Advanced Fog of War Feedback Thread 2.0

One month check, any update to this?

so i have turned off AFOW and Global illumination and also turned off DL nand the game is still super slow. This has been going on for quite a while. Im starting to get upset and thinking about playing on another platform. I pay real money to use these features and it slows down so bad it take 5 - 10 seconds for anything to happen wheter it opening up a character sheet or moving the map.  Why is this not being fixed??  its been going on for well over 6 months.  whats up developers. stop coming out with new content and fix the broken stuff first.

It seems like on some of my maps, AFOW is working now - which is nice! On most others it remains just as bad as ever though, and I haven't yet been able to figure out quite why. My assumption is that it's a matter of how many vision blocker lines there are, as the map I've observed things working on is a dungeon with two-tile wide, typically straight hallways while the one that is lagging terribly is a building with more complicated, narrower rooms, but I'm not really sure. Size doesn't seem to be related - both are about the same size maps - and I tried making a maze of vision-blockers on another map and found it wasn't lagging either, so I'm not sure my theory's actually right. Doesn't seem like it's related to the age of the map, either, as some of my old maps work find and some of them lag. More bothersomely, I tried to delete some vision blockers that my players couldn't even see on the lagging map, just in case that improved the speed, and it froze the tab.

I may burst into tears... Or song. That looks so beautiful.

I know it's early for meaningful feedback, but the torchlit areas should be visible to the moving character even outside of their personal field of vision.

Looks fantastic!  I like the simplicity of the controls so far. ;-) I'm guessing the Visibility Radius is a control for performance reasons?  I'm thrilled with customizable ways to keep everything running smoothly, although I can't help but think with the displayed scenario as an example my players would say they would see those lights at the end of the dark tunnel from much farther away.  Put another way, that value is always "infinity" with the current system, right? (which probably is part of the performance problem) Thank you for the update, I’m very excited to see the end result! :-)

keithcurtis said: I know it's early for meaningful feedback, but the torchlit areas should be visible to the moving character even outside of their personal field of vision. +1 on this. In a perfect world, there would be diffusion and reflection as well, but I just know that's too much to hope for.

keithcurtis said: I know it's early for meaningful feedback, but the torchlit areas should be visible to the moving character even outside of their personal field of vision. Wanting to clarify here, Keith and Anthony - The vision distance setting can be set to any distance desired. The light radius can be set to any distance. Where the vision radius and light radius overlap, the darkness is revealed. If one wanted the moving token in our example to see the light from the campfires, setting vision to 100 would have done that from the starting position. Are we on the same page?

keithcurtis said: I know it's early for meaningful feedback, but the torchlit areas should be visible to the moving character even outside of their personal field of vision. +1 as well. This was how the old system worked. The Dynamic Lighting portion worked on an infinite distance, and the AFoW checks were limited by the old View Distance setting. EDIT: Ninja'd Kenton  said: Wanting to clarify here, Keith and Anthony - The vision distance setting can be set to any distance desired. The light radius can be set to any distance. Where the vision radius and light radius overlap, the darkness is revealed. If one wanted the moving token in our example to see the light from the campfires, setting vision to 100 would have done that from the starting position. Are we on the same page? I certainly understood that Vision Distance could be adjusted. I think the hangup, for me at least, is the game system I normally run (D&D 5e) does not restrict what a character can see based on distance. A character can see a torch 30 ft., 60 ft., or 500 ft. away, but the default Vision Distance in the demo is 2 squares/10 ft. That seems overly restrictive. If the new AFoW system can handle it, I would prefer a default Vision Distance that is blank/infinite and is set if necessary for certain conditions. I believe that would cover a much larger number of use cases right by default. The demo visually looks good, and I am happy to have seen it. It looks like the grid-based checks for AFoW are a thing of the past, which is very welcome. It  seems   like you might now be using something I suggested early this year: that the canvas curves/polygons that have already been calculated for DL to show what a token can see be reused to clear fog of war. If that is the case, I am very interested to see what the performance would be on large maps. I have a few questions, some of which come from the single use case of the demo. It is fine if you are not ready to answer any of them, but hopefully they give you an idea of where I hope the development is going. What is the performance of the new system? Specifically, if a token's Vision Distance is infinite/set to a number that covers the entire map, is there a crippling performance hit? The concern here is that in game systems that represent a significant portion of Roll20's games, a token's visions should be infinite by default. In the old system, View Distance only restricted how far fog of war was cleared, not how far a token could see. Following on from question 1, what would happen if the default Vision Distance for a token was infinite? I believe that a blank value for View Distance, referring to an infinite distance, would more easily facilitate setting up tokens for a greater number of game systems. How does the system handle default tokens that have a Vision Distance set when the token is used on 2 different maps with different scales? If a token with a Vision Distance = 60 ft. has a radius of 12 squares on a 1sq=5ft map, does it have a radius of 6 squares when dropped on a 1sq=10ft map? It seems like allowing each token to have its own Vision Distance has a limited use for a large number of game systems. In contrast, setting Vision Distance on a map level would have a great deal of usefulness for special situations that would limit visual distance for all tokens, such as fog or smoke, in those same game systems. This would allow a GM to have default player tokens that normally could see everything be restricted on a map with adverse visual conditions without needing to adjust the tokens on that map specifically. Would a page-level Vision Distance be a possibility? When can we try this out on the Pro server? 😀

