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Pascal_LSGC

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

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We can write a simple SASL plugin to set those values at sim start, without having to load a Carenado :-)

 

That would be great - anyone of You great knowledable people out there able to do that?

Would be most appreciated i think - and maybe Laminar will add some of all that great stuff into V10.30!?

 

I gave this a try today, very cool looking.  Adjusting the RGB values can give some more realistic/ different takes on the approach......

 

A good example would be to tone blue and green down and add a tad more red for a warmer effect.....  What would be nice is a UI with sliders to adjust these settings......

 

Maybe LR will implement this in the future since playing with art controls is considered taboo..........

One question - maybe i missed something:

But will SkyMaxx Pro be able to take advantage of this great stuff in thefuture sometime?

Again: Apologizing in advance if i missed something, but as a matter of great interest ... as far as i read/know, SkyMaxx - so far - does not work with these "Raleigh Tweak" - hence my question right above.

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SkyMAXX works fine with the Raleigh tweaks......

 

 

Cloud shadows thats a different story, we are hoping to have the ability to add them in the future.  They are part of the SilverLining SDK but we need "access" to apply them to the X-Plane terrain....  

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SkyMAXX works fine with the Raleigh tweaks......

 

 

Cloud shadows thats a different story, we are hoping to have the ability to add them in the future.  They are part of the SilverLining SDK but we need "access" to apply them to the X-Plane terrain....  

 

Thank You very much for the clarification! Really appreciated!

And great to know the SkyMaxx works with hte  Raleigh Tweak - besides the cloudshadows - but i am most confident that it's just a question of time, that all these great things will work together smoothly!

:smile:

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hello friends!

 

Nice shots Pascal!

 

That´s the point why i posted my topic (and share my "findings")  ! And as i said, there are so many capabilities in this engine! So we can together find out "the best settings"  -> it can be also hepful for Ben or LR (or giving them helpful hints) to implement this settings in the next update  (f.e)! it´s now possible to save the ART data refs (or to make such plugin?, Bens statement was "NO" ) i have no luck with my trials! You can try also sky/ or lights/ section, there are also many variables or try out /white out in clouds=0.00000" :-)!

(as a small hint f. e.) !

 

I´m happy, and for now, I´m entering always the values for my prefered datarefs (such clouds, scattering ....and when i´m sure that these values are without errors or when I find out the best settings, i will also share the values) 

 

regards, Arnie !

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AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D , watercooled, GeForce RTX 4090, RAM 64GB Kingston Fury 6000Mhz , Fractal Design 7 XL, MSI X670 Carbon, all SSD

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Thanks Arnie. The screenshots look just great, but with so many variables it's kind of daunting when you don't have spare time to tinker.

 

So looking forward to your ideal settings when you've settled on them!

 

BTW everyone, Arnie's hint about setting

 

skyc/white_out_in_clouds=0.000000

 

is a really good tip if you don't want the, well, you can guess...:)


i910900k, RTX 3090, 32GB DDR4 RAM, AW3423DW, Ruddy girt big mug of Yorkshire Tea

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hello friends!

 

Nice shots Pascal!

 

That´s the point why i posted my topic (and share my "findings") ! And as i said, there are so many capabilities in this engine! So we can together find out "the best settings" -> it can be also hepful for Ben or LR (or giving them helpful hints) to implement this settings in the next update (f.e)! it´s now possible to save the ART data refs (or to make such plugin?, Bens statement was "NO" ) i have no luck with my trials! You can try also sky/ or lights/ section, there are also many variables or try out /white out in clouds=0.00000" :-)!

(as a small hint f. e.) !

 

I´m happy, and for now, I´m entering always the values for my prefered datarefs (such clouds, scattering ....and when i´m sure that these values are without errors or when I find out the best settings, i will also share the values)

 

regards, Arnie !

The hint regarding the white out in clouds is fantastic! ;-) It's amazing what XPX has to offer under the hood!

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Thanks Arnie. The screenshots look just great, but with so many variables it's kind of daunting when you don't have spare time to tinker.

