This patch unlocks the "/console farclip value" command available in all WoW clients. The farclip value is capped at 777 in Vanilla 1.12.1, at 783.333313 in TBC 2.4.3 and at 1583.333374 + 791.666687 in WotLK 3.3.5a (for WotLK/TBC and Vanilla zones respectively). Yes, the values listed here are wrong.
Let's start with some eye candy, here are a few screenshots.
All executables have been patched with the LAA (Large Address Aware) flag, which I believe will help avoid some crashes at high farclip values. More info here and here.
The higher the farclip value, the more it will affect performance (obviously).
If the value is set high enough WoW's graphical engine will at some point reach its limit, even with powerful hardware.
If the value is set too high WoW will crash.
The value will reach diminishing returns at some point (see Vanilla @1500 vs @2000 and TBC @3000 vs @3500).
How good the game will look will depend on the zone (some zones have more fog than others).
Vanilla seems to reach diminishing returns way faster than TBC and WotLK, I'm not sure if that's because of the older engine or if I just chose a bad zone.
The value is actually capped at 10000 with this patch.
Here's some more technical info for those interested:
Code:
Vanilla 1.12 (WoW.exe+8E9B94)
Default farclip limit float value: 777
Default farclip limit hex value: 00 40 42 44
Patched farclip limit float value: 10000
Patched farclip limit hex value: 00 40 1C 46
TBC 2.4.3 (WoW.exe+9A45F4)
Default farclip limit float value: 783.333313
Default farclip limit hex value: 55 D5 43 44
Patched farclip limit float value: 10000
Patched farclip limit hex value: 00 40 1C 46
WotLK 3.3.5a (WoW.exe+8D7748) - farclip limit for WotLK/TBC zones
Default farclip limit float value: 1583.333374
Default farclip limit hex value: AB EA C5 44
Patched farclip limit float value: 10000
Patched farclip limit hex value: 00 40 1C 46
WotLK 3.3.5a (WoW.exe+8D7748) - farclip limit for Vanilla zones
Default farclip limit float value: 791.666687
Default farclip limit hex value: AB EA 45 44
Patched farclip limit float value: 10000
Patched farclip limit hex value: 00 40 1C 46
Refer to this thread for more in depth info on how I patched the executables with the new hex values.
To wrap all of this up, it would be nice to have a way to lower or remove the fog which can hide a lot of detail in some zones, but I haven't found any info on this for these expansions/patch versions yet.
I don't really know Wowme or what it does exactly to be honest, I just heard that it's used for some model edits. However, I just did a quick test and it appears that Wowme still hooks onto the original WoW.exe file, and if using my modified executable the FoV fix does appear to work with it. Are you having any specific issues?
Please tell me is it real to fix grass draw distance in vanilla wow.exe?
It sure is, or at least I've done it in TBC. However the FPS drawbacks were huge (on a 1070 mind you, so it wasn't a hardware bottleneck), so it didn't seem to be worth releasing. I never tested it in Vanilla though, I'll look into it and let you know how it goes.
EDIT: Okay, first of all I think you have the wrong idea about the "frilldensity" console variable (which I assume is the one you're changing since it has a 256 maximum value), it only changes the density of the grass/ground clutter, not its draw distance. Well, anyway, I started looking into it and I've kinda hit a roadblock: the console variable which changes the draw distance of the grass in tbc TBC, "groundeffectdist", doesn't exist in Vanilla. According to WoWWiki the "groundeffectdist" variable which got introduced somewhere in TBC replaced "frilldistance", however "frilldistance" is nowhere to be found in Vanilla. This spreadsheet should list all console variables available in Vanilla, but I haven't found anything yet. It could be possible that there is no equivalent to "groundeffectdist" in Vanilla, and that would make changing the default grass draw distance extremely hard.
If you know the name of the console variable I'm looking for please let me know.
It sure is, or at least I've done it in TBC. However the FPS drawbacks were huge (on a 1070 mind you, so it wasn't a hardware bottleneck
Perhaps it is strange, but I think you were bottlenecked by your CPU, check system monitor or install MSI afterburner to see more information about system load.
I have tried to change every setting with any "dist" command, but with no luck. Sorry about 256 frilldistance. I was wrong. I set farclip for 177 and it was nearly five times longer distance than grass draw distance, perhaps we should calculate real parameter of grass draw distance. But it is difficult because depends from camera position at current time.
Perhaps it is strange, but I think you were bottlenecked by your CPU, check system monitor or install MSI afterburner to see more information about system load.
That could be possible, but I remember checking both GPU and CPU usage and coming to the conclusion it just was the engine itself that couldn't keep up.
Originally Posted by Greensiberia
perhaps we should calculate real parameter of grass draw distance.
Yeah, that's correct, however having a variable to change helps infinitely. Having no initial value to start looking for with Cheat Engine makes this extremely hard. I don't believe the value itself changes based on the camera distance though, it seems it's just applied to the camera position instead of the character position.
I think you uploaded the wrong 335 wow.exe. Because it don't work,
and every one I asked to try it it didn't work for them too.
Plz re upload the working 335 wow.exe.
I just re-tested the 3.3.5a executable and I confirmed it's correctly patched and working. However I did notice something strange: the uncapped value only seems to work in WotLK and TBC zones, while Vanilla zones seem to still be capped at the ~777 farclip value; I'll see what I can do.
Didnt want to open a new thread, but I too wanted to increase the grass density at some point to the Vanilla Client but hit a wall since the value is not tied to a cvar.
Anyway I want to add another address to the current work you are doing to complement the farclip cvar and is horizonfarclip, this value is used to clip the terrain detailed geometry and force it to render as a shadow only on the horizon.
Testing the value on Thunderbluff its best to set the farclip at 900 and horizonfarclip at 3000 in config.wtf. If you increase farclip past this value, you will see that the game start clipping the terrain at the edges, so I suspect there is another value thats need to be tweaked to really increase the draw distance, maybe is DistCull.
Horizon Far Clip value:
offset: 00410224
00 00 04 45 default value=2112f for Vanilla Client
change it to:
00 40 1C 46 to increase its max value to 10000f
Last edited by marcelo_20xx; 05-09-2021 at 12:18 PM.