Environment Effect - Fog

Simulating fog in 3D

Fog

You can create the effect of haze, mist, fog or gloom with the Fog settings. To produce an overall environmental effect e.g. "foggy morning" or "gloomy night", you will need to make appropriate changes also to the Sky and Lighting settings. A guide to these combination settings is given in Getting the right effect.

To apply or change fog effect

  • Choose the  Environment command from the Edit menu

The recommended settings for day-time worlds are:

  • Fog Color = Sky Color = 'pale blue'

  • Minimum = 1000

  • Maximum = 10000

This has the effect of "hazing" the horizon and blends the sky color into the sky texture. The distances used do however depend on the dimensions of your world. The units of distance will correspond to the units of distance used in your terrain surface i.e. '1000' corresponds to either '1000 feet' or '1000 meters' depending on the wireframe surfaces you have imported.

Fog Settings Tips

  • As a rule, the best effects are obtained by keeping the fog and sky colors the same. For mist or fog, use 'white', and for gloom use 'black'. Try matching the sky color to your sky texture to minimize edge effects.

  • Fog varies linearly from the close distance to the far distance, for the best results it is recommended that you set the Minimum Distance very close (near to or at zero)) and gradually increase the Maximum Distance  until a satisfactory effect is found.

Minimum Distance

This is the distance from your view position over which you have 100% visibility. The fog effect starts from this distance and then steadily increases.

Maximum Distance

This is the distance from your view position beyond which you have 0% visibility. The fog effect starts from the Minimum distance until you have zero visibility at the Maximum distance.

Troubleshooting

If the recommended fog, sky and lighting settings do not produce the desired effect, gradually decrease the Fog Minimum distance.

If reducing the Fog Minimum distance has no effect, or if you suddenly lose all visibility, then the problem is likely to be with your graphics card or monitor:

  • Check that your monitor is set to either High Color (16 bit) or True Color (32 bit) - lower color settings have insufficient color range to support these effects.

  • Check that your card supports DirectX graphics, and download and install the latest graphics driver from the card manufacturer.

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Environmental lighting
Sky settings