Larger nebula exclusion zones (rendering distance)

Skotty

Maybe some of you guys know the problem: you want to create a exclusion zone in a nebula with a background (sphere cmps). If your exclusion with this background shape is lager than 9k (size=4500) the end of the shape gets faded out. like a far clipping.

Chaning any value in nebulas for this clipping distance doesn’t change anything.

Is here anyone who has an idea to increase the clipping distance of nebula exclusion-shapes?

Moonhead

Skotty. wrote:
Maybe some of you guys know the problem: you want to create a exclusion zone in a nebula with a background (sphere cmps). If your exclusion with this background shape is lager than 9k (size=4500) the end of the shape gets faded out. like a far clipping.

Chaning any value in nebulas for this clipping distance doesn’t change anything.

Is here anyone who has an idea to increase the clipping distance of nebula exclusion-shapes?

My guess is that it is hardcoded (just like the visibility limit for planets) so it’s a value that needs to hacked rather than something we can change in the ini files. I don’t have a clue, but here’s the original post of the planet limit:

FriendlyFire
Flight Commander
Original posting
posted 10/4/2005 18:31 PST
–------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was fiddling with a problem I had with scales and I was looking for the mythic 250k draw limit. I found it!

Open up your Freelancer.exe with your favorite Hex Editor. I use Hex Workshop.
Search for a 32 bits Float value of “250000” ( Without “” ).
The first and only result is the good one. Change it to, say, 1000000 ( 1000k ) and save, then try to boot the game ( Singleplayer is better for this as it does not have the ship explosion bug when you are too far away from the center of the map ).

It will work!

Hope this helps making even greater mods.
FriendlyFire

So, maybe you could search for 9000, if that’s the proper value… (be sure to backup before you start hacking )

I assume all these restrictions were implemented to protect the comuter the game was running on. They suck though! Or at least, they should have been set larger (but the average PC 6 years ago probably could handle less then the average PC nowadays).

Skotty

I found out after some testing:

If your exlusion zone is bigger than 9000m, the shape will get clipped at maybe 96% of the value until 45000m. Thats something like a maximum distance.

I can’t find these values in the exe file.

adoxa

Freelancer.exe has one 4500, but no 9000; nor do the squares of either exist. The 4500 seems to be related to waypoints, but here it is anyway - 08DF46, 4500f = ? and before it there’s 08DF3C, 5000f = ?.

How do I set up and test what you want?

Skotty

You need a nebula with a exclusion zone that uses a cmp for its edges (so you can see the clouds of the nebula).
For example at station Ithaca.

Then you size this zone up to 9000 or more. If you are at the edge of the shape but inside you can see clipping the other side. Its like a ugly “hole” with the nebula fog color in it.

adoxa

It is exactly far clipping. If for some reason you don’t want to use the ini setting: freelancer.exe, 11C3D3, 75->EB = remove (exclusion) zone clipping.

Skotty

Ah thanks adoxa. I didn’t know that this far clipping influences this exlcusion shape.

Moonhead

adoxa wrote:
It is exactly far clipping. If for some reason you don’t want to use the ini setting: freelancer.exe, 11C3D3, 75->EB = remove (exclusion) zone clipping.

Do you mean this hack also addresses the planets disappearing from sight beyond 130K.

I’ve since long applied the hack FriendlyFire discovered (see my post above) but that is setting the limit larger instead of totally removing it.