I’ve got my _fog, farplanedist, fogclip keys in worldspawn like radar, am using radar sky, my fog shader is virtually the same (copied and pasted from the radar one, just changed the colour), and it still doesn’t work properly…
Basically big chunks of sky shader pop in and out of existence on a seemingly arbitrary basis, eg:
Now we see it:
Now we don’t:
Radar has no problems like this, so am I missing something fundamental?
I know there is no detail in that simple map but what a cool FPS. 
Sorry, I can’t help at all.
GTK = Sore Head.
Better have another beer
Well the problem here will be that your fog has different color than the fog mask defined for the radar sky. Have a look at the radar sky shader, there’s a stage with a fog mask, you’d need to change that to fit your fog color.
I think that might do something with the vis compile. Did you do one?
I got similiar behavior inside buildings but only with r_showtris 2 so I am not really see the missing skyshader parts, but I see that parts are dissapearing.
Well the problem here will be that your fog has different color than the fog mask defined for the radar sky. Have a look at the radar sky shader, there’s a stage with a fog mask, you’d need to change that to fit your fog color.
It’s not a colour issue, the fact the colours don’t match is actually beneficial for showing this problem.
If you look at the top picture, while the fog colour is wrong, the sky box itself is seen whereever there’s no actual map.
Now in the second picture, just by turning a little, a whole chunk of the sky shader is not being drawn (along the horizon, above and below the gun sights, and more on the top left corner). THAT’s the problem I’m trying to solve, the actual fog colours are irrelevant here
Radar never has this problem I’m illustrating here (and I’m using the radar sky shader and a copy of it’s fog shader, so both are identical apart from the colour in the fog shader, which is nothing to do with it - maybe I’ll make it pink in future screenshots to make it clearer :)).
The lightning is scripted, search for “thunderstuff” inside the map script (Don’t know if this helps you).
Gerbil I have a similar problem and I think I know why.
I have a lift and around the lift, I made a cage into which the lift goes down. The cage has one of the alpha texture, so it’s caulked on all sides except one and I get the exact same thing as you have. One moment you can see the grid of the cage, the other you see through it all and see the sky behind it.
What happens is I switched to q3map2 2.5.14 yesterday. Before that, I was using 2.5.13 and never had that behavior. You might wanna try switching version just to be sure that’s not the problem. If q2map3 is the culprit we’ll have to tell/ask ydnar.
@MadJack, try common/nodraw on the hidden faces of your lift instead of caulk, it might help.
edit: it could also be a depth sorting problem.
I recently used the shader command sort to fix one of my alpha channel blends, where part of it was being drawn infront of another surface it shouldn`t of been.
I think it’s a VIS issue personally - I dunno if you’ve ever spectated around a map with lots of caulk edges, a sky box, and r_showtris - you can see how the sky is made up of squares that make up a huge box - these squares pop in and out of existance according to whether the engine decides bits are visible or not (to save on drawing more than it needs obviously). However, it’s clearly going wrong here for some reason which I don’t understand.
The entire map is detail except for the structural sky hull 
ah, I understand what your saying about the vis, hopefully sock or someone from sd can enlighten us as to how they got fog to work with a skybox?
Don’t recall seeing all that grass on Helm’s Deep before.
SiliconSlick (who thinks Gerbil may be working on the wrong project these days as we all eagerly anticipate a HD that doesn’t require torches)
off topic:
@SiliconSlick, Im trying to convince gerbil to keep our large terrain map as bright and sunny as possible, although he has explained to me it will probably need some fog culling, as its open area is even bigger then hd`s and I designed it more for my own fr, rather then taking into consideration a sever full of players running around it.
personally, I really like how SIX did his sky in his recent screen shots.
on topic:
@gerbil, how about making the existing sky brushes a caulk hull, then building thin detail sky brushes in front of the structural ones? …could that get over the vis problem?
Yeah don’t worry slick, I’ve not forgotten HD, Ratty is working on this and I’ll just eventually be provbiding the buildings for it
ah, was slicks post in ref to that dark compile you released of hd? I hadnt realized you hadnt fixed that... but yes, Im going to keep pointing a stick at gerbil so he finishes his own work as well as helping me finish mine
@ ratty… My problem was, in part, caused by caulk but now the alpha texture really acts like an alpha tex… Meaning I can walk through it. Not good. I could clip it but I think it was better the other way, with caulk…
@ Gerbil, did you try for kicks if the other version of q3map2 does the same thing?
@MadJack, alpha tex wouldn`t be nonsolid by default unless their shader also has that property.
Ok then, like an old Q3/Q3TA alpha texture then 
Anyway, I can walk through it… Its shader is probably made that way. I’m in a kind of a jam/hurry now so I’ll take a look later and post what I find. Gotta finish that .bat file too… Arrggghhhhhh!
I don’t tend to update q3map2’s, I’ve not had good experiences with it in the past.
I think I’ll update in the next few days though simply for the new alpha stuff which I can think of plenty of uses for 
Am working on HD now if it’s any consolation - will try to get new caves layout pic on my site tonight.
