Distant Horizons and the abillity to "X-ray", lets talk.
Some of you might know me. I come in here pretty often asking about stuff like this. I'm staff for a server who has DH banned because you can "x-ray with it". It's also banned because at the time, DH didn't have server support. Fast forward now and it does. The owner installed it on the server to test but removed it because the ram usage was very high. Fair, but he still doesn't want players using it on the client because you can "x-ray" with it. This is where I come to ask the DH community. Would you ban using DH on the client for that reason? I want to come up with a good reason to convince him to unban it. People could x-ray with texture packs anyways... and theres plenty of anti x-ray mods in place
26 Replies
I think having "DO NOT X-RAY" in the rules is enough
If people use DH for that (Which idk how) they can just be banned like any other person x-raying
I also would like to know how DH have ran for some of you guys when installed on a server. We get up to 100-150 concurrent players
What are some ways to optimize DH to not take up all the ram
I'm looking forward to your responses 🙏 I'd love to get this unbanned on the server I'm with
I have a Déjà vu
https://discord.com/channels/881614130614767666/1371378924012965951/1371378924012965951
https://discord.com/channels/881614130614767666/1388751865017139231/1388754608595144825
Depends if you run the mod or the plugin
It boils down to either decreaasing the DH server side thread count (as each thread need it's own piece of RAM)
Or decreasing DH bandwidth limit and concurrent requests or other smaller setting adjustment
Plugin has additional anti x-ray options by the way
Yeah I lowkey thought those threads were deleted so I opened another lol
Modded does not have anti x-ray options?
Can you sum it up in short how ppl x-ray with DH? Are they looking at stuff when chunks are loading?
Don't remember if they finally got added or not
I think it was, but it requires a separate addon mod to configure via the API
Gotcha, I'll probs forward to one of the devs on the server
They can figure it out
I can only think of this:
1. When you set your vanilla RD to high, or the server does not send you the vanilla chunks fast enough, there is a hole in between the vanilla and DH, which I guess you can see something through, see: https://discord.com/channels/881614130614767666/1428317822131638333/1428318062108610640
2. There is a bug where DH can render in front of vanilla, creating a sort of long range x-ray, but block your normal vision. It can be triggered and fixed by alt-tabbing or exiting/enabling full-screen, see: https://discord.com/channels/881614130614767666/1386714266865766585/1386714266865766585
3. When using other mods like Freecam mod, the overdraw hole will be around you (the camera), where the vanilla terrain will stay with your player, making a x-ray sphere around you, see: https://discord.com/channels/881614130614767666/881614131877269586/1394079530234413262
Good luck using any of those though, they don't work on close range, and some require other mods that can be considered more cheats than DH X-Ray.
They would be very hard to make use of, much harder than X-Ray resourcepacks for sure.
With the plugin you can prevent both seeing any ores in LODs and you can seeing caves
As it has options to make a replacement map, e.g. all
diamond_ore will be replaced with stone
And it has an option to only generate the surface and couple blocks downYup we do have freecam mods banned. Thank you for this in depth explanation
I will add him to this thread eventually I think these are all good points
This is what I always thought, the times you can x-ray with the mod
It doesn't even seem like a viable option
and I genuinely think theres WAY more people installing DH for good intentions over bad ones
I mean you could make a mod that converts DH lod data but at that point its easier to just use a texturepack
If you use the plugin version of DH on the server side, you can have it generate LODs that only contain the world's surface - not the full build height. This pretty much eliminates the ability to use it for x-raying.
The plugin also has material mapping, which lets you replace certain materials with others. For instance; replace diamond ore with stone.
Forgive me if this question is stupid, but can you use plugins alongside mods?
Our server is modded on fabric 1.20.1
I see
For those who don't have DH installed on their client but DH is on the server, does everything run fine?
They wouldn't lag or anything because of it right?
With something like Arclight, yes.
Unless your server is overloaded by whatever DH is doing for players that are running DH, no problem
But generally if you pre-generate all the LODs, then DH does very little work while playing the game
I see, and what happens when those lods are updated? like when players break trees or build? When it tries to update those LODs will the server lag then?
Only if your server is 💩
Gotcha
Unlike last time I am going to add the owner to this thread and see if any of this changes his mind
again I appreciate the responses and will talk to yall then 👍
To clarify: You can adjust which events trigger LOD updates, how often they are processed, and how many threads are used. So it should be possible to adapt it to almost any scenario.
I think its just backwards to ban DH specifically to prevent xray, who in their right mind would ever install DH to xray with it when there are a bazillion other mods to freecam, xray, cave-find and any other cheats you could use
Id think its insane to warn and especially ban someone if they'd for example, post a screenshot in the SMPs discord while using DH
Couldn't have said it better myself, now you see why I'm advocating for this..
Countless people have joined the server and has asked why it's banned
People always say this and it hurts 😭 I just have to sit there and watch cause I didnt make the rules
Some people just can't be convinced. Either they really do believe this and won't accept any argument on why it's absolutely idiotic to think that, or they know deep down that they're wrong but don't have the courage to admit it. It's a weird position to defend, but some people will try anyway.
It's probably best for everyone's sanity to drop it.
I also would think twice about being staff with someone like this making the rules but we dont have that much context to work with.
The person in the screenshot is not the owner of the server. The rules are also activley being worked on and suggestions are being made! That's why I'm gathering ample evidence to back up my opinion on the ban
The owner is very open to change and once he's returned off LOA I'll be adding him to this thread
Sorry if this did cause some peoples mental here to tilt 🙏
I think you guys provided great talking points and he'll reconsider. It was just before I didn't know too much about the mod to sound convincing lol, which is why I opened this thread
Ah okay, makes sense
TYSM GUYS
I've waited months for this moment.... expect a new thread sometime in november asking about server side support :P
Cheers
nice!
👏