Personally I don't see the problem when using ASN + REX Soft clouds and clouds set to max density within V3, I did a flight from KLAX to KSFO PMDG 777 the sky/clouds looked fantastic.

IMO REX Soft clouds is a must, brilliant addon for P3D

David I use ASN with Rex Texture, would I really see a diffence with Soft Clouds as well thrown in?

Yes big time Elaine , Soft clouds is a sim changer.

Personally I don't see the problem when using ASN + REX Soft clouds and clouds set to max density within V3, I did a flight from KLAX to KSFO PMDG 777 the sky/clouds looked fantastic.

IMO REX Soft clouds is a must, brilliant addon for P3D

 

 

Agree totally

Good stuff David. Great value too

Wait to you see them  :smile:

Yes big time Elaine , Soft clouds is a sim changer.

Which set you use?

Because I do not see a big difference between clouds of REX4 at 512 and those of Soft Clouds.

Which set you use?

Because I do not see a big difference between clouds of REX4 at 512 and those of Soft Clouds.

 

Hi,

 

if you have stand alone Soft Clouds. Try the first set of clouds. If you have REX 4 TD + Soft Clouds then they are the last sets in the app. In fact there is a major difference between the REX 4 clouds and the Soft Clouds.

Yes big time Elaine , Soft clouds is a sim changer.

 

You just brought me to buying Soft Clouds today after work

Looking forward to it...

Hi,

 

if you have stand alone Soft Clouds. Try the first set of clouds. If you have REX 4 TD + Soft Clouds then they are the last sets in the app. In fact there is a major difference between the REX 4 clouds and the Soft Clouds.

+1

Even with Soft clouds intergrated into REX4 TD you have to scroll to fine the real soft clouds.

You just brought me to buying Soft Clouds today after work

Looking forward to it...

Enjoy

Where might one find this tweak?

 

I think it might have been in the old popcorn clouds thread. What happened was LM made an error in cloud.fx at v2.3 with GetScreenQuadPositions(quad, width*1.0, height*1.0); so I believe it was Beau Hollis that posted this hotfix where you change that to GetScreenQuadPositions(quad, width*0.5, height*0.5);

 

What you need to do is open Prepar3D v3\ShadersHLSL\Cloud.fx in Notepad or Notepad++ and go to line #315, by default you'll see GetScreenQuadPositions(quad, width*0.5, height*0.5); so you just scale the clouds by changing 0.5 to 0.65 (or whatever you prefer up to 1.0 but try 0.65 first). Note if you search Cloud.fx for "GetScreenQuadPositions" this will be the 2nd occurrence, leave the first one alone.

 

At that point you can either simply save the file (make a backup first in that case) or preferably do "save as" and save the modified version in an external ShadersHLSL folder. Then open ProgramData\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v3\shadersHLSL.cfg in Notepad and add your external folder above the default folder like this:

 

[Entry.0]

Title=Tweaked Shaders

Path=D:\P3Dv3 Addon Content\ShadersHLSL

Required=True

Active=True

 

[Entry.1]

Title=Default Shaders

Path=ShadersHLSL

Required=True

Active=True

 

Make sure the Path= in [Entry.0] is correct for your own situation. With this "compliant" method you can just delete the shadersHLSL.cfg to revert if you don't like it, the sim will generate a new default shadersHLSL.cfg the next time you start the sim.

 

The problem with this tweak is that there's a certain point in cloud coverage density where your frames will tank badly, the larger the multiplier you choose in clouds.fx the more susceptible to "frame tanking" you'll be. When ASN sends Wx updates to the sim they don't remove the previously depicted clouds immediately which keeps clouds from popping in and out of view, and for a while you'll have double clouds, that's when you'll most likely see the frames plummet, it depends on the cloud depiction, if ASN is depicting fair weather with few clouds you probably won't notice any difference at all, in heavy overcast it can ruin your flight though so you sorta need to apply the tweak when you're expecting fair weather and un-apply it if you're planning to fly in heavy cloud cover. That's easy to do in the shadersHLSL.cfg just by setting Active=False on the external ShadersHLSL folder [Entry.0].

 

Also note with the scaled clouds your ceilings and tops may not coincide with what your Wx program is trying to depict, larger multipliers in cloud.fx will exacerbate this discrepancy. Just don't start a thread at HiFi telling them their cloud ceilings aren't accurate because the problem isn't with them, it's the tweaked cloud.fx that's causing the inaccuracy, lol.

 

Jim

.....

 

What you need to do is open Prepar3D v3\ShadersHLSL\Cloud.fx in Notepad or Notepad++ and go to line #315, by default you'll see GetScreenQuadPositions(quad, width*0.5, height*0.5); so you just scale the clouds by changing 0.5 to 0.65 (or whatever you prefer up to 1.0 but try 0.65 first). Note if you search Cloud.fx for "GetScreenQuadPositions" this will be the 2nd occurrence, leave the first one alone.

.....

 

Jim

 

Thanks Jim. That certainly has improved things.

Even with the extra width and height there is still some very apparent repeating textures, which give messy and very fake looking structures - any yes popcorny at times. Making them very large (0.75 or bigger) helps, but performance really suffers, and it will play hell with weather engines base placement. 0.65 x 0.65 seem the sweet spot between performance and better blending of the cumulus01 textures, while not causing too many issues with placement.

 

The other problem is the way they handle lighting, remaining very bright during dawn and dusk, and even glowing brightly when the sky has gone completely dark. Adding tweaks to the cloud.fx shader to darken them and use more sky colour helps somewhat, but they still remain very poor compared to the way FSX deals with them. It is for me the last remaining advantage FSX has over P3D and an area I wish LM would take a look at..

 

edit to illustrate.

 

P3DV3 with scaled clouds to 0.65 settings at max.

 

FSX.

Here are some Screenshots with ASN and REX Soft Clouds - no other Tweaks.

Looks amazing in my eyes.

 

http://imgur.com/a/Xy4dr

How I got rid of the popcorn clouds:

 

I had them in v2.5 and they carried over to v3. I have REX texture direct and soft clouds installed. I stumbled up the fix by accident, while trying to tweak my system. When I opened the 'Lighting' sections under display options I noticed that the sliders for 'Enables shadow cast distance', 'Cloud shadow cast distance' and 'Object Shadow cast distance' were all to the left showing zero on all. I recall applying these settings from a 'tweak' read to fix other issues for v2.5 and I applied them as a 'carry over' in v3.

 

My fix:

 

Set 'Enable shadow cast distance' and 'Cloud shadow cast distance' to 20000m and 'Object Shadow cast distance' to 3000m (this can be adjusted to suit). I'm not saying this is a guaranteed fix, only that it worked for me.