Fear in the Fog

[easytarget]

Just because I was basically curious how fog would look, I loaded up Fear in the Fog. I'm not familiar with how fog is supposed to be implemented in the game, or what it's supposed to look like, but frankly, there's no fog here at all. The sky looks overcast, that's about it.

No fog.

I'm using an ATI 9000 128mb radeon card, which while not state of the art, should be more than sufficient to portray whatever the graphics in the game might be.

Is this normal? I was pretty much expecting heavy fog to mean I'd have a fog so dense I couldn't see. That's not the case?!

[Green Hornet]

EasyTarget,

The fog in Combat Mission is very dense. You are probably not seeing fog because there may be an issue with your video card. If you were seeing fog you would know it.

I remember seeing a lot of threads in the Tech Support forum about ATI chipsets not displaying fog correctly in CM.

Try doing a search on the word "fog" (subject line only )in the Tech Support Forum.

I honestly don't remember if this issue has been resolved but I believe the problem is (was) on ATI's end.

[easytarget]

thx

did searches using fog for about the last half hour

no real luck

strange that i can get transparent buildings and transparent smoke

just no fog

[Mikeydz]

Originally posted by easytarget:

I'm not familiar with how fog is supposed to be implemented in the game, or what it's supposed to look like, but frankly, there's no fog here at all. The sky looks overcast, that's about it.

No fog.

I'm using an ATI 9000 128mb radeon card, which while not state of the art, should be more than sufficient to portray whatever the graphics in the game might be.

CMBO (and CMBB for that matter) use something called table fog, which is the older, more wildly compatible method of creating fog under Direct-X(at the time the current CM engine was coded, at least). Unfortunatly, ATI drivers do not support table fog (at least in the way it's called for under Direct-X, so your get not actual fog on screen. The "fog" is still there causing limited LOS issues for your troops, but the cool looking graphic effect is something that won't show up.

[easytarget]

interesting,

thx for the info - i looked in the setup for the vid card, there's definitely no setting for turning on a fog table - sigh

so, do nvidia card users see the fog?

[Mikeydz]

Originally posted by easytarget:

interesting,

thx for the info - i looked in the setup for the vid card, there's definitely no setting for turning on a fog table - sigh

so, do nvidia card users see the fog?

As far as I know, yep. they see it in all it's glory. The ATI fog issue is a long known problem, but unless ATI releases a driver that supports this type of fog coding, there's nothing BF can do other than hacking changing thier fog programing, which isn't gonna happen until the engine rewrite.

[easytarget]

thx for the quick responses

this is pretty much what i was afraid of

but as you said, at least it doesn't change the LOS in the game when it's played - just the way you see it - unfortunately that is a lot of the fun

just chalk it up to one more reason (and i've got a whole bunch more) why i'll NEVER buy another ATI product - sad part was, i knew better even when i bought the 9000 - it had been about 3 or 4 vid cards back since i had tried ATI and thought I'd give them another go - mistake and i knew it even at the time

[Strontium Dog]

Originally posted by easytarget:

strange that i can get transparent buildings and transparent smoke

just no fog

Hi easytarget

I don't mean to insult your intelligence but you do have the weather effects switched on don't you? Shift + 'w'

Just thought I'd check

[Brodieman]

Rats, i ahve a Radeon 9000 Pro so i guess i too will be copping no visuals for fog, bugger it! :mad:

[Vadr]

Fear in the Fog on an Geforce 3 Ti 200

vadr

[Mikeydz]

Originally posted by Strontium Dog:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by easytarget:

strange that i can get transparent buildings and transparent smoke

just no fog

Hi easytarget

I don't mean to insult your intelligence but you do have the weather effects switched on don't you? Shift + 'w'

Just thought I'd check </font>

[easytarget]

S dog,

good question to ask - always start with the obvious and work down from there

and yes, unfortunately i've cycled through all the settings available with shft-w and get nothing in fear in the fog except a night time setting w/ no fog

i'm getting no love from this ATI card when it comes to fog

but hey, i just checked the paper and i can pick up an nvidia gf4 ti4200 for 69 bucks locally so i suspect i'm going to do just that

as i was saying above, i'm not a fan of ATI - they simply don't even come close to nvidia when it comes to drivers - either in terms of quality or speed of release (especially the latter)

so, as of tomm. i'll probably pick up a new vid card and give the ATI to someone in the family not concerned with such mundane matters as fog

[Moriarty]

Greetings,

I am running an ATI Rage Orion card and get the full effect of the fog and all the other weather, too. I'd post the pic, but I really don't know the ins and outs of doing that. It might be a driver issue.

You might want to post on tech page or e-mail Madmatt for advice.

[ November 30, 2002, 03:50 PM: Message edited by: Moriarty ]

[Brodieman]

ALL RADEON OWNERS!! Try downloading the 3drage tweak tool. In it are options to disable ATI's crappy w fog and options to enable table fog and z fog (i think both need to be enabled to work - but disable w fog too). Download at http://www.rage3d.com/r3dtweak/ Once installed open up the settings select the 3d tweak tab from there double click on direct 3d tab then remove the tick next to w fog and place ticks next to z fog and table fog - now hopefully it should display fog for CMBO. I still haven't got the game (damn postal service) but it corrects my no show fog in Thief 2 so hopefully it helps will some one try it and tell us please!

[easytarget]

sad to say, i tried every variation possible using this software tool with no effect whatsoever

i then went into the registry and manually added variations of w, z and table fog in different combinations

same results - no fog

conclusion (and yes, i've said it before, but i'll say it again) ATI makes lousy drivers

because we all know full well the hardware is capable of rendering fog - and we all know that ATI has been told about this issue about a million times

Hell will indeed freeze over 7 or 8 times before I ever buy another ATI product

[Brodieman]

Thanks for checking mate, sorry to get everyones hopes up about it! I'm regretting the purchase of my ATI card now, sure it's good hardware but as you have stated the driver support is rubbish, particularly if it means the card will not perform basic graphic functions!

