Quote Originally Posted by Dazusu View Post
The clipping limit is for aesthetic effect. Just like real life, the distance you can see is not meant to be infinite. As there is a lot less in the game to obstruct your view (where there are buildings, forests and other obstacles in real life) there has to be a limit to the view to give the effect of expansion.
This is a bit of a ridiculous statement. As others have said, unless you are in a smoke-filled room, your view distance is far better in reality than it is in FFXI.

Besides, a view-distance "fog" and a "clipping plane" are two different things. Personally, I hate both, but at least the former is more realistic-looking than the latter (and the former is usually used to hide the latter). In places like Meriphataud, the clipping plane just makes the landscape look stupid, as in the above pictures.

And for the people commenting on the 3rd-party tools that may or may not have been used to generate the "improved" images, all this does is act as another prime example of why so many people use said 3rd-party tools to enhance their game experience. Here's something that a 3rd-party tool allows you to do that doesn't affect "fairness" in any way, and should not require a 3rd-party tool to do. Stuff like this is exactly the type of thing that should be high on SE's list of graphics enhancements needed to bring the game closer to the standards of the current decade.