Disease clouds "pop" in and out near the top part of the screen

[sirbruce]

I have a GTX 285 and I'm running at 1280x1024.

The disease clouds over cities persist when moved to the left, right, and bottom edges of the screen, but if they approach the top 20% or so of the screen, they "pop" in and out, as if the game thinks they are now off-screen so it no longer needs to render them. But they are not off-screen. Looks like a simply calculation error based on a particular resolution; it may or may not happen at other resolutions. This is a minor graphical issue but one which should be easily fixed.

Edit: Further investigation reveals smoke clouds operate the same way. Also it's not strictly confined to the top of the screen; it seems those at the sides of the screen will pop out sooner at the top than those at the middle. It's like there's a circular "focus" area where these are only drawn, rather than the entire screen.

 

[BlckKnght]

I'm pretty sure it's a "distance" issue. If you zoom in a bit they'll begin to disappear at a higher point on the screen. If you zoom out they'll disappear lower. It can be rather distracting!

 

[sirbruce]

I'm pretty sure it's a "distance" issue. If you zoom in a bit they'll begin to disappear at a higher point on the screen. If you zoom out they'll disappear lower. It can be rather distracting!

That could be; things near the edges are being calculated as a further distance. Whatever the reason it shouldn't be that way.

 

[BlckKnght]

I should be more specific. I'm pretty sure its using the "render distance" that gets calculated by the 3d engine automatically to determine what to show. It is likely changing the level of detail on other things, but since they're not "popping" in and out of existence we don't notice it as much. The fact that there's no lower rez version of the disease cloud is the trouble, probably.

You may be right about this being screen resolution and/or video hardware specific (though who knows). For what its worth, I'm running CK with an ATI Radeon 5670 at a 1920x1080 resolution, on Windows Vista.