Draw distance is very low

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foul_owl
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Draw distance is very low

by foul_owl » Post

First off, just to clarify: "nodes" are the individual cubes that you build with, and "blocks" are groups of 16x16 nodes, is that correct? Ie, if I place a cube of dirt, it would technically be a "node" of dirt, is that correct?

"emergeblocks" uses the world coordinates, which refer to nodes, is that correct?

So I did:

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/teleport 0 128 0
/emergeblocks (-2048, -64, -2048) (2048, 320, 2048)
/set viewing_range 2048
/set client_mapblock_limit -1
This should allow me to see a distance of 2048 nodes in any direction. However, this does not work. It lets me see maybe 200 nodes in any direction, even after letting the game idle for a few hours.

I also tried:

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/set max_block_send_distance 128
/set block_send_optimize_distance 128
(It's my understanding these operate on blocks, so 2048 / 16 = 128)

But this didn't change anything.

I also tried:

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/set max_block_generate_distance 128
(but this shouldn't matter since I already generated a 4096x4096 area)

and that didn't have any effect either. What am I missing here? What is stopping minetest from drawing a large distance?

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Re: Draw distance is very low

by Desour » Post

foul_owl wrote:
Wed Aug 10, 2022 06:01
First off, just to clarify: "nodes" are the individual cubes that you build with, and "blocks" are groups of 16x16 nodes, is that correct? Ie, if I place a cube of dirt, it would technically be a "node" of dirt, is that correct?
Yes.
(Well, nodes are not always drawn as cube. Nodes are the voxels.)


AFAIK, emergeblocks just loads or generates mapblocks (server-side). It does not cause them to be sent to the client. To see more blocks, increase your view range (there's a key for this, I think it's + by default). (Zooming into the distance can also help, I think.)
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Re: Draw distance is very low

by foul_owl » Post

DS-minetest wrote:
Wed Aug 10, 2022 09:08
To see more blocks, increase your view range
Thank you! However, I think I already did this with:

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/set viewing_range 2048
but perhaps there is some variable I missed?

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Re: Draw distance is very low

by Blockhead » Post

Since, as Desour said, emergeblocks just causes the server to generate those blocks, not send them to the client, you need to change a server setting. Set your Active block range (active_block_range) to a higher value to make the server send blocks to the client from further away. If you wanted to see it all, you would probably need to set it to 2048/16 = 128. This should work unless the server places further limits on what blocks it sends that I'm not aware of.

Edit: See Festus' answer. Cunningham's Law is proven right once again :)
Last edited by Blockhead on Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:07, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Draw distance is very low

by Festus1965 » Post

It is NOT active_block_range, that makes this blocks allow grow and work, and will not help at all if the blocks are not loaded also ... (may indicates also loading)

better you use (needed at SERVER settings minetest.conf)

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#    From how far blocks are sent to clients, stated in mapblocks (16 nodes).
#    type: int
# max_block_send_distance = 10
max_block_send_distance = 4
as default seam to be 10 = look 160 nodes far, you need to set it to wanted distance in nodes / 16
but be aware of that is meant in all directions, not only where your looking at - have fun with the load, and net sending
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Re: Draw distance is very low

by foul_owl » Post

Festus1965 wrote:
Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:00

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max_block_send_distance
Thank you, but I originally tried this also...

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/set max_block_send_distance 128
Seems to have no effect. Confirmed with:

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/set max_block_send_distance
and the output says it's currently 128. I'm playing singleplayer, if that matters but seems like it shouldn't since in singleplayer mode I seem to have full control over all variables, both client and server.

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Re: Draw distance is very low

by Festus1965 » Post

Did you double check by going, teleporting to there and then try to see it from the observation position,
yes or now,
if no ... was the view of client set over 2.000 nodes (+ / -) also ?

How long after log in at observation position can you detect a flow of data (maybe network) and see changes in enlarge the view ?
to maybe detect slow transfer until it could be seen, or recalculate other settings that we are not aware to check or set ?
Maybe build every 160 nodes a special easy spot to know ok, got 16 mapblocks, got 32 mapblocks (320 nodes distance sight), and further ?
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Re: Draw distance is very low

by Desour » Post

Oh, I've just re-read your first comment. So, you can see 200 nodes in any direction. I wouldn't call this very low. But it is an undesired boundary here. I can reproduce this.
I haven't managed to get a higher draw distance with max_block_send_distance either. Zooming helps though, as already said.
And I haven't found an issue about this on github by a short search. If you find no more settings, you could open one.
You could also try to look into RemoteClient::GetNextBlocks in clientiface.cpp and do some debugging.

Edit: Btw. https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/10703 lists the related settings.
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Re: Draw distance is very low

by foul_owl » Post

Gotcha! Let me poke around a bit more, and if I can't seem to get it working, I'll open an issue for it.

In the meantime, anyone else have this issue or managed to get large draw distance working?

Also, apologies, when I say "very low" I was thinking in comparison to my target, ie, ~200 vs 2048 seemed quite low to me, but ~200 node draw distance is probably perfectly fine for the average use case.

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Re: Draw distance is very low

by Festus1965 » Post

foul_owl wrote:
Thu Aug 11, 2022 00:35
In the meantime, anyone else have this issue or managed to get large draw distance working?
I am not sure what you mean, but I had years of experience with sure about 2.000 Node distance view (setting client viewing_range, and also fog on/off + distance),
Most as of have been there and jump back to higher base, and with open the view distance I saw all this islands in the distance.
The problem here seam to be to force a load of huge areas WITHOUT visit them also (typical activation, load) but to see so far I had on several main servers I played ...

Oh, maybe you also should check out your client settings about amount of mapblocks storage ?
Didn't find that in 5.6.0 client now ...

or even possible, as I played with ! ... saving map received from server : enable, as maybe distant blocks taken from there ?
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Re: Draw distance is very low

by Desour » Post

Ok, so I did some print debugging and found out that the max range is limited by the nearest block that is not emerged yet or something. So, if I understand correctly, the server doesn't load and send blocks that are already generated because there is at least one block that is nearer and can't be loaded without generating, or so, I guess.

Increasing max_block_generate_distance together with max_block_send_distance helps though.

Btw. there's a new PR by c55 that tackles exactly this part of the code.
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