Eliminating the Pano temporarily

[Indy Anna Jones]

I didn't want to post this as a direct criticism of Spencer's new Dismal Hollow's pano, therefore this new thread. The truth is though that when we played it I was about 2/3 recovered from a stomach virus and quite frankly the out-of-focus look was making me feel queasy, so I shut it off, and thought I'd post the simple technique for the new people who might not know how to do it.

1. Boot up your course
2. Above the main screen click on Game -> Options -> Course
3. The second choice is Panorama Detail. Click on none.
4. Click on apply, done.

Now your pano will be showing bright blue skies with a small line of trees on the horizon (or possibly the pano from your default library.) I've also found this to be helpful with some of the darker panos when dark textures are in use, and as another way to get a better look at the course itself. You can undo this and get back the original pano just by returning pano detail to high.

[SteveHorn]

Indy! I've never done that before. I'm going to do it on a few courses just as an experiment to see how they look.

I just gave it a quick try on Point Reyes and it did exactly as you said. Blue sky and trees as pano. Some people might like that on this design of mine if my original pano bothers them. The thunder on 17 & 18 will seem weird though.

[tincup]

Good tip Indy.

This game was designed for the days when computers and video cards had only a fraction of the power they have today. I think some of the Options are to minimize how much work the computer has to do to draw a game screen.

Another such setting is horizon distance under Options>Course. If you set the horizon distance to say 350 yards, any object more than 350 yards from where you are will disappear. You lose something by limiting the game this way, but at least at the time, lesser machines could still play the game reasonably well.

If you have a computer new within the last 5-6 years, you should probably have everything on max and you will run just fine.

Dar

[Indy Anna Jones]

Good tip there Dar. Sometimes by reducing the horizon range you can also get rid of this spikey or ragged looking objects in the distance. Another thing that's fun to do sometimes is to increase/decrease the ball size; you can have it down to 1 or 2 pixels or as big as a baseball. It doesn't change a thing in the mechanics of the game but it sure can play some tricks in your mind!

[spencerturner]

I picked the most dismal looking pano I could find for this course (thus the name , Dismal) and built everything around t he pano. To change the pano to something as bland as described here ruins the entire look of the course and defeats the look I was trying for . I had no idea at the time that it would cause such a problem. I guess I should have included a free bottle of Pepto Bismal with the upload. Spencer.

[SteveHorn]

Spencer! I think you and I have learned the hard way that using a somewhat experiment type pano usually back fires. To me I get a little tired of seeing the safe blue sky puffy white cloud here or their pano. Weather changes so does the looks of the sky at certain times. Yes its usually a nice day when you go golfing but sometimes things change when you hit the course.

[Indy Anna Jones]

I didn't mean to step on any toes, Spencer... my apologies for that. Steve I did like your stormy skies. IMO there are just a few panos that don't work very well, and sometimes it's just a matter of opinion. And sometimes I just enjoy posting about things in this game that I didn't discover for years that some of the newer people might not have discovered yet, for example setting cameras for different views of the course.

For an example on panos that don't work, several months ago I posted that I wanted to do an urban municipal course and was searching for an appropriate pano. I got several suggestions, but the one I really liked was Beaumont, which was set in NYC but featured the Twin Towers. I still considered it until I looked at it closely. The question as to whether using the towers became moot after I saw a low flying jetliner approaching the towers. Boom, case closed.