Kenton said: keithcurtis said: I know it's early for meaningful feedback, but the torchlit areas should be visible to the moving character even outside of their personal field of vision. Wanting to clarify here, Keith and Anthony - The vision distance setting can be set to any distance desired. The light radius can be set to any distance. Where the vision radius and light radius overlap, the darkness is revealed. If one wanted the moving token in our example to see the light from the campfires, setting vision to 100 would have done that from the starting position. Are we on the same page? Thanks Kenton. I think so, from that description. The system should be able to handle this common scenario: Bob carries a lantern which sheds light 30 feet. There is a campfire 100 feet away which  sheds light for 20 feet. There are no obstructions. He should be able to see everything in his 30'r circle of light, and everything in the campfire's 20'r circle of light. But nothing else should be visible. A character should be able to see all illuminated, unobstructed squares. This is modeling both most game systems and the real world. Ideally, the areas revealed by the campfire should be persistent (but grayed out upon leaving) as well as Bob's personal light space. This would be in accordance with characters following a torch bearer. It sounds like the system in progress models these conditions by setting a large vision radius, but normal light radii. Am I reading correctly?

Actually, looking more closely at the settings and animation in the preview gifs, this looks exactly correct. The campfires are being revealed before the character's personal light intersects. Will there be performance problems with very high vision distances? Oh, and again, this looks great!

Looks great!

keithcurtis said: Actually, looking more closely at the settings and animation in the preview gifs, this looks exactly correct. The campfires are being revealed before the character's personal light intersects. Will there be performance problems with very high vision distances? Yes, that's correct. There are two circles ( not grid squares, circles) one is the vision (which will reveal the darkness if there is light), the other is the light (which will reveal the darkness if there is a token seeing the light). We don't have performance testing yet, but that was and is a consideration throughout. We're building this on WebGL, which will let the browser leverage the GPU in addition to the CPU. Oh, and again, this looks great! Thanks! We are really excited about how this is going.

Kenton said: keithcurtis said: Actually, looking more closely at the settings and animation in the preview gifs, this looks exactly correct. The campfires are being revealed before the character's personal light intersects. Will there be performance problems with very high vision distances? Yes, that's correct. There are two circles ( not grid squares, circles) one is the vision (which will reveal the darkness if there is light), the other is the light (which will reveal the darkness if there is a token seeing the light). We don't have performance testing yet, but that was and is a consideration throughout. We're building this on WebGL, which will let the browser leverage the GPU in addition to the CPU. Oh, and again, this looks great! Thanks! We are really excited about how this is going. The part I bolded is the most beautiful part of the demo. Well done to the dev team for tackling this in a new direction and coming up with a promising result. I am looking forward to seeing this with dim light and the AFoW dimness added back in!

