Is this how REX4 & ASN clouds should look like in P3D?

[yorgosGK 7]

Rob, thank you for taking the time to look into this and sharing your results. It looks like mine and others are acting a little differently (i.e. more tiles)

 

I'd call my tile effect a dramatic & noticable one. Are you useing REX4 or Soft clouds in this clip? Have you patched up to 2.4 or clean install?

[Guest]

I did some more testing using OpusFSI this time around ... flight was from EKSB to ENTC.  

 

The clouds seemed good on departure, but after about 1 hour into the flight the clouds started to get very narrow and repetitive similar to the results shown by OP ... I recorded the issues and will pass along to LM.  

 

Also, I was getting cumulus clouds at 31,000 ft?  Checked METAR and it says scattered clouds 6200 to 12,000 ft.  

 

I also noticed a strange dark patch on the ground/sea (didn't look like a shadow) rotating with my view at FL310.

 

So not really sure what's going on ... perhaps the LM cloud changes have impacted how various weather engines build the weather or maybe it's just a bug LM need to look into.

 

I'll keep testing with ASN and FSGRW using 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.4+"cloud fix 2" -- I hope I don't have to keep doing 1+ hour flights before I see the issues.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[GSalden 4,657]

Here I have seen the same issue . After more than 45 min with Opus the overcast started to look like many the same clouds.

I thought that it was caused by Opus , so payed no attention to it as I always use ASN ( installed on the client pc ) on full simulator flights.

[Qatsimo 7]

Here is why...

 

In the screenshot I used a cloud texture with characters and numbers.

For demonstration purpose

 

In FSX or previous version(s) of P3D the puffs would randomly be rotated around

the z-axis before placed in the scene. Which means for the screenshot there would

hardly be a character (or number) standing upright. An A could be upside down e.g.

And a 2 could be laying on its side etc, hope you get the idea.

 

As you can see now everything is standing upright which means for the clouds in

P3D2.4 that there basically are only 16 cloud puffs to draw the cloudy sky's from

and therefore the duplicates are easier spotted, depending on the shape of the

puff/cloud.

 

I for one, I like it how it is now (be it intentional or a bug)

The cloud tops can be painted now as well as the bottoms. It takes a bit of a

special painting technique to avoid repetition and especially stratus type can

look much more realistic now.

 

In the cloud.fx shader file things can be improved a little by changing line

293 into:

 

GetScreenQuadPositions( quad, width*0.7, height*0.7 );

 

(makes the puffs slightly bigger and the clouds therefore less repetitious)

 

 

 

 

[bic 44]

I had been running a patched version of 2.3 and installed 2.4 and lost my puffy clouds, only a  very high level cirrus.  I ended up reinstalling (12+hours later) and now everything looks normal / great.

 

I also had REX4 and ASN and tried a couple of the recommended "fixes", but only the reinstall worked.

 

This seems to be a common problem...

[MikeAdamo 51]

Folks,

 

Thank you everyone for sharing your experiences and for helping out and apologies to Rob for taking a bit to get back to you on this.

 

I've been testing various REX themes and settings within ASN and P3D and like many others, feel like this is more to do with how P3D is now interpreting the weather being injected and also how P3D is generating the cloud formations. Some themes I tried worked better than others (not as a noticeable repetition) and one set seemed to work but the cloud coverage killed my FPS (from steady 30 to around 5 to 9) but I'm still testing as I think it may have been more to do with a Control Panel tweak I added versus the clouds themselves. Here's a video of one theme I used:

 

 

Here's my P3D and REX4 settings and the REX4 theme (shared out so you can download it and try as well) used in the video above. I think Rob is correct in bringing this forward to LM and Gerrit may have proven this is just how P3D now manages the weather environment in v2.4 so now the focus is moving to actually flying from point A to B versus trying to fix the clouds :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MikeAdamo 51]

In the cloud.fx shader file things can be improved a little by changing line

293 into:

 

GetScreenQuadPositions( quad, width*0.7, height*0.7 );

 

(makes the puffs slightly bigger and the clouds therefore less repetitious)

 

Gerrit,

 

Tried your suggestion and moved it up a notch higher to .80 for both width* and height* and I'm liking what I'm seeing so far! Took a test flight out of Spokane, WA with the following weather from ASN

KGEG 021759Z 00000KT 3SM -SN BR SCT022 BKN045 M07/M08 A3008 RMK AO2 P0000 T10671078

 

Even with the increase cloud size and snow I was able to maintain a steady 30FPS. There were some small dips to 24 but other than that, the visuals are much better and it's still smooth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

What I have found is right off the bat I saw the popcorn clouds after loading soft clouds - what I did was to go into user defined weather customize menu in P3D - I played with those settings until I saw some nice cloud coverage - play with type of cloud and 3/8 - 7/8 area - after I did this my basic themes of choice now look decent - it was like a switch or something 

[yorgosGK 7]

So is there any conclusion as far as who needs to touch on this? REX, ASN or LM?

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Yup REX Soft Clouds work for me - also made the 7.0 change - thanks for that - this was just an Orbx theme - great stuff REX

 

[yorgosGK 7]

Yup REX Soft Clouds work for me - also made the 7.0 change - thanks for that - this was just an Orbx theme - great stuff REX

 

I also tweaked line 293 with REX soft clouds and I can at least enjoy a good flight for the time being...

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

I also tweaked line 293 with REX soft clouds and I can at least enjoy a good flight for the time being...

 

Did you do what I said in post #23

[yorgosGK 7]

Did you do what I said in post #23

 

Not exactly. What I did was use default ASN settings and toggled the default weather themes to a preset and then for it to be controlled by ASN

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Not exactly. What I did was use default ASN settings and toggled the default weather themes to a preset and then for it to be controlled by ASN

 

That wont work as stated for some reason playing with those settings seems to bring soft clouds alive - after you do this your weather generation program will follow suit - this what I have noticed

[Qatsimo 7]

@MikeAdamo

 

Good to hear it works for you. I concur that performance loss is minimal, if any. You could have clouds intersecting with ground at some places though. But could also still happen with .5

Nice shots!

 

@Richard

As always truly gorgeous sky on your screen!

 

@YorgosGK

No conclusion as long as P3d remains in development. ASN works well and so does P3d, you just have to choose a cloud that fits best to the current state of the sim and your personal taste.

 

 

Greetz,