 

So looking forward to your ideal settings when you've settled on them!

 

BTW everyone, Arnie's hint about setting

 

skyc/white_out_in_clouds=0.000000

 

is a really good tip if you don't want the, well, you can guess...:)

 

This one got a bad side effect. Once set to 0, the visibility rendering (flight visiblit) doesn't work anymore, if a METAR reports low visibility. Seems that this ART is connected to the main visibility settings in XPlane. 

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This one got a bad side effect. Once set to 0, the visibility rendering (flight visiblit) doesn't work anymore, if a METAR reports low visibility. Seems that this ART is connected to the main visibility settings in XPlane. 

thank you JakobG ! i did not notice that on my machine, by the way, that´s the reason why i proceed with caution to give this hints -> it´s not easy to know what will be also affected by this values (as I've already mentioned  -> the art data refs are not for public use and not documented, and i am also a privat person and have nothing to do with Laminar and don´t wont to have some "negative" impact on XPLANE or elements of development, and i have allready some values for mie/scattering (like pascal) with some nice results, but have some artefacts, so i do not "publish" them) ! I allways write "try out" -> and not "use them" :-), but as you can see -> with some nice results, and you also can see, which jewel is hidden in XPLANE :-) (more than now)!

And this "observations" can also be good for development! ( if possble or wanted )! 

 

kind regards!

Arnel

 

edit: you can nothing damage with art data refs, just revert the values or make a restart of XPLANE and you will have the old same values !

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hello friends!

 

Nice shots Pascal!

 

That´s the point why i posted my topic (and share my "findings")  ! And as i said, there are so many capabilities in this engine! So we can together find out "the best settings"  -> it can be also hepful for Ben or LR (or giving them helpful hints) to implement this settings in the next update  (f.e)! it´s now possible to save the ART data refs (or to make such plugin?, Bens statement was "NO" ) i have no luck with my trials! You can try also sky/ or lights/ section, there are also many variables or try out /white out in clouds=0.00000" :-)!

(as a small hint f. e.) !

 

I´m happy, and for now, I´m entering always the values for my prefered datarefs (such clouds, scattering ....and when i´m sure that these values are without errors or when I find out the best settings, i will also share the values) 

 

regards, Arnie !

 

Hello Arnie,

First, thanks a lot for having initiated this! Your findings are absolutely essential, and I guess we are all playing with art controls now. :D

 

One way of saving and loading art controls and datarefs is to use a placeholder plane, you just copy any default plane in it's own folder, you add the SASL plugin, create en avionics.ini file in the plane's folder with the lines that I and some others indicated in this thread.

 

For now, instead of playing with too many art controls at the same time, I've tried to understand how the scattering parameters work together, and find a convincing and simple set of parameters, to give us somewhere to start. Here are my results.

 

 

Some inital tweaks

 

To have more vivid colors in the sim, I have my gamma setting in the graphic options set at 1.8. I used to push my monitor's contrast to counter the darkening, but here's much better: once again, X-Plane has everything needed in it's art controls. Just set

 

hdr/gain_min = -2.8

 

and see the result by yourself !

All the following tweaks where done with these initial settings. Different initial parameters probably require some changes to my suggested parameters thereafter. Experiment !

 

A reminder: all these tweaks only work with hdr set to on in the graphic options.

 

 

rayleigh_r (red) parameter and mie scattering

 

We can use one in place of the other. If we add some red, we can easily find the exact original effect by removing some mie and adjusting rayleigh_gain. What does this mean ? We can set red to a value near 0 and get all the effects we want with mie. In fact, mie scattering is the same as rayleigh with green = blue = red (in fact, red just a tad higher). What's the use of setting red to (nearly) 0 then? Because it simplifies a lot hue adjustment. I you use the red parameter, each time you change it you must also adjust blue and/or green to find/keep the right tint.

