First of all, I do apologize if this is answered somewhere else; a search of the forums didn't turn up anything, but the new search is slooooow, and brings up multiple entries for the same threads, so I might have missed it.

I have FPS Optimizer up and running, and it's working beautifully with my new machine. I'm really eager to try out some sort of distant land; the type of thing I've seen in some of the screenshots where you can see Red Mountain from anywhere on the island, for example. I know MGE can do that, but I thought the FPS Optimizer could as well, and I'd prefer to use what I already have working. What settings in the FPS Optimizer do I need to change, and to what? Or does your view distance automatically extend that far as long as the fps doesn't fall too low? It looks like the maximum view distance is set to what the game's max default is, but I'm not quite sure what I should change it to.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

FPSOpt can only 'extend' your view distance as far as the original morrowind graphics engine can draw. I would say it's more designed to work backwards from this high point to maintain a reasonable frames per seconds. Therefore I don't think FPSOpt can do what you're after. Easiest way to get max view distance with FPSOpt is to check the use mouse wheel to increase/decrease option on the view tab. With that you can scroll the view range in or out, makes it easy to see how far out it can go.

To get true distant land and a view range of more than a cell or two you have to use MGE. If you setup FPSOpt I'd say you could setup MGE, it's not too difficult, plus there's lots of help available in the MGE thread.


Good luck

:)
-kwm

In addition to what Mr KWMonk stated, FPSO can increase Morrowind's draw distance up to twice the normal range - i.e. 14336 vs 7168.

To add the extra view distance in FPSO, do the following:
* startup FPSO
* in novice mode - goto 'options' tab >> check 'Do you want to see farer [sic] (up to two times) instead of having too high FPS rate?'
* in advanced mode ('novice mode' unchecked) - goto 'view' tab >> find the 'View Distance extra' line (middle of that tab page) enter the value for the extra distance you want added, up to +7168.

Make sure you also bind AI to view distance:
* in novice mode - 'options' tab >> check 'Do you need to optimize AI Distance when your View Distance is low?'
* in advanced mode ('novice mode' unchecked) - 'misc' tab >> select the checkbox under 'bind AI to View Distance units' ... increase the ' 7168 ' units on the maximum line to equal the combined value of what you entered for exta view distance (e.g. MW default max 7168, + 7168; enter 14336 for max units) ... I recommend leaving the other bind AI values alone.


Anything higher than 2x MW's draw distance will probably not gain you anything view distance wise, and will definitely lead to AI animation errors.

Since MW only loads in the current cell + the surrounding 8 cells, at 2x view distance when moving between cells you're likely to see the abrupt edge of the adjacent cell and the fog void beyond before the next set of cells gets loaded when extending MW's view distance. That's because you have to cross the current cell border before the cell beyond the one your moving into gets loaded, and with view distance doubled you're already looking past the edge of the next cell. This assumes that view distance will stay at maximum (i.e. 14336) - if you also setup FPSO to auto adjust for a consistent framerate, then this only holds true as long as the framerate threshold does not dip low enough to force lowering the view distance to compensate.

Perhaps I've done something wrong, but FPS Optimizer's increased view distance doesn't look any different than normal Morrowind on my machine.

New MGE caps the view distance at default, and overrides FPSO. So if you want to use FPSO for extended view distance, you have to sacrifice MGE first, or use an earlier version of MGE.(Very early.)

I think, you can adjust your view-distance to thrice of morrowinds standard view-distance with the fps-optimizer. just type in the view-tab 7168 + 14336 instead of 7168 + 7168. make sure, you adjust bind AI-distance correctly to the maximum distance (21504), or your game will crash with animation errors. the drawback is, that you see the cell borders quite clearly... with doubled view-distance, the view still fades out in fog. this leads to the conclusion, that mw can render the surrounding 24 cells instead of only 8 like tetchy stated.
you can also bind a key to maximize view in the FPSO view-tab, so you don't have to scoll with your mouse-wheel all the time.

if you intend to use MGE, it'll only cap your view distance, if you enable distand land. disabling it still lets you double or triple your view distance.

Quite interesting. And thanks for the correction. Now 24 cells is a lot, I wonder if this could be the thing behind the performance problems. I also will experiment with the cell buffers in the ini settings.

You can certainly increase the view distance value in FPSO to any number, but Morrowind will only render the current cell and the surrounding 8 cells. You're never going to see more than that. Increasing the view distance beyond 2x will only gain you the ability to see the abrupt end of the far edges of the surrounding cell borders clearly.

You've come to the wrong conclusion. It's best to test a theory in practice before correcting someone's statement with an incorrect assumption. :slap:

Here's how you can test this yourself:
* Make sure FPSO is set to NOT auto-adjust view distance so that you can keep it at the maximum.
* Start up MW without MGE distantland enabled and FPSO set to extend view distance 3x
* Load up a game with clear weather
* Open the console and type TB (toggle borders) - each cell border will be indicated with a yellow dashed line.
* You might also want to type TCL (toggle collision) in order to move way above the ground and get a better look at what cells are rendered.

Do the test again, but with 2x view distance - the resulting viewable cells will be the same except that there will be more fogging near the borders.

ouch, didn't want to offend you. actually I made a test before. if you set the view distance to any high value, fpso will cut it down to 14336 which meant to me like rendering 2 more cells in any direction. I went ingame and was able to look from a vivec canton the most distant ebonheart-building. afterwards, I checked the cell distance in the CS. so I was somewhat sure that its rendering that far.

but you are right,I tested it out quickly a second time, with +7168 and the result is the same, I see the cell borders.

sorry, I apologize for being an idiot.

Thanks, that makes things look much nicer. With the true distant land, I must have misunderstood something I read in another thread at one point; thanks for the clarification. I'll give MGE a try as well.