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VC Shadows and PMDG 777?

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Anybody having luck getting VC shadows in the T7? I'm seeing them in stock aircraft but not this one.

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Anybody having luck getting VC shadows in the T7? I'm seeing them in stock aircraft but not this one.

I'm not sure about this one. Yesterday I added the VC shadows in the Real Air Legacy and they looked GREAT. But, you have to add them yourself with the DX10 Toolbox which comes with the fixer.

 

I didn't test enabling VC shadows in the NGX. But if you do, I recall seeing an checkbox option in the Fixer saying 'HD Jet shadows' or something like that.

 

Did you actually add the VC Shadow to the NGX using the toolbox?

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I tried enabling VC shadows for the NGX but it didn't didn't work properly. The shadows only showed up on some parts of the side consoles. Maybe the way PMDG has set up their materials?


Dave Garwood.

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I'm not sure about this one. Yesterday I added the VC shadows in the Real Air Legacy and they looked GREAT. But, you have to add them yourself with the DX10 Toolbox which comes with the fixer.

 

I didn't test enabling VC shadows in the NGX. But if you do, I recall seeing an checkbox option in the Fixer saying 'HD Jet shadows' or something like that.

 

Did you actually add the VC Shadow to the NGX using the toolbox?

 

I checked the HD Jet Shadows box in the DX10 Controller app and enabled aircraft self-shadows in the FSX.cfg. I see now I've overlooked the toolbox utility, so I will give that a go.

 

Thanks for the tip!

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Anybody having luck getting VC shadows in the T7? I'm seeing them in stock aircraft but not this one.

 

both NGX and T7 do not support DX10 Jet shadows ...only the J41 does.

 

they have clearly made a choice to say goodbye to DX10 which is unfortunate given the fact that the fixer has been released and we're ready to enjoy immersion factors like these.


Antoine v Heck
---
Ryzen 5800X3D, 32Gb DDR4 RAM@1600 Mhz, RTX3090 (24GB VRAM). 2TB SSD - VR with Quest 2 via link cable 

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I seem to remember Jim (Firehawk) saying that both of the PMDG aircraft work perfectly. I don't have either, so I've referred this back to Steve, because I think he did the VC development using the NGX....



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I tried enabling VC shadows for the NGX but it didn't didn't work properly. The shadows only showed up on some parts of the side consoles. Maybe the way PMDG has set up their materials?

Hi guys.

 

There are two things going on here and its actually covered in the manual on about page 50/51.

 

To get VC shadows you need two things:

 

Firstly the VC shadow bit set in the VC model header. DXToolbox can do that but for payware aircraft you must first check with the developer that they are prepared to let you flip that bit.

 

Secondly you need the exterior surfaces to have the material property 2 sided set. This is where computer graphics and reality diverge. A single sided surface is only drawn when you are one side of the surface - its a performance tip to the GPU to avoid it dealing with interior walls of buildings when viewed from outside.

 

The shadows are calculated by looking from the position of the sun at the VC model and single sided surfaces facing inwards get discarded and so don't cast shadows.

 

If that sounds complicated just sit down in you VC and raise the seat or move it backwards until you are outside. There you can see how the model is drawn when calculating shadows and from your description you will be able to see inside.

 

Now at this point you need to ask PDMG very politely if they would consider changing their material properties for the VC cockpit walls. Since you are normally inside the VC the performance cost of a double sided material would be minimal I would think.

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To bad but I highly doubt they are going to add vc shadowing anything that may add to fps loss pmdg would not be in favor of


Rich Sennett

               

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To give an example the stock 737 take 9ms in my GPU - drawing the 2 sided near VC wall in the shadowmap takes 9us. Disabling the VC wall (i.e making it one sided) increased the shadowmap GPU time by 4x as it then had to draw all the interior and the far wall. When the wall is 2 sided items further away get discarded at almost zero cost. So actually I think its a disbenefit.

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Steve if I read this right having vc shadows would be faster ? thanks Steve appreciate all the hard work


Rich Sennett

               

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No I don't quite mean that. I think making the side walls work with VC shadowing wouldn't cost anything when VC shadows were off, and would improve performance in the GPU (by a tiny amount) when VC shadowing was on. But I don't have their model to test.

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I was missing the shadow bit in the MDL file. The DX10 Toolbox when applied to the VC MDL file enables the shadows on T7. For the most part, they look really cool. A nice bonus immersion factor.

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Ah I see Steve but pmdg would have to do something on their end to allow this, so you do not have the 777 ?


Rich Sennett

               

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Ah I see Steve but pmdg would have to do something on their end to allow this, so you do not have the 777 ?

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/414390-inside-a-pmdg-vc-light-bloom-and-moving-shadows/

 

Ryan's response in this thread (similar topic but before the fixer was released) indicates that it is probably not that easy, so we have to ask them nicely again to take a serious look at it.


Antoine v Heck
---
Ryzen 5800X3D, 32Gb DDR4 RAM@1600 Mhz, RTX3090 (24GB VRAM). 2TB SSD - VR with Quest 2 via link cable 

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The biggest issue I can see is that the skeleton of the overhead panel geometry (buttons and switches) is casting a shadow, not just the airframe. My guess is that the effort involved to design a VC cockpit that casts realistic shadows was prohibitive and would have negatively impacted the design and/or performance of the core simulation - and since the shadows couldn't be done "well", they simply weren't done at all.

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