Fog test

[Ralleyon]

It's pretty common how many games employ fog to hide non-visible land (in the far distance) these days. I curious as to what impact, performance wise, this has on Planeshift.

Can any of the testers put a dense fog on their private servers and check FPS?

If I remember right, this used to improve my performance when there was snow or fog on the main server, just not sure if it was just an impression.

/Later...
@Neko  Now that we have an answer, feel free to move to Wishlist.

[Kaityra]

Hmmm, here is something that makes me ponder. If Yliakum is within a large stalactite and is illuminated by a crystal inside of it where do the weather phenomenons such as rain, snow, fog, etc. come from?

[Vornne]

Fog in ps does improve FPS, but only because it automatically adjusts view distance, just like you can do in the options window

The fog doesn't improve performance by itself; it just blurs the line at the "clipping plane" beyond which nothing is rendered, which does the actual performance increase.

[ThomPhoenix]

Kaityra: weather occurs in any big enough room. NASA has this huge single-room building to prepare their space shuttles in, and in some conditions actual fog or rain can occur within it. Since the stalactite is much much larger than NASA's shuttle building, even complicated weather phenomenon can occur.

[Ralleyon]

Nicey! Time for a feature request!

PS I know clipping distance improves fps, but having a sort of fog do that helps with the immersiveness rather than just disappearing landscape.

/later  Added to BT Fog as "clipping distance" option

[Velh Krome]

No doubt, having most distant landscape fading in slowly instead of popping in suddenly, would certainly enhance atmosphere.

Feature request you say? I second!

[Pizik]

I love the idea, very much in fact. It adds to realism also because eventually when looking into any distance you will experience atmospheric haze IRL, why not in PS also.

[Illysia]

I'm pretty sure PS already has fog it's just not used often.

[Pizik]

We have fog as a weather function that needs to be invoked by a Dev or GM with a /fog command. This is more about exploiting that effect to give a better in-game experience.

[Tuxide]

Man I sure hate it when it takes a GM to improve my FPS.

[peeg]

Slight distance fog actually sounds like a great (and obvious?) idea to me, as it would improve performance *and* atmosphere! All for it.

[Lanarel]

I and some other testers played around with fog some time ago. It is very difficult to find a good fog with the current possibilities. It is either too light (and thus does not blur distant objects enough to allow clipping) or it is too tight (making even nearby objects disappear). I think recent changes in CS and the lighting and collission system allow to use fog in this way, but I do not think PS uses that.

[Vornne]

I remember talking to Xordan of it ages ago, suggesting he use the weather type fog... he said something about adding distance fog sometime, but it is not the same type. Not to say it would be very hard or anything, though.

[Xordan]

I've already got this implemented locally. I'm touching it up before committing.

[Ralleyon]

Don't take this the wrong way or anything, but...