Jump to content

X-Plane 10: Experimenting with art controls (Raleigh scattering)


Pascal_LSGC

Recommended Posts

Hi,

Thanks to AUA425 in this thread, we are now able to recover the lost cloud shadows. I tried many interesting art controls for clouds to get rid of the ugly dark-grey clouds. When exploring deeper the art controls with dataref editor, my attention was drawn to a few of them containing the word "raleigh". I started to tinker with these, and here's what I got. Especially, look at the distant landscape colors:


ATR72_94.jpg

ATR72_102.jpg

ATR72_121.jpg

ATR72_129.jpg

ATR72_197.jpg

ATR72_244.jpg

Notice the blueish hills in the far. I have yet to find the ideal setting, but this is already way more realistic than X-Plane's default. Combined with cloud shadows, we now have some beautiful atmospheric effects, already present in X-Plane's engine, just not used at their full potential. Some would say ironically, with some reason, that X-Plane's beauty is an inside beauty. :)

But that's not the end of the story. Like everyone here tinkering with clouds shadows, I had to regret the volatility of the process. I then remembered that datarefs can be set when you open a plane if you follow this marvelous advice by Dan Klaue. Just had to figure out which prefix the art control need.

Now, I have a plane which is loaded with some experimental settings. I just put the SASL plugin inside, create an "avionics.lua" file containing some lines like:
 

defineProperty("CloudShadowLightenRatio", globalPropertyf("sim/private/controls/clouds/cloud_shadow_lighten_ratio")) set(CloudShadowLightenRatio, 1.0

When I open the plane, all the values are applied to the art controls, and stay so for the current X-Plane session. This is a bit weird, but it works.

Pascal

PS: Important notice: Raleigh and Mie scattering atmospheric effects only work with HDR.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 343
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Great findings Pascal!

Main Simulation Rig:

Ryzen 5600x, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, 1 TB & 500 GB M.2 nvme drives, Win11.

Lenovo TB310FU 9,5" Tablet for Navigraph and some available external FMCs or AVITABs

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

Thanks to AUA425 in this thread, we are now able to recover the lost cloud shadows. I tried many interesting art controls for clouds to get rid of the ugly dark-grey clouds. When exploring deeper the art controls with dataref editor, my attention was drawn to a few of them containing the word "raleigh". I started to tinker with these, and here's what I got. Especially, look at the distant landscape colors:

 

Great! Can you share the DataRefs values you used in your shots?

"Society has become so fake that the truth actually bothers people".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whoa, thats a great find and those screenshots look unbelievable. I'd be ready to ditch my skymaxx in a heartbeat for that atmospheric scattering (i believe that is the correct term for the blue hue in the horizon?) and cloud shadows!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From Ben's blog...

 

The art controls are mapped into the domain sim/private/controls/…. by X-Plane. 

 

Like all sim-private datarefs (sim/private) these datarefs are undocumented and unsupported and may not be there in future builds.

 

Your plugin, panel, or object should not depend on any sim/private datarefs!  They should only be used for diagnostics/debugging.

 

 

Also see this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From Ben's blog...

 

Also see this.

Well, now, this is documented !

 

Frankly, this, and cloud shadows totally changes the atmosphere of the sim. Like a new sim. This is too late to ask me not to use it, sorry if this is a big problem for you, JGregory.

 

Pascal

Great! Can you share the DataRefs values you used in your shots?

I didn't write down these in particular, and I'm still experimenting. Will share.

I've noticed some potential problem with the horizon and the planet rendering. I'll look if this is caused by my tweaks, or some other mod I installed.

Look for "atmo" in the dataref editor to find the art controls.

 

Pascal

Whoa, thats a great find and those screenshots look unbelievable. I'd be ready to ditch my skymaxx in a heartbeat for that atmospheric scattering (i believe that is the correct term for the blue hue in the horizon?) and cloud shadows!

 

Thanks, yes, that's atmospheric scattering.

 

Pascal

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...