One aspect that I really do not like about X-Plane's lighting is the way it renders sky lighting near the begin / end of the day, when the Sun has just set or is about to rise.

 

It is usually too dark, a lot darker than in RL for the same situation ( date / time of day properly adjusted for LT ).

 

At another forum someone suggested editing "skycolors.png"  Has anyone tried it? Suggestions? Screenshots of the mods?

 

Thx!

One aspect that I really do not like about X-Plane's lighting is the way it renders sky lighting near the begin / end of the day, when the Sun has just set or is about to rise.

 

It is usually too dark, a lot darker than in RL for the same situation ( date / time of day properly adjusted for LT ).

 

At another forum someone suggested editing "skycolors.png"  Has anyone tried it? Suggestions? Screenshots of the mods?

 

Thx!

 

Here's the skycolors texture (rotated 90 degress for better clarity):

 

 

 

The most important thing to modify is probably the lighting. You have 8 "stripes", corresponding respectively to (AFAIK):

 

.ambient light

.direct light

.sun color

.moon color

.water

.dark color variation of clouds

.light color variation of clouds

.direct light of the moon

 

The colors vary smoothly depending on sun angle above/below the horizon. For example, the color of the second stripe (from above), directly above and between the "-8" and "-4" marks, should be the color of the direct light when the sun is 8 degrees below the horizon.

 

So if you want to modify the lighting at sunrise/sunset, you have to modify those stripes (keeping a smooth color variation of course) depending on the type of lighting you want to modify (ambient light, direct light, etc.).

 

Different skycolors textures are used in the simulator, depending on the combination of visibility, altitude, cloud cover, precipitation. X-Plane smoothly mixes several of them when the conditions are "intermediate". For example, if sky is clear and visibility is greater than 80 miles X-Plane uses "sky_colors_mount.png". If visibility is 40 miles, "sky_colors_clean.png" is used. If visibility is between 40 and 80 miles, they're mixed. Sometimes even three different textures can be mixed.

 

So depending on which weather conditions you want the sky colors to be different, it may be necessary to modify more than one .png.

 

You can see how X-Plane is using lighting textures in real time with the menu "Special -> Show Sky Colors".

 

 

Marco

Brilliant Marco!  Thx a LOT!  Now, I just have to learn how to edit it :-)

Another thing I should add is that, according to my past experiments, when HDR is on X-Plane graphic engine does additional calculations on top of the texture to determine colors and lighting.

 

So when HDR is on, the influence of the texture on the sim colors and lighting is somewhat a little less and somewhat more indirect.

Have you tried Sabach's HD sky package?

 

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=19462

 

Personally I thought some of the day colours were overcooked (electric blue for most times of the day) and the clouds had some weird colours at dawn and dusk so I uninstalled it, but they seem to work for many people.

I personally use http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=18751 and like it very much. IMO others i've tried (sabach etc.) go for... more picturesque skycolours and i would like something more realistic, atleast going by what I see most of the time when i look at the sky here in finland. The one I linked is quite close imo.

Well, thank you all. I didn't try Sabach's HD sky package but I did try SkyMax.

 

Now I'll give gheeD's suggestion atry too :-)

 

Marco, yes, I noticed that too, and even playing with the Gama values has different effects depending on when HDR is used or not...

I agree with gheeD, the Tom Knudsen colors look the best and ive tried them all. They are not over saturated and look the most realistic at all times of the day.

 

Rob

I'm wondering when the REX guys are going to look our way. It's been rumoured to be on the cards for a while now...

As an addendum to this topic, something which can make a nice difference to the lighting is the gamma setting. By default it's set to 2.5 which gives a bit of a washed out look to the midday lighting. I pulled it back to 1.8 and it seems much nicer.

 

With the skycolours from here  http://forums.x-plan...&showfile=18751, and the visibility limiter and NOAA weather injector, the sim is looking better than ever!

I decided to edit the PNG files and change it to my liking. I have 3 versions and they're all very nice, at east for me :-)  Now, at 2100Z current date, I still have "daylight" faint but not pitch dark like with the default.

 

I simply edited the PNG using IrfanView and Paint, and played around with light / saturation and a few other parameters...

