In order not to totally threadjack Scawen and his haze post i've made this new thread.

I'm having trouble with the LOD settings in LFS - ideally I would like to compeletly disable the LOD, or at least get rid of this really annoying trait - most noticeable at the start, but also when i'm racing close, when a car is on the edge of the screen it gets octagonal wheels.

I've tried screen width LOD effects on both settings but neither alters the problem.

Here are some screenshots showing both the problem and my current settings - what do I have wrong please?

http://www.bansheestudios.com/img/lfsGfx1.jpg
http://www.bansheestudios.com/img/lfsGfx2.jpg
http://www.bansheestudios.com/img/lfsGfx3.jpg
http://www.bansheestudios.com/img/lfsGfx4.jpg

Under Misc options check your settings for multiplayer speed up particularly "dynamic LOD reduction" setting (0.00 is best, 1.00 is max dynamic LOD reduction)

Quote from B2B@300 :

Under Misc options check your settings for multiplayer speed up particularly "dynamic LOD reduction" setting (0.00 is best, 1.00 is max dynamic LOD reduction)

I've also been suffering from the same problem, as you can see from the screenies I have the settings as you have mentioned

http://www.stuartbaker.dsl.pipex.com/misc.jpg
http://www.stuartbaker.dsl.pipex.com/graphics.jpg

Edit: 1280x1024 is the res I run LFS at.

Thank you, I have tried as you suggested but unfortunately it did not resolve the problem. I have screengrabbed the Misc settings page too:

http://www.bansheestudios.com/img/lfsGfx5.jpg

iirc "screen width affects lod" only kicks in @ => 1024x768 ... might be wrong tho..

Just tried with 'Screen width affects LOD" off, no change.

http://www.stuartbaker.dsl.pipex.com/wheels.jpg

Only thing I did was maximize the user, dust, and mirror LOD sliders and change "screen width affects LOD" to yes. I now have round wheels (can't get a screenie for you guys, sorry. Dialup and it would take too long).

Do you still have the problem if you select a lower resolution? (1024x768 or 800x600)

Even when the quality settings are all on high, some people can get this issue if there is too many cars in view (either in mirrors or in front).

Sometimes I see cars "simple models" drawn in the distance... sometimes I don't. It almost feels like that this stuff can sometimes turn on depending on graphics and CPU usage.

Only Scawen could explain this I guess

Quote from B2B@300 :

Do you still have the problem if you select a lower resolution? (1024x768 or 800x600)

Just tested at 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200.
All with Screen width... on and off and I cannot get rid of these damn hexagonal wheels.

Even try turning on/off Track LOD reduction? Not that it could have an affect on the wheels, but it is worth a shot :doh:

I've got every setting on max as far as I can tell (LFS does have very strange graphics setting options though so I may have got confused), I do get round wheels but I still get the octagonal ones at the very edges of the screen, i'm on 1280x1024 resolution.

I'm not sure what % usage my cpu & gpu are on but if I turn off frame limiting I get 100+fps - I have it capped to 60fps normally (the eye really cannot tell the difference over this so it's a waste of Watts/heat to run the game faster). I also got the problem when overclocking the system to 110% cpu/fsb/gpu speeds.

It is only on the very edges of the screen though - but here's the thing - it's a racing game... I sit on the grid and I drive alongside other cars, those octagonal wheels actually crop up quite a lot for such a limited area of the screen!

I notice your eyepoint is quite far back. Move your eyepoint forward using the Zoom In command and I bet the problem disappears. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way for the user to properly resolve the problem; it has to be done by the devs adjusting the thresholds at which various LOD levels are activated.

The way I tested was to find a stationary car, then Shift+U to get a side on view and then zoom out.

In all modes I tried the wheels turned hexagonal at the same distance from the car.

I wonder if it possible for the Devs to give a ini file to download that should be max detail for us users with systems capable ? Even when I tried 1600x1200 I was getting 30+ fps with full AA and AF turned on.

And could a passing mod move this to the bug reports section please.

LFS Benchmark has the max and min cfg files, I'd guess they are the definite max and min settings. Just to let you know, might be handy sometimes when debugging system etc.

Quote from Becky Rose :

I've got every setting on max as far as I can tell (LFS does have very strange graphics setting options though so I may have got confused), I do get round wheels but I still get the octagonal ones at the very edges of the screen, i'm on 1280x1024 resolution.

I'm not sure what % usage my cpu & gpu are on but if I turn off frame limiting I get 100+fps - I have it capped to 60fps normally (the eye really cannot tell the difference over this so it's a waste of Watts/heat to run the game faster). I also got the problem when overclocking the system to 110% cpu/fsb/gpu speeds.

It is only on the very edges of the screen though - but here's the thing - it's a racing game... I sit on the grid and I drive alongside other cars, those octagonal wheels actually crop up quite a lot for such a limited area of the screen!

The mip bias in the graphics settings is set to -4. AFAIK that is the lowest quality setting (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). I don't think it will help with the wheels though.

No option can disable octagonal wheels in some cases. Sometimes you can move or change your view in certain way to remove the effect. The lfs engine decides by itself when and what it alters. It simplifies the models which it assumes are not very important or with not sufficient resources. Far away, too many cars around etc. I am sure Scawen can adjust these things, so those of us with more fast machines won't notice these that much, at least at close perimeter.

I don't think -mip settings are lowest quality. +settings should give better performance but the textures will blur. -settings look ugly higher than -2 to my eyes (too speckley) but the textures will be sharper.

On mip mapping, here's the -4 setting
http://www.bansheestudios.com/img/MipMapOff.jpg

and here's with the slider right up, take a look at the trees in the mid-distance, the foot bridge, and the buildings in the door mirror
http://www.bansheestudios.com/img/MipMapOn.jpg


I definately preffer the slider on -4. More concerning for me though is that for some reason that view is only rendering at 45fps which has really annoyed me :turtle2: .

Is it rendering at higher fps on +settings?

Not really, I dont think mip mapping effects rendering times. It's just a visual prefference thing that fakes textures to look higher resolution by bluring them, but I dont like the blur - especially not on an active matrix screen. It's not so bad on a CRT where everything onscreen is that little bit more 'analogue' and contrast is better anyway. On TFT the contrast is poorer to begin with - and then you blur...

Mipmapping is a thing the GPU does when turning pictures into textures, not while drawing textures on the screen. The fps hit is not existing (very small), only the texture size in the video-RAM should be affected.
In theory... I didn't mess with mip-mapping in ages...

Vain

I'm beggining to think it is some sort of bug :/ with LFS not recognising your graphics cards full capabilities...

Try installing LFS in a new folder and then run it. Also check all drivers are up to date and the latest version of directx is installed

It's a bug in the LOD-algorithm. The algorithm calculates that, no matter the setting, the LOD is very low on the edges of the screen. That is wrong, because on the edges there can be very near vehicles that do get a lot of attention. It's indeed something Scawen has to fix.

Vain

Um no, I think most people get better than that I do and I only have a nVidia 6600GT, Becky has 2x 6800GT's in SLi mode so she should get better than I

I can only replicate the type of octagonal wheels she and Bean0 get by raising "Dynamic LOD Reduction" otherwise they look round (no matter what distance or angle) So I have to guess that somehow LFS isn't recognising their cards full capabilities...
This could be a bug or it could just as likely be a driver installation has gone bad have heard/read of such instances having unusual effects before