Popcorn clouds continue in 2.5.12944

[Fi5kuS]

I also have an issue with runway lights ever since 2.4 (I'm now on 2.5). My runway and taxiway lights are bright and well visible until I get closer. When I get closer then all the lights in a circle around the aircraft get darker and loose all the bloom effect. Never found out what that is... Runway lights are really a mistery since the release of 2.0...

 

I wonder if it has anything to do with the latest nvidia driver? Remember runway lights disappeared completely after one driver.

[Potroh]

After some brief investigations, to me it seems the problem of "popcorn" clouds is related to two different factors.
The first is the fact that the last version was 2.3 which slightly rotated 40-50% of cloud bitmaps vertically, (usually 25-45 degrees) that's why in 2.2 and 2.3 you got much more visual variations. Probably due to the "vertical rotation issue" this has changed in 2.4 and now ALL (cumulus) bitmaps are always applied to the cloud sprites absolutely horizontal (parallel to the horizon).
This gives less variations and in case many similar bitmaps are placed this way, they visually look very uniform, partially resulting in the "popcorn" effect.

The second one is a bit more complicated and more important.
Most probably there was an internal change (probably in weather.dll) where one particular type of the several cloud types got rendered differently, hence the problem with the uniform repetition. If this was the case, I'm certain that it is unintentional, probably a simple glitch.
It is easy to test, if you fire up the "Fair Weather" theme and then change the clods to: scattered. You will clearly see the uniformly repeating cumulus clouds (as a tendency).

Digging a bit deeper into it, it seems the problem is with a single type of cloud shape, which is the "cumulus humilis" variation.
If you want to test, backup your CloudArtFiles.xml in the weather\clods folder and find the section "cumulus humilis" there. You can see that it gives only four coverage variations (<coverage amount="x">) and each coverage section has four variations of the _cumulusHumilisxx-y.cld sprite type.

Simply exchange these to something else and you will never get the "popcorn" effect anymore.
I exchanged the variations to the "cumulusCongestusLow..." type and it seems to work just fine.
Like this:
    <cloud description="cumulus humilis">
        <coverage amount="1">
            <variation file="cumulusCongestusLow18-1.cld" shadowGuid="{4e09025d-7b96-459a-af0f-3bb389b7a823}"/>
            <variation file="cumulusCongestusLow18-2.cld" shadowGuid="{afeac3c8-e85f-4668-88e3-b330cb792cac}"/>
            <variation file="cumulusCongestusLow18-3.cld" shadowGuid="{0d94bfc6-fba7-40ac-9551-c989c578abe3}"/>
            <variation file="cumulusCongestusLow18-4.cld" shadowGuid="{2b435c04-2989-4f6a-bdc0-89ed353b7d31}"/>

For "coverage amount= 2 use: ....28-x
For "coverage amount= 3 use: ....38-x
For "coverage amount= 4 use: ....48-x

I won't claim it is a final solution for the problem but after running several tests here, I've never seen the problem again.

Potroh

[TurboTomato]

Will be giving this a go this evening, thanks!

[Fi5kuS]

 

 

Maybe I did something wrong, but this was the result. Same old.

 

[Jim Robinson]

Hmmm. There are only 3 variations of "cumulusCongestusLow38" and "cumulusCongestusLow48" (-1, -2, and -3), did you just use "-1" twice? Also where did you get the shadow GUIDs as they neither match what I have for _cumulusHumilis or cumulusCongestusLow? Had you experimented with those and found those GUIDs gave you better shadows?

 

Fi5kuS, can you give us some details on your Wx scenario, approx lat/lon, date/time, ASN(?), OPUS(?), etc. please? I'd like to try and duplicate that and see if I get the same thing, thanks.

 

EDIT: It definitely changes things on my end although I'm not sure I like it better. These are with GetScreenQuadPositions( quad, width*0.68, height*0.68 ) though so maybe they're a bit over-scaled. These are from a saved flight where I set "Fair Weather" and then went into advanced and set clouds to the highest "scattered":

 

[Fi5kuS]

@Jim - sorry, it was live weather by ASN and I did no take note of the metar. Those images were taken at Tromsø Airport (69.6828° N, 18.9428° E), with todays calender. I have been told by HiFi that ASN has difficulties rendering good looking clouds at higher latitudes for some reason. At least for me, the popcorn cloud issue seems to slowly vanish as I approach more southern latitudes.

 

Of note, I decided to try REX OD (as other claim do magic to clouds in P3D). At first eyesight the clouds seems better, although I can still see repeated patterns and popcorn clouds at high altitudes. However, after installing REX OD cloud textures (along with REX Soft Clouds textures) the clouds appear more milky-white than normal. Everyone are familiar with white clouds during nighttime flying, but these were pretty intense to me. Also, this is with HDR off. 

 

 

 

 

[jabloomf1230]

Here's what is being suggested. There are three types of low level cumulus clouds, based on the cloud thickness layer (from the FSX/P3D SDKs):

 

• Cumulus Humilis are cumulus layers shorter than 3000’.
• Cumulus Mediocris cover from 3000-6000’.
• Cumulus Congestus cover from 6000-9000’.

