Increasing PSOBB's draw distance

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Sodaboy

Sodaboy

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After today's maintenance, you can now enjoy a much better draw distance for PSOBB.

In order to take advantage of this, you must launch the options program and click "More" to increase your "Clip" distance.

Example:

psobb_opt.png

Doing so will enable you to see more of the environment, enemies, objects, etc., from a longer distance away.

Thanks again to @tofuman for implementing this and thank YOU for playing on Ephinea!

Edit: If you get massive slowdown with an extreme draw distance, your computer is probably not strong enough to handle your clip setting and we suggest you to back off the clip distance some.

If you get flickering and glitching with textures with extreme draw distances, it's recommended that you use "Pixel Fog" as opposed to Vertex or Emulation Fog, as those cause issues. If you're on Pixel Fog already, still get flickering and you're using an AMD FreeSync monitor, make a FreeSync profile that DISABLES Freesync with PSO.
 
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First bit of feedback.

The good so far
-new options menu is good.
-the viewing distance was something that always bugged me, so being able to see longer distances is great.

-The *potentially* bad
-There seems to be some issue with targeting another user was having due to the update? It could be related to detection ranges being bumped up, but I don't see why viewing distance should effect physical targeting unless Sonic team did a Sonic team thing and tied physical targeting to what you can view. I did notice that enemies popped up on the HUD from longer distances, even if I cant target them. That's coincidentally bad for Sinows since their cloaking means nothing now (not that it ever did once you memorize spawns)

-For some reason as opposed to solo mode (which was flawless, 0 frame drops, whatsoever, even in rooms with many enemies), multimode became a slideshow in certain hallways, especially with certain bosses (changed depending on user, myself and another user had lag in different bosses respectively) and I was showing no more hardware resource use than usual while monitoring in task manager. It could still be the limitations of my aging hardware, but yeah being its experimental right now *Maybe* I could chalk part of it up to it being new and needing more optimization.
 
Due to PSOBB being, as usual, a bad port from ST to PC, increasing the draw distance will definitely have more of an impact on the game and, yes, you’ll need stronger hardware to run the game at a further draw distance.

I don’t think there is much we can do about optimization in that regard. Either your hardware is up to snuff or it isn’t. You can try to lower it a bit from the max clip or try other detail settings, but that’s it.

Regarding the HUD thing, I don’t know. Maybe tofu can look into that.
 
I figured as much in that sense, however there being a difference goin from flawless solomode in the same quest/hall/area, to it being laggy in multi under the exact same settings is very odd to me LOL. I can't think of a reason for that other than other players being loaded in, which is strange 3 more player models would cause that.
 
Nikki said:
I can't think of a reason for that other than other players being loaded in, which is strange 3 more player models would cause that.
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Indeed, as the only thing that changes is the draw distance.

It may be something tofuman can actually look at, not sure about optimizing, but maybe there can be some tweak done. It helps to know the quest, areas, etc. you're noticing a difference in when comparing solo and multi versions of the quest... as well as areas you always have trouble with when the distance is turned up.

Hardware information like video card and processor would also be helpful.
 
A GTX600 series card, and a AMD quadcore 3.5GHz processor for me, Dunno about the person I was playing with that was complaining about extreme boss cutscene lag.
 
Nikki said:
A GTX600 series card, and a AMD quadcore 3.5GHz processor for me, Dunno about the person I was playing with that was complaining about extreme boss cutscene lag.
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Thanks for the information. Still would like the quest and area you experience issues, too.

Also, try other settings of draw distance, not just the maximum. See what is better, maybe you don't need ALL the way, but maybe just a tick or two up from the default would be a good enough improvement. ;)
 
Yeah I've been pushing the slider down to optimize what the max value might be, hard gettin multimodes going at this time of day though lol. Quest I've been Testing in is RT since it hits many usual performance hitting areas. The main issue areas that were giving lag were Gol dragon entrance, and seabed halls. Seaside was lag central as well for whatever reason despite not a lot of objects there. As far as the other guy, they got lag in the big open pool rooms in seabed, seabed halls, olga flow cutscenes. I had no lag/slowdown in Olga whatsoever.
 
Have no Apparent issues, this is really great!
I will update when I play some 4P games to see if it still runs well.

Hardware:

-GPU:980ti
-CPU:4770k @4.5ghz
 
I am the one that Nikki played with and had the lag issues in Seabed and Olga Flow's cutscenes. The issues occured while playing with the Draw Distance slider maxed out. PC specs are as follows:

GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX960
CPU: Intel I5-4460 3.20ghz

After the RT run I set my Draw Distance to mid, didn't notice any problems after doing that in two RTs and a PoD except maybe a very small slowdown during Olga Flow's cutscenes again. No problems solo while testing out EP1 with maxed Draw settings.

I noticed something else though. I am not sure if this new change can even be the cause of it, but after today's update and testing the Draw Distance at Max in a Solo game I noticed I have more trouble hitting enemies when near doors as in I can't target them. I know there are doors that a prone to this happening and it goes away after you are far enough into the room, but the thing is it feels like the actual gap between being able to hit enemies near a door and the no target problem has increased. Some rooms in Ruins like the small room at the start of Ruins in TTF for example required of me to be almost standing in the middle to hit the enemies now, which wasn't the case before.
 
I shoulda mentioned in game that certain doorways in PSO have poor interactability with mobs, idk if its the room ID's or doors intentionally made that way to avoid player cheese. But yea, it's ESPECIALLY prevalent in ruins, and really freakin annoying.
 
Ok for starters ALL HAIL TOFUMAN

With that out of the way, I have a GTX1060 and a barely-year-old i7. I’ve yet to ever play episode 2 and beyond so I’m wondering if anyone with similar computer specs can tell me what the performance is like with Max draw distance and Max details, etc. I’m running everything on Max in Episode 1 and it’s perfect for me, but I’m curious.
 
Nikki said:
I shoulda mentioned in game that certain doorways in PSO have poor interactability with mobs, idk if its the room ID's or doors intentionally made that way to avoid player cheese. But yea, it's ESPECIALLY prevalent in ruins, and really freakin annoying.
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I think it's that way for everything but forest so you have to really commit to being in the room. Near the doors you can take damage but can't dish it out, it was always that way on GC. In forest you can stand on the door panel itself and shoot into a room
 
Tried the maximum draw distance and had no issue at all in Tower.

EDIT:
full

Broken lobby.
 
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I noticed some background textures flashing in the dark falz arena, pre transformation. Not sure if those were already in the game.
 
ffeJ said:
I noticed some background textures flashing in the dark falz arena, pre transformation. Not sure if those were already in the game.
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Probably not. Earlier today tofu noticed that on really high draw distances, there can be flickering or flashing due to what he thinks is lack of texture memory. He’s trying to find a way to fix that but you may have to back off the clip distance a bit if it annoys you.
 
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