Farseer

Press Control + Shift + F in-game to bring up a settings menu where you can adjust view distance and various look-and-feel settings.

 

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1.22.0 upgrade notice!

The new version adds support for Algernon's amazing Terrain Sampler Lib, speeding up heightmap generation times by an absurd degree.
When the mod is found, Farseer will automatically be superfast. Also saves on memory and CPU usage. It's a must have!
Be sure to download Algernon's mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/algernonsterrainsampler

Also, like for 1.21.0, when updating you should delete existing heightmaps for worlds you want to keep playing on so heightmaps can re-generate.

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1.21.0 upgrade notice!

If you are using Farseer and just updated to 1.21 while playing on the same world,

you're going to want to remove the files in VintagestoryData/Farseer/.

What this does is erase the far terrain heightmaps for existing saves so that the mod can generate new ones.

This is necessary because 1.21 introduces changes to terrain generation!

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Farseer is a dead-simple LOD terrain system, allowing you to see the silhouette of terrain much further out than normal - by default ~4000 blocks in all directions. It does so by building two-dimensional heightmaps using the information stored in your world's chunks, and will automatically generate them for far-out chunks around players so they can see distant areas they have not yet visited.

To be clear, the mod won't show "real" chunks with trees, buildings and so on, it's just a simple heightmap rendered to look like atmospheric fog.

The initial LOD building process can be quite slow if you haven't explored much already, as the mod will have to partially generate real world chunks when they don't exist yet. The new partial chunks won't be saved, so your world file size stays the same.

Heightmaps themselves barely use any disk space or RAM and are stored in a database on the server so they can be loaded very quickly by any connecting player the next time they are needed. They are also 100% static, meaning they will not "update" when something in a chunk changes.

<span style="text-decoration: line-through;">The mod needs to be present on the server-side in order to work, but for players on the server it's optional, they just won't see the distant terrain if they don't have the mod installed. </span>At the moment the mod is marked as required on both sides, so that the server can auto-download it for connecting players.

Configuring

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There's two configuration files, one for the client and one for the server. The client settings can be changed in-game with the default keybind Control + Shift + F. The server settings can only be changed manually by editing the file.

Server settings

• HeightmapGridSize (default 128): Increasing this will make the heightmaps more detailed, but also increase file size and bandwidth use exponentially. Value should be a number to the power of two, so 32, 64, 128, 256 and so on. 512 is the highest possible value, sampling the heightmap at every single block. If you change this on an existing world, you should remove the mod's database for that world first (In VintageStoryData/Farseer directory) to reset existing regions.
• ChunkGenerationQueueThreshold (default 64): If more than this number of chunks are currently being generated, the mod will not generate any far terrain heightmaps until it's lower again, to prevent server overload. Max possible value is 2000.
• MaxClientViewDistance (default 4096): Limits the max view distance of players so they can't eat up all of your disk space. Increase this on the server if you want to increase view distance for players. Ignored in singleplayer and in "Open to LAN" worlds. Players can see the server-side limit in the Farseer config UI. If they set their far view distance higher than the limit, the server will make sure the limit is enforced anyway.
• GenRealChunks (default false):&nbsp;If set to true, the mod will generate and save actual chunks as up until your "far view distance". When set to false, only chunks within your normal view distance are saved.
• DisableProgressLogging (default false): If set to true, the mod will stop spamming your server log with far region generation progress reports.

Before you try

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• This mod is experimental and not throughly tested. You may experience issues, crashes and other weird behaviour. If you do, please share in the comments or on the mod's GitHub Issues page.
• It uses vanilla's built-in chunk generation system to build distant heightmaps, but in a slightly unorthodox way, which has potential to cause issues with some mods (none confirmed so far).
• As a precaution, back up your save before installing the mod.

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Known issues:

• The mod will probably break on very small world sizes or at the very edges of a world.
• The transition between real chunks and far terrain is ugly and the two can sometimes overlap.
• The extra tax on worldgen can cause some chunk generation errors, but afaik nothing that permanently messes up your save.