Ever since the beta of Vanguard, and every month after that in which I have played (From beta-GU2, a month in GU3, and now back after GU5) I have always had one major problem, perhaps IMO Vanguard's biggest flaw for my taste.

Drawdistance.

This game touted "8km viewable!" which was a lie. You could never see beyond 1.4km. EVER.
There is a fog set at around 1km, which fogs completely textureless at above 1.4km.
The slider in Settings that goes all the way up to 8km? Does nothing past 1.4km.I'd see mountains far off in the distance of Khal- completely textureless, blank. HOW FRUSTRATING! Where is my massive viewdistance?

Then finally......one day..... I learned of a secret that, for some reason, Sony doesn't want you to know about.
If you know this secret, Vanguard becomes 100x more beautiful without the loss of any performance (unless you have a very low-end system, then performance will be lost most likely, just as if increasing viewdistance beyond what is probably 1km or less)

But I urge EVERYONE to try this secret, wonderful tweak.

/setfog 999999

(that's six 9's)

This eliminates the fog completely, and allows you to view up to 8-10km.
Make sure you also have your Far Clipping Plane to the max 819200 in SETTINGS.

The result is absolutely beautiful. Try it out for the first time in places where you can see a mountain, but a textureless fog is wrapped around it. Perhaps just outside Tursh, facing the mountains. In the desert of Khal, looking far across on a high slope. At the starless sky at nighttime.

Just know two things: It resets everytime you completely exit the game program, and so each time you start Vanguard and login, you have to /setfog 999999.

Having your tree detail range set to 100% will mean this might hurt more performance, as trees are see further away that you otherwise wouldnt see. I have a 8800 gt and keep my tree detail range at 40%, and it blends so well you can't really notice the "paper" 2d trees. The reason performance isnt lost by increasing viewdistance from 1km to 10km, is bc everything that is so far away is drawn in 2d like paper, but bc it's so far away it's near impossible to notice and it blends in beautifully.

I have NO IDEA why Vanguard doesn't tell people about this. It's amazing. It makes the game SO much more beautiful.

awesome tip!

is there a secret /command to remove the shiny plastic look?

Thanks for the great tips.

Here is a couple of screenies after following your tips.

Originally posted by Kenze

awesome tip!

is there a secret /command to remove the shiny plastic look?

I think thats the Unreal Engine more than anything :(

Wow,

That literally makes a world of difference.

To bad it resets each time you log.

Thanks for this!

Originally posted by etwynn

 

Originally posted by Kenze

awesome tip!

is there a secret /command to remove the shiny plastic look?

 

Turn down the render quality to highest performance then turn up the textures way up.  then turn on normal mapping past zero percent and adjust other settings that are tied to render quality such as trees and clip plane.

damn that looks a lot better! thanks for the tip.

All I have to say is WOW!!!!! The game just got 1000% better. Thanks for the helpful tip. Game looks gorgeous and way better than any other game I tried.

Just: GREAT!!!

Thank you thank you. That is superb

My setting was already there, and I don't ever recall the fog issue.  You sure that's not just a normal setting in Video or Performance?

Originally posted by etwynn

 

 

Turn down the render quality to highest performance then turn up the textures way up.  then turn on normal mapping past zero percent and adjust other settings that are tied to render quality such as trees and clip plane.

How does that effect performance?

Before

After

All I did was /setfog 999999

The only problem I've found with this so far is that if you are flying or can see the horizon (standing around the cliffs of Bordinar's Cleft, there is a solid gray "wall" of fog in the distance.  I love the massive view distance, but hate the wall of fog. 

Can anyone post screens from higher up or of the horizon.  Curious if it's only me seeing the dense fog wall.

Thanks!

I took this with Xfire when I saw some one mention the setfog deal and tried it out.

has fog but it is purdy

Originally posted by etwynn

 

Originally posted by Torak

Originally posted by etwynn

 

 

Turn down the render quality to highest performance then turn up the textures way up.  then turn on normal mapping past zero percent and adjust other settings that are tied to render quality such as trees and clip plane.

How does that effect performance?

 

Performance will be better because you won't be rendering as much shiny. 

 

Edit: I wouldn't turn textures past medium-high or high because I can't really see the difference after that.

I tried it last night and I don't like like how it looks with the render on highest performance. It looks to "blobby".

ok, this is important:

in order to maintain a realistic progressive blur all the way up to the maximum view distance you want, you should start the fogging at -1.

Type /setfog  and the system will display the default values: it's start fog: -1, End fog:160000, Red 255,  Green 255, Blue 255. (the last numbers are colour saturation)

You should only tweak the End distance if you don't want the picture to look unrealistic. For example, if you want to have view distance set to 5km (which is the best compromise between realism and image quality), type /setfog -1, 500000, 255, 255, 255. This should extend the fogging distance up to your desired 5km limit, without removing it from the foreground (and thus resulting in unrealistic image quality).

My 2 cents