Server Suggestion Let us choose our own rendering distance?

[Solomon]

Suggestion Title: Let us choose our own rendering distance?
Suggestion Description: Hi, so i've noticed there's a weird sort of black fog that's forced on you preventing you from seeing stuff that should be pretty clear even if you're far away, yet you can't see it unless you get closer. I know this is done in the interest of preventing people from lagging out/crashing, but why not let people decide which view distance they want themselves?

It kinda makes snipers a bit useless if you can't see details of stuff that's more than 100m away from you.

Why should this be added?:
- Allow people to make use of binoculars, snipers etc to have better planned bank robberies, raids, things of this nature etc.

- Will be able to see cars a lot sooner and prepare to drive around them, which will prevent a lot of the car crashes that happen with fast cars.

- People can adjust their view distance to their own ideal sweet-spot according to how much their hardware can handle, maximizing performance and gameplay quality.

What negatives could this have?:
- May allow for an unfair advantage if people with better PCs can see significantly further than those who do not I suppose?

- May cause crashes/lock people out of the server if they cannot join long enough to change it without lagging. Maybe this could be similar to a clientside configuration where to reset it you just have to delete it and rejoin?

What problem would this suggestion solve?: Imo this would help the game be a lot more realistic, aside from making long-range shooting more useful, it will let the PD use binoculars to properly stake out/perform surveillance on highly active areas or when acting on information they have, as well as allowing criminals to properly stake out and plan their crimes in a more organized way.

It would also raise the skill floor a bit for PD, at the moment you only see when they're about to place down a tire strip when the fog clears because you're pretty much blind until you get very close - it's too late at this point.

Useful Images:

https://imgur.com/a/8pkvedC

Looking at Regals from City Garage, not zoomed in.

https://imgur.com/Dpa8WKg

Outlining the usefulness of the binoculars.. /s

 

[Creepis]

The view (render) distance is fixed by the map itself for a good reason. There is just way too much stuff to render if you count all the entities, lights, player, models, effects all at once. This is very expensive for performance especially with 128 (!!) players and we still sometimes struggled with just 70 or 80 players. The current view distance is good enough and just upping it for improved scouting before a raid is not worth to have enabled all the time.

I'm not even sure if you're able to select the view distance yourself since its a property set by the map itself. Other than that it would give multiple unfair advantages if you could.

While we have better hardware nowadays it just really still a limit of Source and would make a lot of stuff just dreadful. I suggest you turn off the skybox so you can get a feel for what is actually being rendered or not as anything beyond that is still eye candy but still pretty accurate if you for example would want to snipe someone across the map which we tried before and works. You of course just can't see any players so you have to rely on communication.

 

[Solomon]

I mean if it's straight up impossible fair enough, but if it *is* possible I don't see how "It's too resource intensive" is a good reason for not having it as an option? That's up to the player in that case.

You mention an unfair advantage and I can see where you're coming from, but I don't see how this would really affect raids given the compact areas they happen within and lack of sniping spots. If you think being able to snipe and actually see where your target is in any capacity - then why have snipers at all?

Is being on the phone and playing a game of "Guess where he is within the dark abyss with the help of a friend" really considered a viable alternative to being able to realistically see who you're shooting?

 

[SomeUser]

I mean try and do that on a 20 year old engine (spoiler you cant)

 

[Creepis]

I mean if it's straight up impossible fair enough, but if it *is* possible I don't see how "It's too resource intensive" is a good reason for not having it as an option? That's up to the player in that case.

You mention an unfair advantage and I can see where you're coming from, but I don't see how this would really affect raids given the compact areas they happen within and lack of sniping spots. If you think being able to snipe and actually see where your target is in any capacity - then why have snipers at all?

Is being on the phone and playing a game of "Guess where he is within the dark abyss with the help of a friend" really considered a viable alternative to being able to realistically see who you're shooting?

With how accurate the guns in this game are I don't want the guy with the best single core performing CPU to snipe me across the map from office at max render distance when I'm at slums in the name of realism.
Snipers still have a use case and they don't need to be long range to be viable on a small map like Paralake.

And no, the communication thing with a phone is not viable. I was just pointing out that it works if you really wanted to.

 

[peeps]

Draw distance is set in hammer before the time of compile. There are ways to change it in game, but these are primarily commands for debugging and are not intended for use in actual gameplay. For this reason, and for the sake of balence, the draw distance for V6 will be set and locked as it is in V5.

Whether that distance is greater than it is in V5 I can't yet say. Optimisation will be one of the final stages of development before we release.