VC shadow edge flickering and a top ceiling issue.

[govindsr180 1]

hey guys..

 

So after installing steve's dx10 fixer..everything is great..the ground shadows..other fixes etc..however i noticed 2 discrepancies.

 

1. The VC shadow's edges are flickering. May i know why this might be due to?

 

2. I see a top ceiling issue as shown in the image given below. May i know what is causing this?

 

 

The sky above appears to be like a darker hole.

 

3. Is it possible to use steve's dx10 fixer with SGSS set to none in NVI? Am i loosing anything sue to this? Currently i have set AA in steve's fixer to 8xCSAA with 4x SGSS set in NVI.

 

thankign you

 

govind

[SteveFx 258]

Welcome Govind

 

On 1   you will see a little movement on the edge of VC Shadows. The quality of the effect is limited by the size of the shadowmap buffer.  FSX has to calculate the shadows in real time so once per frame.  Some of the movement you see comes from vibrations of the airframe - if you turn off the engines you should notice an improvement (at least for a short while...).  The rest comes from the modelled rotation of the earth.  I have improved it as much as I can but there are still limits. 

 

On 2  I think that's just FSX, if you compare with DX9 I believe its the same.  The colours come from the sky textures.   If you turn off filtering you can see bands corresponding to the lines in the sky_*  textures.  

 

On 3.  Standard AA works on the edge of 3D objects that are modelled so e.g the edge of a window frame against the outside.  It doesn't work on lines inside textures. So if you turn off SGSS you will see a deterioration on writing within  gauges and writing and lines on the aircraft.

 

I should add that DX10 without SGSS should look the same as DX9 without SGSS!  It improves the image but costs GPU performance in both cases. (there is no CPU cost as its all in the GPU).

[govindsr180 1]

thanks steve for the quick response. So as per your replies:

 

1. Some VC edge jagging would still be there and i have to live with it..correct?

 

2. turn off anisotropic filtering you mean? ok..so this means this is not due to dx10 and it appears in dx9 too and its normal correct? I just wanted to confirm that.

 

3. hmm..i turned off SGSS and noticed this. So i guess keeping this ON is good. I am thinking of using 8xCSAA antialiasing along with 2x SGSS( though from the table it is told to use 4xSGSS). will this cause any issues?

 

thanking you

govind

[SteveFx 258]

on 1) yes - sorry but that's the way it is

 

On 2) yes - I don't mean that you should fly with filtering off by the way!  - just that if you try as an experiment you can gain an insight into how the sky textures are used - they are in the textures directory and you can view them with paint by the way.

 

On 3)  I don't think it will cause any issues but I  don't think it will save you much in performance terms.

on 1) make sure that you have HD shadows on of course - but I assume that you do.

[govindsr180 1]

thanks steve again for a quicker response.

 

1. HD shadows is definitely ON. shadow bias is set to 0.5. But i dont think changing this value is gonna stop edge flickering. That will always be there right? I am glas that now i have VC and external shadows. Sim looks more real.

 

2. I am using rex sky textures. I just wanted to confirm that this image is normal and as per you mentioned, it is normal. So i am ok with this.

 

3. Do you mean there is no difference between 2x SGSS and 4x SGSS?? there is no difference much in terms of performance and its better to have 4x SGSS enabled?

 

thanking you

govind

[SteveFx 258]

1) agree

 

2)  To me it looks normal   I loaded a flight (also using REX for the sky textures actually) and it looks similar in DX9 and DX10

 

3)  I would suggest experimenting with the two as I am unsure.   I  have a suspicion  that actually the number of samples on the standard AA determines the quality and cost of the SGSS  but it was a very long time ago that I experimented.    Try the two and see which you prefer.

[govindsr180 1]

1. nothing more to say regards to this.

 

2. So final confirming..what you see in the image that i posted is normal right? and expected and same as dx9 and dx10?

 

3. I guess in terms of clarity definitely 4xSGSS looks better..and since performance has moved to GPU, there is no big effect.

 

thanking you

govind

[SteveFx 258]

2 yes

 

3 the challenge is in heavy clouds, sgss can be a problem then depending on gpu power.