Seeing towers from a distance

[smash]

I have a 96-meter tall tower that I cannot see from 250 meters away (at ground level). I can only see the tower from 250 meters away if I walk all the way to the base tower, and then turn around and walk back to my original point 250 meters away. I've tried changing distance settings per the post: http://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?id=3368 and it does not change anything.

Is the bug reproducable?
Yes
How can you reproduce the bug?
Start at the 96-meter tall tower. Walk to a point 250 meters away from the tower, that has a clear view of the tower. Exit the game. Restart the game and enter the world. Note that the tower is now gone.
What is your operating system?
Linux Mint 13
What is your version of Minetest?
0.4.7
What game do you use? (e.g. minetest_game, survival, build)
minetest_game


In addition (not sure if this is a separate bug), the following happens about 50% of the time: When the tower actually is visible, only the lowest 40 meters (approx.) are visible, so the tower appears much shorter. I can remedy this by climbing to the top of the tower, and then when I walk 250 meters away from the tower, I can see the full height of the tower.

I'm sorry I cannot post the entire debug.txt because if I do I'll get "413 Post entity too large" or something like that.

[kaeza]

This is not a bug.
When you exit the game, it unloads all the chunks (sections of the map). To view the tower again, you must be close enough for the game to reload it.

[smash]

That's fine to say it's not a bug. However, it would a be nice feature to have, to change how close you have to be to something in order to reload it.

[PilzAdam]

That's fine to say it's not a bug. However, it would a be nice feature to have, to change how close you have to be to something in order to reload it.

There are settings for this in minetest.conf (see minetest.conf.example).

[smash]

viewing_range_nodes_max = 1000
viewing_range_nodes_min = 800

Still not loading objects 250 meters away. Maybe I'm changing the wrong settings?

[PilzAdam]

viewing_range_nodes_max = 1000
viewing_range_nodes_min = 800

Still not loading objects 250 meters away. Maybe I'm changing the wrong settings?

Thats the viewing range, what you are actually looking for is called differently (something with "sending" or "requesting", IIRC).

[VanessaE]

What is needed to facilitate this more easily is client-side caching (on disk) of the data that has been received by a server (in separate folders named for each server, of course), so that the client can reload some reasonable portion of that data on the next connection to that server. Of course, the cached data will be updated and/or overwritten by that which comes from the server, but that's somewhat necessary and can't be helped anyway.

[Sokomine]

That would be great! It is annoying to climb on a tower and not see anything because the area around hasn't been loaded (at this time of visiting the world). Even if the cached data is slightly out of date, that would not matter in most cases.

[smash]

viewing_range_nodes_max = 1000
viewing_range_nodes_min = 800

Still not loading objects 250 meters away. Maybe I'm changing the wrong settings?

Thats the viewing range, what you are actually looking for is called differently (something with "sending" or "requesting", IIRC).

I've gotten some improvement with:
viewing_range_nodes_max = 1600
viewing_range_nodes_min = 350
max_block_send_distance = 100

I can now see the tower if I already know which direction to look, and I stare in that direction for about a minute (maybe my computer's a little slow). If I'm up in the tower when I start the game, I can see about 300 meters, but what's odd is that parts of the map about 200 meters away or less are not plotted.