Cliffs in Lot view?

[rosess]

rosess: I checked GoS and the sky mod you talkted about. Unfortunately there were no pictures. Otherwise, thanks for the tips. *goes on a downloading spree*

Drat, they were still there when I linked, unless I was seeing cached images.  As one would expect from GOS, the selections are darker and more dramatic than the original, though there are a couple of blue skies, too. 

[kazebird]

Actually, I think I tracked it down to Nightlife.I looked at old uploads to MTS2, and found these pics.

This picture clearly has clouds, and was of the game with UNI:


While this was with NL:


As you can see, the clouds didn't appear anymore with NL, and might link back to that wall.

[Quinctia]

It has to be post-NL.

I first started playing on a laptop that barely had a video card.  So I was running just Uni/NL for awhile.  When I got my new laptop, I played a very short while under that configuration, and then I installed Seasons.

I have a few shots then running under Uni/NL.  It was actually these shots that made me realize I used to see stars under a shorter draw distance than I do now with Seasons.  And it's not my video card gimping out with Seasons.  My current video card exceeds all the requirements for all the EPs, I have smooth edges and the ability to see fish, etc.

These shots aren't awesome, as I wasn't trying to get the sky, but they're decent evidence.

Night sky with stars and clouds, moar night clouds 1, moar night clouds 2, and daytime clouds where the distance is definitely set to medium.

Contrast with:
Daytime shot under Seasons with medium draw distance that would have definitely had had clouds before, Daytime, XL distance, empty sky, Ditto, and night sky with XL distance--I can't prove it, but I think the stars are appearing in a higher, smaller radius in the skybox.

I think that if I hadn't had installed ceilings and ended up making my interior shots much better, I would've noticed this earlier.

[craziej]

I can't prove it, but I think the stars are appearing in a higher, smaller radius in the skybox.

I've noticed this as well

[kazebird]

The big question now, is how do you fix it? Knowing EA, something was probably changed for no reason. I know if you look up during any season/weather the sky above matches the sky below, so what is the point of this shrunken sky view? Did they think peoples comps would lag too much if they could see the sky?

[Assmitten]

I think they decided to change it, because nowhere on earth has orange skies.

I think the pic looks like twilight in certain places I've lived. Sadly, my night sky is often orange when it is overcast, because of the reflection of the city lights on the cloud cover.

[Zazazu]

Yeah, mine is very heavily red-orange tinted. I live in the city, now in a very congested area. The sunsets and sunrises are fantastic, though.

I still get stars in my game, but the daytime sky is featureless. I have all options at maximum. You can see the stars here. Camera is on the ground level looking through two layers of windows.

Daytime: a whole load of nothing:

[kazebird]

I know, I get stars too, but they used to be lower in the sky, so you could see them without using tab. Same with the sun, and moon.

Also, now that you mention it, my skies are orange at night. I live right near Boston, but I was actually referring to Daytime orange skies, which are found on Mars, but not Earth.

Anyways, there must be some way to fix it.

[witch]

An orange sunset for Parrot, although he doesn't really deserve it because he's being a bit of a dork at the moment. It's not as good as the one last week but it's quite nice.

[Pandaah]

Wow We need absolutely something like this for the game.

[kazebird]

It's very pretty. I wish my sunsets looked like that. The colors are more horizontal, and not vertical like that where I live.

[Zazazu]

Poofs is a New Zealander. You know how backwards they are.

[SaraMK]

Poofs is a New Zealander. You know how backwards they are.

They're not backwards. They're apparently at a 90-degree angle.

[kazebird]

So anyway, there still doesn't seem to be any suggestions on how to fix this. There must be some way. If anyone has any suggestions, I would be more than happy to listen to them.

[witch]

Poofs is a New Zealander. You know how backwards they are.

They're not backwards. They're apparently at a 90-degree angle.

Oi, oi, we're akshully upside down at 180^o last I heard. 

[Menaceman]

I don't know how relevant this is now, parrot, but it is possible to stop objects such as stairs and elevators and trees fading away by editing the Live camera text file. At the very bottom is some text about fade distance and I just set everything to 0.

[kazebird]

I know you can, but am not sure if it's safe.

[Menaceman]

Well I've been using it like that for months and haven't had any ill side effects. I would have thought something as simple as altering the fade distance should be farely safe but then again I'm not an expert like Pescado.

[kazebird]

This is a picture of what happens when you can see the sun at all (ignore the common glitch that causes a second sun or moon.)


As you can clearly see, something like a wall is blocking half of the sun.
As you move forward, it gets less visible. As you move backward it gets more.

All we need to do is eliminate, or even just shorten this wall, and we may even get the clouds back.

[kazebird]

Leave it to EAxis to not be able to add weather without breaking something else in the sky.

[nil]

Shader mods 1:

[quoted from reply 17, by Quinctia]
I use this mod by niol for my pond water, and I think it really improves the pond water in my game.

Niol also made a mod for the neighborhood water which looks great in neighborhood view, but looks strangely transparent in lot view and, as I've got a whole custom hood built with the sea as part of the deco in the background or on flooded lots, that was not going to work for me at all, so I removed it.  I'd be really happy with a mod that had a similar effect as the pond water one when it came to hood water in lot view.
[quote ended]

The mod is simply to turn the terrain water into swim-pool water, and it happened that structures of the two were close enough for such a simple tweak.  It takes a swim-pool block in the lot to activate the mirror-reflection in EP5 or later.  There's no tweak made to add in the EP5-based PS2 shader to the earlier swim-pools in the earlier game versions, for I worried I'd get sued.  I regretted I didn't release more variants as I was very busy with RL.

As for the neighbourhood mods, the thing is that the in-lot beach/ocean/sea is yet another shader which I didn't touch much for the fast release of the EP 6 version to ensure the neighbourhood view will be OK at least.  I couldn't catch up as I was deadly busy with RL.
The mod will only affect how the TS2 rendering engine presents the graphics according to the hardwares of the users and shouldn't affect any data saved in the custom folder.  Should it do, blame Eaxis,

Your suggestion may be possibly easy to make, but I'll have to be able to open simpe in the first place.  I'm in no condition to test such altered source presently.  Or, finding someone to incorporate the altered source into a shader mod is necessary.


Shader mods 2:

[quoted from reply 20, by Feckless Fool] Does anyone here use Niol's pond water mod with M&G?

Shaders are unlikely altered for SP but EP in a general sense so far up to AL EP8 to my knowledge, so shader mods are unlikely to be affected by new SP, yet a confirmation on whether new SP folder or its subdirectories has an over-riding shader material.package file is good to know.


skybox textures and textures of  suns and moons, stars

There're all in the 3D folder, may use simpe to search them out with keystrings like "sun", "star", "moon", "skybox", "day", "night", etc...  My memories about them start to fade...

That'll be just for graphical replacements as global mods.


Camera settings and draw distance:

Seeking out the draw distance settings in scripts may be a way to manipulate.  I've too far from reaching my game copy presently to tell exactly.  It may be in the config and camera folders and the like from both the custom and the game programme folders.

At least some settings are related to object-drawing dependent on how close it's from the camera.