Also would like to pile on with the 'this looks promising', I'm really excited to try it out once it's in a state worthy of release. Thank you for the update, keep us posted~

Wow, this looks awesome! Can't wait to see it in action!

This looks amazing! As you said you are working on low vision and dim light, I'd like to raise awareness to the fact that not all systems work like DnD. For the game we play (Das schwarze Auge / The Dark Eye), we could not simulate darkvision with the system dnd uses. Instead, there are 5 kinds of light in DSA. Let's call them: Bright, not so bright, dim, nearly dark and then darkness. Darkvision I makes them: bright, bright, not so bright, dim, darkness. Darkvision II makes them: brigth, bright, bright, bright, darkness. The absolute range of the vision does not change. The only thing changed is the start of the dimming of the light. So if a character with darkvision sees a torch some 50 ft away, they could see them with the modifiers outlined above. What I think I need to achieve this is an option on the charactertoken which is a multiplier for the startrange of dim light. As a bonus I would love the option to have dim light in user defined number of steps instead of smooth grading. Edit: This bonus was not thought through. If the number of steps is set to 4, making the startrange multiplier 2x, then in the second half would still be 4 steps, but half the size, which is not what I meant. But anyways, those gifs look really good! :D

Hi all,  I have a map with a a pair a rooms and a false wall between them. As you can see, the PC shouldn´t been capable of see the hidden room but, when I use CTRL + L to see the player view, the result is different in one room and another. In the left room, the hidden room is well hidden and the PC can´t see anything: But, if I switch PC to the other room, the effect is different and PC can see the hidden room in shadows: I´ve tryed to reset fog of war and change some settings of the player and FoW: And the page settings are those: Am I doing something wrong? Is there any problem with my settings? Regards

Thanks you Drespar. I´ll try to align better. Regards! Drespar said: Hi Jeropa, Looking at the images you provided, it seems that the grid cells extend past the walls a bit-- meaning that if the center of the cell enters the tokens line of sight, the entire cell will be revealed (Even beyond dynamic lighting walls). If you align the necessary wall to the grid does it prevent the extended sight? You can find more information about how the cell reveal works in our help desk article here .

Will the performance of lighting be improved? Right now, advanced lighting is basically a non-feature for me, as it lags out the map so much that it's unusable. And it has been like this for the entire year.

Hey, maybe someone here can help me out, I've been trying to use tokens as light sources. Basically, when I'm in the GM role, everything is lit up as it should be. But when I test things out with a player token with vision activated, the Fog of War doesn't update or change any more. It's just a static grey zone around the character with black hidden areas beyond, moving the character around doesn't reveal anything. No other tokens or map features get revealed. To highlight my point, this is what the GM view looks like: And this is what the player view looks like: The far right of the map shouldn't even be revealed as gray from where that token stands, he should only be able to see through a few one square shafts on three of those 4 walls. No matter where I move the token, that lighting you see doesn't change. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Or is token-based lighting bugged? And yes, I made certain the player token in the lower left there has vision and I have tested to be controlled both by every and just myself to zero effect. EDIT: Figured it out, I didn't realize you have to check off the box "Players can see light". That's kind of a weird option to have turned off by default, is there a way to turn it on by default when creating new light sources?

It's likely off by default since it's commonly used to simulate types of darkvision. I.e. the token can see by a light not openly shared. But yes, you should be able to change the setting on the Game Settings page , specifically the Token Defaults section.

Is AFOW ever going to be fixed so that low-bandwidth users can use it?! Several of my players get super lagged out when I use it.

Rather than a fix, it appears that the system is currently being re-written from scratch to use different technology.

SᵃᵛᵃǤᵉ said: Is AFOW ever going to be fixed so that low-bandwidth users can use it?! Several of my players get super lagged out when I use it. FYI people with 1G internet and fast computers can't use it either, just saying.

