if they need to..

The problem is players ships always seem to dissapear at about 5k and when in a group ar 10k...

And so far noone found out how to change that..

Greetz Nataku

Post Thu Jun 19, 2003 12:27 am

i use "riva tuner" for my g-force 2 mx400 to change gamma and details so that some games like FL still are running on my k6/2 400mhz
there you can also change the ?mipmap? setting
thats similiar isnt it ?

Vera Lynn

"we will meet again, some sunny day"

Post Thu Jun 19, 2003 12:59 am

@vera lynn: The "purpose" of LODs and mipmaps are similar, but they are actually two different things. LODs describe the quality of 3D objects, whereas mipmaps describe the quality of the textures on a 3D object (to put it simply).

@nataku: The LODs for ships are changeable from a different file, which is something I just discovered recently--shiparch.ini. I am sure that increasing these values would solve the problem of players becoming invisible to the EYE at 5k, but the range at which they are detected on radar is a whole other story. You would have to look up tutorials on installing new scanners on your ship if you want to do that.

Post Mon Aug 11, 2003 9:14 am

Simple question, hope it has a simple answer.

I've made a new model and have a new problem, I have exported the milkshape .cmp and the .mat file ok. The ship is visible in the game ok except when docking or leaving a base or planet. At these times it "disappears" momentarily, and you can't see it docking or leaving, nothing except docking lights and exhaust flare. at all other times the ship is visible. Ithought it may have something to do with the tga files so I converted them all to .dds format as it provides higher "distance detail". No difference same problem, I have tried everything I know without success.

It was suggested that I experiment with the hp mount as the model may not all be in view and also play around with lod values:

Well I have tried moving the mount further foward, further back to no avail, it is visible in the equipment dealer np, so I moved the model to Manhattan, it passes thru the docking ring and disappears, becoming visible for a brief moment, as it comes to rest on the landing platform, go to the equipment dealer, no problems....... so I copied a heavier fighter sur file over the top, same result - leave the equipment dealer go to the launch site - a collection of guns - no model - launch - briefly visible then as the ship turns to leave for the jumpgate a series of lights and engine flare - out through the jumpgate - invisible until the model "returns to control" , so, as the model is fairly complicated (has spikes), back to ms, remove all the "extra bits" reweld everything - check the .mat file nothing in there that shouldnt be there, export a "simple" cmp - same bl.... result - have spent along time on this model - not had the problem before - sure I have had a problem where the model is not 'substantial enough' relatively easy fix - simply add some cowling, or a grille extra detail etc., an problem fixed........ but this one has me stumped..... would happily pass on the appropriate files for you to look at...... and here am i thinking this is a really good model........ anyone know the fix?

I used the dagger as a base for the files and have copied the dagger files over mine and vise versa = dagger visible at all times, even went so far as to load up another saved files and with the modified dagger files still in place, go looking for enemies they are not visible either.

lod files...... whooo! not enough of whatever to know the answer.


Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

Post Mon Aug 11, 2003 6:59 pm

Had some of the same problem when I was doing my first model .. my problem turned out to be a bad mat file. I followed the instructions in the lightwave tutorial and the section in there for creating the mat file is a bit off.

you might want to find the tutorial on the borg sphere and redo the mat file. See if that fixes your problem.

Also .. make sure your ship is high enough scale in milkshape. I used another ship (the snub fighter - available somewhere here I believe) as my template for scale (mainly I used the pilot figure).

Make sure your ship is upside down and below the x-axis too. far enough that it will be visible when it's on the ground (the x plane is considered ground level and the cmp exporter inverts the y-axis for some reason).

I put my HpMount at the center of mass, just above the x-axis then.

My model worked fine after that .. hope yours does too.




I refuse your invitiation to join your hallucination.

Post Tue Aug 12, 2003 2:41 am

seawolfe02,

Thanx for the suggestions, looked at the matfiles and scale, when first imported it was huge - the size of a small freighter - so I re-scaled to a more appropriate size. The ship actually exists, just wasnt visible at all ranges, so I didn't think the problem was there. The problem was actually in the lod ranges.
It was suggested that I change the values to a higher number so rather than start high, I changed the entry to: 0, 1001, 1002,1003 to take up the same number of values as previously which were 0,75,125,1000. Dunno if it is absolutely necessary to provide the same number of values but I thought caution was wise.......

Problem fixed.

Thanx again,

Harrier.

Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

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