Some maps don't draw the full visibility range.

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gaoesa
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Some maps don't draw the full visibility range.

Post by gaoesa »

This is not a bug. It is supposed to be so. Well, somehow.

Anyway, I have heard that some players have thought they have some wrong settings or that theres a bug in the map or in the mod. This is not the case. I'll explain here what it is.

Some map makers limit the range of visibility. This means that in those maps, there is a area far away that is not drawn. These map makers use fog to hide this unvisible area. Few of such maps are: Industry 2, Artic Guns and Railgun. So normally there would be a partially visible area just before the 'wall' that fades away the fact that the stuff that is too far, is not drawn at all.

On the server though, the fog is forced off for all the clients. (There actually is no way to force any settings to individual clients, but all the forced settings and ranges affect all the clients.) This means in practise, that in stead of fading the wall away, it is just something that is completely not draw and thus making it look white or any background color.

The benefits are:
* It increases the FPS in maps where the fog is used.
* It makes the visibility to be the same for all the clients (fairness).
* The fog isn't actually used to be more then just fading away the area that is not drawn at all.

There is a bug that affects some ATI graphics card drivers. By setting the r_clamptoedge to 0, these drivers remove the fog from the partially visible area. The partially visible area is a narrow area just before the wall where players and things are seen just a little. It is fairly narrow, but still some could try to make advantage of it. However, the fog is not used at all and therefore, there is no such area. On Himalia server, the setting r_clamptoedge does not have any effect what so ever, at all.

Little warning though. On other servers where the fog is used, it is fairly common that the punkbuster checks the use of this variable and kicks for it. At least if the server doesn't have a way to force any settings or ranges to the clients. So to avoid cvar kicks by punkbuster, it is advisable to not use any configs that are downloaded from the internet or if you don't know what they do. It is fairly common that these configs contain some settings that make punkbuster kick you.
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