So Advanced Fog of War still has a lot of issues as I can read... can it be a bug THIS one too?

keithcurtis said: Rather than a fix, it appears that the system is currently being re-written from scratch to use different technology. Is this true or just rumor? It seems Roll20's efforts seem to be focused on revenue generating, IMO.

SᵃᵛᵃǤᵉ said: keithcurtis said: Rather than a fix, it appears that the system is currently being re-written from scratch to use different technology. Is this true or just rumor? It seems Roll20's efforts seem to be focused on revenue generating, IMO. They have spoken of it several times, and released a proof of concept video about halfway up this page .  And I sure hope their focus is on generating revenue—they have employees to pay, servers to run, etc. And the best way to generate revenue is to produce goods and services that people will give them money for.

SᵃᵛᵃǤᵉ said: keithcurtis said: Rather than a fix, it appears that the system is currently being re-written from scratch to use different technology. Is this true or just rumor? It seems Roll20's efforts seem to be focused on revenue generating, IMO. As Keith says, there is a proof of concept in the thread earlier. Also, in the last several community roundtables they have discussed it. There isn't a specific release date, but it is a ground-up rebuild that is making use of WebGL. 

Is there a way to make it so my heroes have different revealed AFOW's? I was hoping to have them each have to explore the map kind of pushing them to stay together more.

Kelzone51 said: Is there a way to make it so my heroes have different revealed AFOW's? I was hoping to have them each have to explore the map kind of pushing them to stay together more. I don't think I am quite following you. What you describe is the default behavior if each player controls a different token.

Brian C. said: Kelzone51 said: Is there a way to make it so my heroes have different revealed AFOW's? I was hoping to have them each have to explore the map kind of pushing them to stay together more. I don't think I am quite following you. What you describe is the default behavior if each player controls a different token. Basically I am wondering if player 1 controlling hero 1, can see the grayed out map that player 2 controlling hero 2 can see.

Kelzone51 said: Brian C. said: Kelzone51 said: Is there a way to make it so my heroes have different revealed AFOW's? I was hoping to have them each have to explore the map kind of pushing them to stay together more. I don't think I am quite following you. What you describe is the default behavior if each player controls a different token. Basically I am wondering if player 1 controlling hero 1, can see the grayed out map that player 2 controlling hero 2 can see. No, players only see cleared fog of war for tokens they control. player one would also have to have edit access to player 2's token/character sheet to be able to see the cleared fog of war for player 2.

I would appreciate some input here, on the subject of letting players share tokens in regards to roll20 lighting. Thematically, a PC shouldn't be able to see into a room that they themselves are not in. However, gameplay wise, it can be really annoying/boring to have your token just out of range, not being able to partake in the description or understand the layout of the room that a DM is openly describing to the party... I could give everyone access to the the whole party, so then everyone can see the same as everyone else However, they can also move tokens that don't belong to them, and roll on their behalf They also, as far as I'm aware... would also hear any 'whispers' that is sent to any character, which might be whispers generated by the DM, or via API's... Are there any more significant benefits/drawbacks to players 'sharing' tokens like this?

I recommend creating a “light crumb” character with a small eyeball or other unobtrusive token that all players have access to, that you can place in the room to allow the rest of the party to observe and kibitz out of character.  It also serves well in a pinch to allow the party to see where they have been on maps that are too large to be able to handle Advanced Fog of War. godthedj said: I would appreciate some input here, on the subject of letting players share tokens in regards to roll20 lighting. Thematically, a PC shouldn't be able to see into a room that they themselves are not in. However, gameplay wise, it can be really annoying/boring to have your token just out of range, not being able to partake in the description or understand the layout of the room that a DM is openly describing to the party... I could give everyone access to the the whole party, so then everyone can see the same as everyone else However, they can also move tokens that don't belong to them, and roll on their behalf They also, as far as I'm aware... would also hear any 'whispers' that is sent to any character, which might be whispers generated by the DM, or via API's... Are there any more significant benefits/drawbacks to players 'sharing' tokens like this?

