Shadows... (Yep... Again ;) )

[robnewman76 0]

Hi all, and Steve...

 

Long time user and long time fan of the fixer. Many thanks for such a great tool

 

I am however having issues with external shadows... I know what the cause is, it's Ezca... however, even with the Ezca fix checked, I still have very odd external shadows. they sometimes work, but more often than not they don't... showing false or missing shadows.

 

I am currently using the latest beta of Ezca (as only the beta is compatible with FSX-Steam Edition as far as I can tell), so is perhaps the Ezca fix in the DX10 fixer not compatible with the latest beta version of Ezca?

 

I have tried all sorts of combinations (different shadow versions, HD external shadows on or off, Ezca fix on or off) but same result each time...

 

If you need any information, screenshots or data please let me know...

[SteveFx 258]

The problem is that with HD shadows enabled DX10SF needs to know whether its dealing with a VC view or an external view as this tells it whether its ok to calculate the shadows more accurately (i.e zoom in).

 

The only way to determine this is to look at the camera position. It performs a calculation which (at least sort of) determines whether the camera is inside the aircraft's "radius" or not.

 

If it is inside then it is assumed to be a VC view and the zoom is applied. For cameras which are within the radius but actually external this results in incorrectly calculated shadows - e.g wing, tail cameras etc.

 

Thus the norm is that with HD shadows enabled only the spot camera works.

 

I suspect that the problem with Ezca may be the way that it defines camera positions.

 

I think the only changes possible are to turn off HD shadows or to see if the camera definitions can be altered - I have noidea how ezca works in this regard.

 

Can you create a camera which is defined to be further away from the aircraft?

[robnewman76 0]

Good info... I have tried with the HD shadows off, but for some reason my external shadows always seem to be HD... whether in spot view or the Ezca aircraft camera... Or maybe the standard def shadows are still too good for me to notice

 

I'll have a play with the camera settings, but in the meantime, I can always move the camera away and increase the zoom slightly... Thanks for that aircraft radius pointer

 

I'll let you know if I find anything else and how it goes... Thanks!