Brighter terrain, darker cloud shadows - DONE!

[virtualstuff 758]

Andre ,

 

You could give my approach for nightflying a try.

 

Nightflying I am doing with Night Environment.

 

My settings with HDR on :

-.brightness 0.35

- bloom 10.0 --> this you need to modify this manually in your P3D.cfg file

- saturisation 0.90

 

The low brightness value makes even the clouds dark, but the high bloom value brings very nice nightlighting.

I use photoscenery only, mostly Mega Scenery Earth. Also for the Netherlands as the NL2000 underground is too dark compared to other countries.

However , I use their 3D objects...

 

Here a screenshot at night with the settings above

 

 

Great shot Gerard I'm on the night environment bandwagon to love it...

Loading already a special CFG for night flying and have it pitch black as in the real world only LM should workout HDR in combination with tess and colours...

 

Playing only now with the shader GPUTerrain.fx for shadows and haze to see the effect and performances

issues, I personally don't like the HSL and cloud FX because it throws the rest out of balance with other issues.

[GSalden 4,656]

Andre, I only have cloudshadows * 0.5.

Nothing regarding the GPUterrain.fx file

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Well done have to load this tweak up for sure - factory clouds were barley noticeable - thank you - looks awesome

[Stefan Muehlemann 2]

Follow this tread.

[ryanbatc 12,851]

Can I adjust this value or values to brighten overcast? I fly in bad weather a lot and would like to see my VC a little better. I think as it is now its too dark. Note I run HDR disabled.

[virtualstuff 758]

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Nice video - any special settings for terrain haze other than using the files in this pack ? thanks

[b757 43]

Here are some shots with those files loaded in my sim. I am really impressed. I am now going to try those files from that video that was just posted.

 

 

 

 

 

I am also running ReShade, which needed some tweaking with these files. I am pretty pleased with the results so far.

​

[Pe11e 812]

 

Yep, that is the guy that sent me the files, and you can see that exactly in the comments! Yes, I'm SimHead on YouTube.

So that pack that Leo Grant has sent me is exactly the same as in my pack. His files are with "_alternative" added in the file name.

Nice video - any special settings for terrain haze other than using the files in this pack ? thanks

 

Nope, exactly the same tweaks, except that he is using different sky texture that changed the haze to that strong blue.

[Jakub Compel 8]

Big thanks ! Cheers * 0.3 , 2.1f

 

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Yep, that is the guy that sent me the files, and you can see that exactly in the comments! Yes, I'm SimHead on YouTube.

So that pack that Leo Grant has sent me is exactly the same as in my pack. His files are with "_alternative" added in the file name.

 

Nope, exactly the same tweaks, except that he is using different sky texture that changed the haze to that strong blue.

 

Thanks - this reminds me of shade - havent figured out exactly whats going on but its interesting but noticed seems to be darker at dawn and dusk - cloud dark areas seem a bit odd - again not sure - also noticed fog on gives you a more natural (blended) appearance in the distance

[Pe11e 812]

Thanks - this reminds me of shade - havent figured out exactly whats going on but its interesting but noticed seems to be darker at dawn and dusk - cloud dark areas seem a bit odd - again not sure - also noticed fog on gives you a more natural (blended) appearance in the distance

 

I ditched shade after some testing, it completely ruined that natural ambient occlusion like shadows that P3D has. I suggest you to ditch it laso, you can control the intensity of cockpit shadows with sky textures. For example REX sky textures have pretty pale shadow setting. One darn pixel in sky_noon.bmp controls the shadow color, and I changed it to my preference.

[John_Tavendale 453]

Awesome work! Thanks so much.

[Pe11e 812]

Short preview of the shader pack tweaks. From dawn till dusk.

 

 

The only culprit here is that you must enable cast shadows on building and vegetation, which has quite an impact on fps. With disabled, trees and buildings will stay lit even in the shade, good example is in this video.

 

 

Anyway, it was easy to make X-Plane like blue haze. Realism Shader Pack v1 + editing the sky texture = this:

 

[MikeT707 1,181]

I want to encourage people to give this a try. I just set it up on my system and upon initial impressions, it looks pretty good.

 

 

Anyway, it was easy to make X-Plane like blue haze. Realism Shader Pack v1 + editing the sky texture = this:
 
 

How do you edit the sky texture?

 

Also, do you know if it is possible to utilize a different two rows of pixels in the sky_noon_x.bmp to define the haze color?