Joe said: I recommend creating a “light crumb” character with a small eyeball or other unobtrusive token that all players have access to, that you can place in the room to allow the rest of the party to observe and kibitz out of character.  It also serves well in a pinch to allow the party to see where they have been on maps that are too large to be able to handle Advanced Fog of War. Here is more info on Light Crumbs .

Thanks, Keith, I was just in too much of a hurry at a time to find the link. ;-) 

I have that stuff bookmarked...

godthedj said: I would appreciate some input here, on the subject of letting players share tokens in regards to roll20 lighting. Thematically, a PC shouldn't be able to see into a room that they themselves are not in. However, gameplay wise, it can be really annoying/boring to have your token just out of range, not being able to partake in the description or understand the layout of the room that a DM is openly describing to the party... I could give everyone access to the the whole party, so then everyone can see the same as everyone else However, they can also move tokens that don't belong to them, and roll on their behalf They also, as far as I'm aware... would also hear any 'whispers' that is sent to any character, which might be whispers generated by the DM, or via API's... Are there any more significant benefits/drawbacks to players 'sharing' tokens like this? In my experience, characters are generally close together. They describe what they can see to the others and have not complained when there is something they cannot see, but they do let other's know if something is outside their field of view. If you want people to stay in the action when they are separated, you might want to try an "observer" token that everyone controls. That let's the player's watch the action without having access to each other's character sheets, and you will be able to continue to whisper in secret.

Yeah. A magic floating eyeball graphic looks to be the best option.... Cheers

godthedj said: Yeah. A magic floating eyeball graphic looks to be the best option.... Cheers I use a transperant token. :)

Hydrall said: It seems like on some of my maps, AFOW is working now - which is nice! On most others it remains just as bad as ever though, and I haven't yet been able to figure out quite why. My assumption is that it's a matter of how many vision blocker lines there are, as the map I've observed things working on is a dungeon with two-tile wide, typically straight hallways while the one that is lagging terribly is a building with more complicated, narrower rooms, but I'm not really sure. Size doesn't seem to be related - both are about the same size maps - and I tried making a maze of vision-blockers on another map and found it wasn't lagging either, so I'm not sure my theory's actually right. Doesn't seem like it's related to the age of the map, either, as some of my old maps work find and some of them lag. More bothersomely, I tried to delete some vision blockers that my players couldn't even see on the lagging map, just in case that improved the speed, and it froze the tab. I'm not sure if this has been mentioned in previous threads, but the group I play with just spent some time working through the lag issue and found that if we set the Adv. Fog of War to something small like 10ft., then the lag goes away. We were trying to set 60ft and 120ft.

Bumping to see if there's been any update on the rework.

Has the rework rolled out yet, or is there an ETA?  I haven't tested it recently (our group stopped playing on Roll20 while the issues were being resolved because it became too frustrating). It would be good to know whether we can come back yet.

Sam T. said: Has the rework rolled out yet, or is there an ETA?  I haven't tested it recently (our group stopped playing on Roll20 while the issues were being resolved because it became too frustrating). It would be good to know whether we can come back yet. Would love an ETA on this also, getting close to the end of our current campaign and starting to look at options for the next one.

It's coming Very Soon. We promised it would come out in Q1 of 2020 and oh would you look at the time it's almost March already. I don't know when your campaign ends so I can't say for sure if it'll be out but... stay tuned.

Hey, we just got plus for dynamic lighting ability. I've got a pretty beefy PC and putting advanced fog of war and dynamic lighting is CRUSHING this app.  Like each small task takes 15-20 seconds.  I'm talking getting it to recognize that a token has been picked up takes 15-20 seconds.  Setting just dynamic light or just advanced fog of war seems ok.  But our ideal would be to have line of sight, dynamic light, but keep areas we've discovered as gray.  And all of lag is simply destroying that experience.  Is this pending update "rework" supposed to address performance issues with Advanced fog of war or are we just not using the right settings?  Any help would be great.  Playing with just dynamic lighting and line of sight is quite the upgrade, don't get me wrong.  Just curious if I can achieve what we want with fog of war without the lag.