On 7/26/2013 at 2:12 PM, Murmur said:

 

Here's the skycolors texture (rotated 90 degress for better clarity):

 

 

 

The most important thing to modify is probably the lighting. You have 8 "stripes", corresponding respectively to (AFAIK):

 

.ambient light

.direct light

.sun color

.moon color

.water

.dark color variation of clouds

.light color variation of clouds

.direct light of the moon

 

The colors vary smoothly depending on sun angle above/below the horizon. For example, the color of the second stripe (from above), directly above and between the "-8" and "-4" marks, should be the color of the direct light when the sun is 8 degrees below the horizon.

 

So if you want to modify the lighting at sunrise/sunset, you have to modify those stripes (keeping a smooth color variation of course) depending on the type of lighting you want to modify (ambient light, direct light, etc.).

 

Different skycolors textures are used in the simulator, depending on the combination of visibility, altitude, cloud cover, precipitation. X-Plane smoothly mixes several of them when the conditions are "intermediate". For example, if sky is clear and visibility is greater than 80 miles X-Plane uses "sky_colors_mount.png". If visibility is 40 miles, "sky_colors_clean.png" is used. If visibility is between 40 and 80 miles, they're mixed. Sometimes even three different textures can be mixed.

 

So depending on which weather conditions you want the sky colors to be different, it may be necessary to modify more than one .png.

 

You can see how X-Plane is using lighting textures in real time with the menu "Special -> Show Sky Colors".

 

 

Marco

Hey Murmur, just digged this up... Do you think editing these two stripes: .dark color variation of clouds .light color variation of clouds would make it possible to keep clouds brighter as the sun sets? The FSE Enhancer sky colors are brighter at dusk, hence making the dark clouds look out of place. Or is cloud lighting when using HDR defined by datarefs?

Edited July 19, 20187 yr by Colonel X

6 hours ago, Colonel X said:

Hey Murmur, just digged this up... Do you think editing these two stripes: .dark color variation of clouds .light color variation of clouds would make it possible to keep clouds brighter as the sun sets? The FSE Enhancer sky colors are brighter at dusk, hence making the dark clouds look out of place. Or is cloud lighting when using HDR defined by datarefs?

Hmm... That post is quite old and when I was still experimenting with the sky textures.

Now, as far as I remember, the cloud color is determined by the 2 squares at the bottom of each sky_colors.png texture. The left one is the diffuse light of the clouds (i.e. light due to the sky, and hence uniform), while the right one is the direct light (i.e. light due to the sun shining on clouds, and hence variable for each cloud puff).

This texture is then modulated according to 2 datarefs (cloud_diffuse_gain and cloud_ambient_gain).

So, if you want to make the clouds brighter, you can either:

.) edit the square textures in the skycolors.png. For example, if you want brighter diffuse light in clouds at dusk (morning and evening), you should brighten the right part of the left square texture.

.) increase the cloud gain dataref. But this will brighten the clouds uniformly (it's like if you're making the whole square texture brighter, so you will het brighter clouds even during daytime).

The direct light square texture should be black when the sun sets, of course (no direct light anymore after the sun has set).

Finally, with regard to the old post of mine you quoted, if I'm not mistaken, those two stripes I mentioned (".dark color variation of clouds" and ".light color variation of clouds") should actually determine the color when _inside_ clouds (greyed out), respectively at the bottom and at the top of the clouds, and not the color of clouds themselves.

 

15 hours ago, Murmur said:

Hmm... That post is quite old and when I was still experimenting with the sky textures.

Well, it's something you have to get back to in X-Plane I guess.

I managed to prolong cloud lighting at dusk to great success by using datarefs - I lighten them up gradually as the sun pitch gets lower, from about 3 degrees to -4 degrees.

Here's a shot, that would before show basically black clouds.

from my recent experiments: (assuming default sim date of March 22 - I never change it myself and so I don't know if it makes a difference):

the very first pixel column is the lighting for most of the day.  If you are on the east coast of the USA (Norfolk,VA), the second column will come in at about 4:25pm and from there each column lasts about a minute until the sim runs through all the textures.  Sometimes it appears the sim may skip a column or two and these squares are not the only contributors to the colors - must be datarefs or something.  the vertical stripes don't appear to do much nowadays.  the ambient light is the only one that still has an impact that I can see.  I thought the direct lighting did something but Im not so sure any more.

 

anyway - the easiest way to brighten clouds later is by making the first 60 to 80% of the bottom left square all the same color.  hard transitions in color wont be that noticeable in the sim.

 

do you mind if I ask what datarefs you used to only brighten clouds at end of day?