Smog

[modman26]

I am looking for a mod that adds smog above cities.

 

I searched for smog in the file index but did not find anything.

 

The point of this mod would be to create an effect that partially masks some terrain, especially around cities, for distance viewing in an effort to increase FPS while actually adding realism when using distant LOD mods such as RAEVWD, or TVWD.

 

I don't know enough about mod making to know if this would be best accomplished with a set of non-collidable meshes or with some other trick involving shaders or some such. I'm not even sure this even can be done or if it will help or hinder FPS. I'd hope that it would at least break even in FPS.

 

Ideally, such a mod would be compatible with major city mods such as Bartholm, Sutch, Stirk, (Firstholm?) and the Better, Open and Open Better overhauls with support for Blood&Mud and Leyawiin Reborn, and perhaps even have an option to turn smog on over villages and major village mods like Villages.

 

For added realism, the visual effect would increase as you rose in elevation, so looking down on the Niben valley would reveal cities more by the location of smog than by structures, with the White Gold Tower emerging from the smog below. This could be accomplished with horizontal layers of smog or some kind of particle effect, i'd imagine (as real smog uses a mix of those effects).

 

For added realism at night, this effect could partially occlude stars while in a city and make cities have a realistic nighttime glow from a distance by softly illuminating them from below.

 

I am a fan of ini files for tweaking settings in visual mods, so the inclusion of one here controlling elements such as density, radius/size, opacity near / at distance, etc. would be a bonus.

 

Feel free to call me names if this already exists, just be cool and also leave a link.

 

Thanks!

[krimzin]

when this first caught my eye I thought it was Smaug misspelled. Sorry to go off on a tangent but I wish someone would make a quest following the story of The Hobbit, I miss that book. lol

But I agree, smog is a very good idea. especially for other mods with Dwemer ruins and cities etc.

[Anniria]

couldn't this easily be done in the CS by just adding fog to everywhere? I don't know how to do it, but that's what I think.

[TodaY]

couldn't this easily be done in the CS by just adding fog to everywhere? I don't know how to do it, but that's what I think.

 

Nope. The fog doesn't have any distant LOD, you would only see it when very close to it.

[Anniria]

Aha, I see, wish I knew exactly what LOD was, hehehe, maybe that could help.

[TodaY]

;P Lod is a copy of the mesh, with lower detail, that allows you to see it from a distance (for example: you can see the IC tower pretty much everywhere in cyrodiil, but from dive rock you can see the cheydinhal stables)

[Anniria]

aha, I have a crappy video card, (laptops aren't what I thought they would be) and I don't see alot of stuff cause I have the view distance set almost to 0 lol. so no I don't know how to help, sorry

[modman26]

So, if distant lod objects are mesh based, would adding a large low detail mesh in the distance over a city keep meshes behind it from being rendered? Or would it just tax the video card even harder?

[TodaY]

No, it wouldn't keep them from rendering. Everything that is added to the world is rendered, even when it's not visible. And making a large mesh for the fog would probably kill your fps on it's own, as fog has animations, and large meshes have high poly count. However, it might be possible by removing the city's LOD, and placing a couple of smaller, LOD version (less detail, visible when very distant) fog meshes over it.

[AmpolX]

Something of this undertaking would best be a job for volumetric fog shaders at Range Vertex, meaning the fog goes around objects like buildings and hills instead of one large wall of fog coming at you. Maybe the OGE team will find a way in the future to use Atmospheric Scattering.