[easytarget]

no problem - it was certainly worth a try - i'd headed down the same path of hope myself

ATI is a silly bunch of boys and girls when it comes to drivers - they've known about this for years and done nothing about it

that alone is sufficient reason to stay far far away from them in the future...

[Tommy H]

Actually Mac ATI cards can display fog in CM, just FYI

Tommy

[ December 05, 2002, 05:31 PM: Message edited by: Tommy H ]

[easytarget]

hehe, that figures

so ATI is even dumber than i thought - they enable it on one platform and not another

for what it's worth, i picked up a gold standard gainward Ti200 (comes overclocked to the performance of a Ti500 from the mfg) for cheap that i installed today

so i'm pretty much all good now

in honor of this momentous occasion i'm going to actually stop momentarily with my slow methodical march down the list of battles and skip straight to Fear in the Fog tonight and play it in all it's foggy glory

One side note, anyone else notice that turning on antialiasing causes the menus in the game to disappear? Rather amusing, I fire up the game for the first time with it on only to find I can't get the battle list to come up. My initial reaction, oh lovely, one problem solved and another one introduced.

Anyway, I turned it off and all is fine. I'm sure if I did a search I'd discover this has been docuemented elsewhere here.

[ December 05, 2002, 09:25 PM: Message edited by: easytarget ]

[Vadr]

One side note, anyone else notice that turning on antialiasing causes the menus in the game to disappear

If you roll back to the earlier drivers (30.82?) you won't have that problem.

Vadr

[ December 05, 2002, 10:09 PM: Message edited by: Vadr ]

[easytarget]

interesting

so you've got antialiasing working with the 30.82's?

hmm, i hate to let go of the latest betas (in this case the 41.09's) because they've definitely increased beformance (at least as i care to measure them, which is in terms of frames per second in the other games i play, which are mostly FPS)

interestinlgy, anistropic filtering doesn't cause problems at all when i turn it on

i'll probably stick with the latest betas and just not run antialiasing since frankly it doesn't seem to make much difference to the CM graphics, which by other game standards are pretty antiquated anyway

[easytarget]

ok, so back to the battle at hand

i'm playing fear in the fog and i've discovered a problem, at least for me if not the AI

i'm in the midst of an engagement that is primarily taking place in the woods and i'm finding that the AI seems to be doing a better job of positioning troops such that they have LOS on my guys better than I do on them

when i plot the location of an MG for example where i can clearly see LOS to the enemy i'm trying to bring fire on to i discover once he gets in position he doesn't have LOS after all

now this isn't do to fog because this current engagement is taking place at fairly close qtrs

the trouble i'm having is that it seems like when i'm plotting where my guys will go, it looks to me like the enemy will be in plain sight, only to discover when they get where they're going they don't ultimately have LOS after all and they fail to contribute to the engagement

so my question is when setting up the movement of troops in the woods how to you judge where they will have LOS?

because from what i can tell so far, my read off the graphical representation i'm looking at is being misinterpreted by me somehow

what am i doing wrong here?

[easytarget]

got another question - hopefully someone will read my other one and reply to it as well

i won as the allies in fear by basically bogging the germans down since i was under the impression i would receive points towards victory if i held the flags and stopped germans from moving off the map to the west

i did that and i thought it worked since i got the victory

i switch sides and play the battle again - assuming this time my goal would be to control the flags once again and also move as many germans off the map to the west as possible

i did both of these objectives and the allies got a tactical victory - even though i did the following:

1. controlled both flags and never during the entire battle lost control of them

2. moved somewhere between 3 and 4 platoons worth of men off the map - perhaps more

3. my casualty rate in infantry and armor was the same as the allies

what am i missing here

p.s. they decimated me with arty - i clearly have no clue how to use it - seemed like anytime i wanted to use it my spotter had to virtually be on top of the place he wanted it to land due to fog (clearly i'm messing this up as well)

thoughts

[ December 07, 2002, 11:00 PM: Message edited by: easytarget ]

[easytarget]

bump

i'm kinda hoping some of the regulars will read my last two posts above and give me some feedback

[Kingfish]

when setting up the movement of troops in the woods how to you judge where they will have LOS?

You can't judge LOS from a location until you are actually there. However, you can get a fairly good idea of how far you can see by doing a LOS in identical terrain before you arrive in the chosen location. This distance will be modified because of terrain features, such as dips or hills, but it does give a general idea to work with.

i won as the allies in fear by basically bogging the germans down since i was under the impression i would receive points towards victory if i held the flags and stopped germans from moving off the map to the west

i did that and i thought it worked since i got the victory

i switch sides and play the battle again - assuming this time my goal would be to control the flags once again and also move as many germans off the map to the west as possible

i did both of these objectives and the allies got a tactical victory - even though i did the following:

1. controlled both flags and never during the entire battle lost control of them

2. moved somewhere between 3 and 4 platoons worth of men off the map - perhaps more

3. my casualty rate in infantry and armor was the same as the allies

When playing scenarios with exit zones, the side which does not need to exit units (in your case the Americans) will be awared bonus points for each German unit that is eligible to exit but is prevented from doing so. The bonus points will equal the value of that unit. So, a 100 point German unit that is suppose to exit, but does not, will give the American player an extra 100 points at games end.

Furthermore, German units that are killed will give the American unit a double bonus - one for the kill and another because it didn't exit.

What I suspect happended in your second game is that you failed to exit a sufficient number of units, and the bonus thus awarded to the American player exceeded your own points total, thus giving him the vic.