Hi everybody. I'm running a Radeon 9700 pro, and recently i've been downloading all kinds of scenery stuff to try to improve my FS9 visual experience.I've had great success so far with the Blue Planet stuff, and the "Water-My Recommendations" thread. the new FSW night lights are great as well.I'm running into a little problem that i don't think i should be running into, though for all i know it might be a flaw in FS9. My horizon is not actually at the horizon level. It cuts off abruptly at maybe 50-70 miles away from my viewpoint. At altitude of 0-4000 feet, i don't notice this, but at higher altitudes, it becomes something of a hassle. orienting yourself to the horizon is difficult, because the horizon is a few degrees lower than it should be! Is there any way for me to extend the world, or the horizon out to infinity? or do i have to keep flying in this little fishbowl effect?here's a picture to clarify.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/53161.jpg

I think what you're seeing is cloud draw distance that is much less than your maximum visibility. I have max vis set to 80 miles, clouds drawn out to 80 miles, then I use FSUIPC to restrict visibility to 75 miles. Really smooths the horizon. Am I right about your max vis being greater than you clouds drawing distance?Best,sg

afraid not. Here is my maximum sight distance to 80, and my cloud draw distance to 80.visibility is on unlimited. should i be changing that? Is that an unrealistic way to fly?http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/53194.jpg

here it is with no clouds, ground visibility 140 miles, visibilty 50 miles. an extremely unrealistic hard line for the horizon, instead of the loss of horizon that should occur.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/53195.jpg

Unrealistic - probably in that in reality you can see farther than 100 miles at altitude no problem. For the horizon to be less sharp however, I find that having max visibility (in options/settings/display) set to the same as your clouds draw distance (for me 80 miles) - only because this minimizes the contrast between clouds and the much more distant horizon if it's set higher. Visibility settings in the weather dialog are constrained by the display setting - even if its unlimited, the sim will not draw anything past 80 miles, or whatever your display settings max vis is. You will see a hard line horizon as you show in your last pic at the draw distance that max visibilty is set to as long as the weather visibility is greater than that distance, unfortunately. If you have the registered version of FSUIPC, you can set the max weather visibility to your draw distance, so that the horizon is muted somewhat. Blends the line quite a bit.Hope this is clear -and if it's not accurate, someone please jump in!Best,sg

The more I look at that, the more I think something is broken!I'm going to try that setup when I get home and bring some screen shots with me tomorrow. What's your altitude in that pic?

Hi, for the ATI cards, there was a line to add in the cfg, I don't remember what's, use the search.ThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

I looked around. the only thing i could find was a suggestion for Radeon 9000 and 9100 users to add a section to their display.cfg I tried fiddling around with mine, and no luck yet. Here's a shot from 35,000 feet with the default "fair weather" options.I've been at 35,000 feet plenty of times, and it doesn't look like this:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/53226.jpg

Just to clarify, gridley, here is one more image.I tried all the things you mentioned, setting distances to equal, greater, and lesser values. I'm beginning to thinkn something's not right. these three at at 35,000 feet. The ones you asked about earlier were from about 20,000 feet.ThanksI'm keeping my images small! :)http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/53227.jpg

I believe what you're seeing is absolutely normal for FS9. The horizon looks very much the same on my system. IMO, this is a huge shortfall for FS9, the sim looks great below 10,000ft but once you go above 30,000ft it starts to look ugly. It's not only the sky, but the water as well when you can see blocks of unmatched water at high altitudes. (As already mentioned in this post: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...d=165612&page=6 )

Here's some shots from my setup. Again, I have 80 miles max sight distance, 80 miles cloud draw distance, and I restrict max weather vis to 75 miles with FSUIPC.Two shots from 25,000 feet - cleared weather with FSUIPC.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/53312.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/53313.jpgAnd one illustrating the ugly distance water.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/53314.jpgWhat's your opinion of these compared to yours? Pretty similar, I'd say concerning the horizon line, with the exception that I have terrain visible to the horizon. Do you have extended terrain textures on? Have you modified FS9.cfg's terrain radius and max levels and things like that? You might want to check some of your parameters according to this post:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...sg_id=240&page=Hope something here resolved your issue!sg

Hi Gridley, Did you use the default water or ocean FX?I have just remember now, fs 2004 default water use 16 bit 8 mips map and the ocean fx was created for fs2002 and use DXT1 6 mips , ocean fx texture mips will cause more noticable blocky water at far because of this.ThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

I use an emalgam of textures for water! Basically the thread here at AVSIM regarding best water. The problem was I wanted to have Render to Texture off for various reasons, mostly because I hate the disappearing 2D cockpit when weather updates. So I started with Ocean FX loaded using the FS2004 front end. That said, I did see water blockiness before updating water. It's almost as if there's a "landclass" for water texturing - a grid of tiles. It's more evident at dawn and dusk because certain tiles are brightened first, then the others. I completed my current water using bill lyons GA texture set (sorry - the filename escapes me) - just the water textures because they cooperate with RtT off, and newwaves3.zip for the others.I'd love to see some updated OceanFX textures in the right depth...;).Best,Scott Gridley

Thanks for the reply, gridley. I guess my horizon is just doing the horizon like FS9 can. Ideally, the terrain would blend into the same color that the sky is, creating a fuzzy horizon. It looks like FS9 is trying that, as you can see in some of my shots, because the ground and clouds have faded to the same color in the distance.All that needs to happen is the sky has to match that color... like this.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/53383.jpg(I did that in photoshop... It's a rough estimate of how i think it should look.)

Here's what I think you need Spiff; It's not my stuff; I had exactly the same problem you have, I posted the question and got this reply from one of the "guru's" out there, and this totally fixed it.In your fs9.cfg file, under: [DISPLAY] insert this line:- TableFog=0 (zero)Back in the sim Weather "Visibility" window set Visibilty to 20 miles, base altitude to zero and ceiling to 50,000'. In the Temp/Pressure window set the altitude to 3,000' and no more than ten degrees between the upper and lower temperatures. This combo produces VERY real haze. The closer you make the two temperatures the more humid the air mass, which makes for very real haze level.This is almost word for word, and it worked like a charm. Good luck!PJ