 

Here is a proof that rayleigh_r and mie parameter can be exchanged providing a small adjustment to rayleigh gain:

 

rayleigh-mie.jpg

 

 

 

Rayleigh green, blue and gain

 

The gain_rayleigh parameter scales the effect of a given green and blue pair. This means that if we double both blue and green, and divide the gain by 2, we get the exact same image. In a sense, the inital choice of rayleigh_gain is arbitrary, and the overall effect can be adjusted by green and blue values only.

We try to find the right proportion of green relative to blue. On the next pictures I settled on a green/blue proportion of 2.8/10. It is necessary to use some green in the color mix, many examples here suggest tweaking the _b parameter only but the result is way too violet.

 

 

Using rayleigh and mie together

 

I then looked for a set of ideal settings mixing rayleigh and mie scattering. I found this little useful trick: since rayleigh_b is arbitrary, by setting it at 10, it happens that the difference between gain_rayleigh and gain_mie is always 11 (in my set of ideal mix). You can have gain_rayleigh=11 and gain_mie=0, or gain_rayleigh=14 and gain_mie=3, etc... I am left with only one parameter to chose to my liking at a session start: gain_mie. By adding 11 to it I can adjust gain_rayleigh. All other parameters have been set once for all and should give nice results.

 

 

Finally, suggested parameters

 

Enough babbling, I know that you just want to grab one set which works and have fun in X-Plane. Here it is:

 

In graphic option screen:

 

Gamma setting = 1.8

HDR ON

 

In atmospheric options screen:

 

Visibility set at maximum 55NM

In clean condition, set the first cloud layer very high.

 

In dataref editor, art controls section:

 

hdr/gain_min=-2.8

atmo/atmo_scale_raleigh=20.000

atmo/inscatter_gain_mie=2.000

atmo/inscatter_gain_raleigh=13.000

atmo/scatter_raleigh_b=10.000

atmo/scatter_raleigh_g=2.800

atmo/scatter_raleigh_r=0.010

 

 

 

And here are my results with varying pairs of mie/rayleigh parameters:

 

 

rayleigh_11.jpg

rayleigh_12.jpgrayleigh_13.jpgrayleigh_15.jpgrayleigh_17.jpg

 

 

Enjoy!

Pascal

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I just cannot believe the effect , talking about shots on the first page. I have never seen anything like that , not even FSX hmmm in Fsx the only effect I used was SweetFX and scenery NL2000. 


Ryzen 5 1600x - 16GB DDR4 - RTX 3050 8GB - MSI Gaming Plus

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Complementary; of Pascal's #2 settings:

 

You just got to love these settings.

 

 

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Awesome findings, Pascal! You've done the community a great service, especially if these tweaks are implemented into a future patch or otherwise made to stick with a plug-in! Trying them out right now on my tour of European capitals and I definitely like what I see:

 

yTlbv4L.jpg

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WOW!!! AMAZING!!! 


100%75%50%d8a34be0e82d98b5a45ff4336cd0dddc

0D8701AB-1210-4FF8-BD6C-309792740F81.gif

Patrick

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This one got a bad side effect. Once set to 0, the visibility rendering (flight visiblit) doesn't work anymore, if a METAR reports low visibility. Seems that this ART is connected to the main visibility settings in XPlane.

That seems to be true when saved and loaded with the lua, but as I don't use real weather at the moment (until we get a decent injector) haven't seen this problem while manually inputting the ref change. Good to be aware of though so thanks for pointing it out.

 

Pascal thanks for the settings! Looks wonderful.

 

Anything you can tell us about your communication with LR on these changes?


i910900k, RTX 3090, 32GB DDR4 RAM, AW3423DW, Ruddy girt big mug of Yorkshire Tea

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[....]

 

Enjoy!

Pascal

 

WOW!

What agreat set of screenshots and what a super informative message post here!

Amazing!

Really appreciated!

Thank Yo very much for sharing!

 

 

 

Anything you can tell us about your communication with LR on these changes?

 

+1 - would be most interesting to find out more about how things might turn out to be take care of in some of the next updates!

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