Maximum distance for viewing textures?
I'm just finishing up my first map, and I'm having a problem I can't figure out.
From the player spawn point, the far wall of my map appears blurred, as if the texture is missing. If I take a few steps forward, the texture appears as it should.
Is there a maximum distance from which a texture/wall can be viewed? My map isn't very big, but if I move toward the wall, or if I edit the map to move the wall closer, everything appears fine.
There are no leaks when I compile, and I've tried several different textures and room geometries, including rebuilding that portion of the map, to no avail.
The spawn point is looking down into a fairly deep pit, so I thought maybe the POV was exceeding some maximum visibility that I wasn't aware of.
Any ideas?
Just out of curiosity, what is your Texture Filtering setting? (Settings>Graphics>Advanced)
Have a nice day,
~Sidneys1
^Click to go to my Steam Community Profile^
You mean my Filtering Mode in the game itself? Anisotropic 4x
Try bumping it up to 16x (shouldn't have much of a performance impact) and see what that does for you. It might not do anything (I think FM is more for extreme viewing angles) but it's worth a shot anyways.
I took a look at some cvar lists, and it didn't look like there was much to do with texture draw distance...
Have a nice day,
~Sidneys1
^Click to go to my Steam Community Profile^
No luck.
I looked back at my starting point from the far wall, and get the same effect. It's roughly 3000 units where it starts to corrupt the textures, which doesn't seem very far.
I'm running the map from Hammer, in Windowed Mode, if that makes any difference.
Ok, I confirmed that there seems to be a max distance. Somewhere around 3648 units.
I built a single, long room. At 3616, no texture issues. 3648, I got the same texture corruption as I did on my original map.
I don't know if the exact distance varies depending on lighting or which textures you use.
Anyone have any ideas of how to block/occlude a player's view only past a certain distance? 
Can't build a wall, because the player eventually needs to go through that area.
Thanks for the help!
I'm curious why exactly you have an area that is so large, 3000 units is pretty big. If most of this is non-playable area, like it is background much like we see in Portal 2, then you should make it a 3D Skybox. This will probably solve some of the problems you are having.
You can also try messing with the draw distances for the player using env_fog_controller. But I'm curious to see a screenshot of this area to see exactly why you need such a big space.
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I tried using the fog controller, and it covered up everything BUT the problem textures Possible I set it up wrong, though.
The level requires the player to use consecutive portals while they're falling to clear a gap to the exit. I originally made the map smaller, but to get enough momentum, I had to make it both longer and deeper. May be possible to restructure to shorten...but it took a lot of calibration the first time around, so if I can avoid having to do that again, I'd prefer to.
One of the areas I was able to move closer to fix one issue, but the other would be harder, because it's caused by both distance and depth.
Problem is the middle dark section, between the ramp and the door/platform
What is the full name of the material that keeps disappearing on you.
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I do not have a straight answer, yet here's more info. Hope it helps.
I've had an issue like this -(the view bug caused the textures to "miss" and I would instead see this kind of bugged skybox, it wasn't blurry, it was like there wasn't any wall, and the view "mirrored" a very previous texture you had in sight. There is a definition for this, can't remember it.)- , tho the 'view bug' was seen only in player straight view, not in depth (roof & floor were ok)..
Fixed it by editing and reducing the distance to equal or less than 2500 units. (I thought this was the cap. I don't really think so now.)
Although, this very same map, with a depth of over 10.000 units works fine, the player even standing in the very top of the map, can make a free fall of 10k units without any 'view bugs'.
I've always been using chamber textures, since I'm just testing.
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Actually, now that I think of it. When I "fixed" my problem, I remember to have removed 2 rooms (spawn rooms), the bug was being caused from one side of the map (coming out of the spawn room), to the inside of the other spawn room. Also happened in another (somewhat) room, at the very top of the map, bugging the view when you watched the room in front of it. This last ones weren't removed tho, just getting them closer fixed it.