Those are layer thicknesses (cloud heights), not base elevations. The suggestion above replaces all the more flattened cumulus coverage variants with ones that have more height to them. The file naming convention that ACES used has to do with sky coverage (1/8, 2/8, etc.). This is why I previously suggested clicking the "convert all broken coverages to 7/8" in ASN because it will introduce more variety to the low level cloud layer. Also allowing more than 3 cloud layers adds additional diversity (but that won't affect the cloud geometry). But unfortunately, the Cumulus Humilis CLD file just produces a lot of similar clouds. The texture set that is chosen (either default, the REX4 TD textures or others) also affects the way that the sprites are painted out. Unfortunately, the clouds are not truly volumetric and probably could be referred to as being 2.5D.

 

FSDeveloper has a tool that can be downloaded that will convert each CLD file to readable text, so one can see how each cloud type is designed. Here's a code snippet from the text version of the 1/8 broken coverage of Cumulus Humilis (showing the header and the 1st two planes):

; CLD File Text listing
; Generated by cldtool.exe, made by Sean Isom
; More info on the cloud format to come soon!


[Header]
FileVersion = 9100
PlaneCount = 378
TextureName = Cumulus01.bmp
ColorLevels = 5
Color1Height = 0
Color1Red = 190
Color1Green = 192
Color1Blue = 203
Color1Alpha = 255
Color2Height = 30
Color2Red = 212
Color2Green = 213
Color2Blue = 223
Color2Alpha = 230
Color3Height = 50
Color3Red = 228
Color3Green = 232
Color3Blue = 240
Color3Alpha = 210
Color4Height = 70
Color4Red = 237
Color4Green = 244
Color4Blue = 249
Color4Alpha = 190
Color5Height = 100
Color5Red = 255
Color5Green = 255
Color5Blue = 255
Color5Alpha = 160


[Plane.1]
XCenter = -6788.65
ZCenter = 213.074
NegYCenter = -6666.13
ShadingNum = 0
GroupNum = 13
WidthMin = 226
WidthMax = 226
LengthMin = 226
LengthMax = 226
MinimumRotation = 0
MaximumRotation =360
UVW1 = 0.25
UVW2 = 0
UVW3 = 0.5
UVW4 = 0.25

[Plane.2]
XCenter = -3248.93
ZCenter = 212.323
NegYCenter = -7856.44
ShadingNum = 1
GroupNum = 19
WidthMin = 288
WidthMax = 288
LengthMin = 288
LengthMax = 288
MinimumRotation = 0
MaximumRotation =360
UVW1 = 0.75
UVW2 = 0.25
UVW3 = 1
UVW4 = 0.5

That's more than anyone probably wanted to know, but obviously not all that there is to say about clouds in FSX/P3d.

[OmniAtlas]

There are a few fixes for these popcorn clouds....which one is the most straight forward? Using ASN here. Thanks.

[gfd]

http://reshade.me/

 

Have fun.     Fairly easy to install.   Finding your settings is what takes time.   I run in technicolor mode with their FXAA on with color curve corrections.

Brian,

 

I am interested in ReShade. Could you give me a quick install process for P3D 2.5? Or perhaps point me to a link?

 

Thanks a lot

[Kuragiman]

Brian,

 

I am interested in ReShade. Could you give me a quick install process for P3D 2.5? Or perhaps point me to a link?

 

Thanks a lot

 

Reshade.me

 

Download the Reshade w/ Framework package and follow the instructions.    This ReShade does not get installed directly into P3D/FSX.  You put it in it's on directory and run the Mediator program in the Reshade folder and point it at your FSX/P3D.EXE and that's about it.  From there it will handle the rest then you can start making adjustments and turning shaders off and on in real time while the sim is running until you find the look you are going for.

[G-YMML1]

Folks,

 

What is the final consensus on popcorn issues? Tired of seeing this as well. I have latest P3D 2.5 hotfixes + ASN/SP3. Would appreciate your suggestion.

[gfd]

Reshade.me

 

Download the Reshade w/ Framework package and follow the instructions.    This ReShade does not get installed directly into P3D/FSX.  You put it in it's on directory and run the Mediator program in the Reshade folder and point it at your FSX/P3D.EXE and that's about it.  From there it will handle the rest then you can start making adjustments and turning shaders off and on in real time while the sim is running until you find the look you are going for.

Thanks

[Guest Novation]

Folks,

 

What is the final consensus on popcorn issues? Tired of seeing this as well. I have latest P3D 2.5 hotfixes + ASN/SP3. Would appreciate your suggestion.

 

I find the only thing that really help is scaling them up in the Cloud.fx shader, which makes for other issues. Running them at .65 to .75 works quite well, but there is an fps impact, and issues with cloud bases in weather engines.

 

Sadly FSX (FS9 too) does clouds far better than P3D in both structure and colouration, the latter particularly during dusk and dawn where P3D falls flat on its face. Early versions of v2 were far better for sky's and clouds and I wished I'd kept a copy of v2.0 to mess with using some of its shaders in 2.5.

[CrownCityMisfits]

Anyone know if REX Architect helps? I'm on the fence with this purchase.

[MVelasquez]

Even with the cloud.fx it still shows popcorn clouds everywhere.