Prepar3D Tweak Assistant (PTA)

[Pe11e 812]

Just a heads up!

Terrain brightness in RSP is not Boost light on the illuminated areas in PTA! Knossos mixed it.

I've tested the values and tweaked for days, and I'm QUITE sure that is pretty much like this (below are the values used in RSP):

 

 

 

These are EXACT values for my current RSP setup - terrain brightness medium, shadows high! I've applied these values and my sim looks the same, so I'm quite sure about it.

 

Also note that extreme values that are not within the RSP limits (0.2 - 0.8 for terrain brightness) and (1.40 - 2.00 for shadow intensity) will not have any effect. For example if you set 0.9 for terrain brightness very high and 1.20 for very high shadow intensity, you will get identical visuals as you chose 0.8/1.40. I've tested extreme values and they didn't had any effect, I'm pretty sure about it, as I've said I've spent days (9-10 days to be exact) tweaking and testing these values, and comparing them with identical screenshots.

 

cheers

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Just a heads up!

 

Terrain brightness in RSP is not Boost light on the illuminated areas in PTA! Knossos mixed it.

I

 

Cool - thanks Guys

[Kensta1092 0]

Whoa! Thanks for adding DPX! By the way, I got a screengrab that show how exaggerated my shaders are in a morning flight from Tacloban to Dumaguete City... Note I have shadows off since it's a limitation of the Intel HD 4400's power (or the CPU, idk what part processes the calculations for dynamic shadowing).

 

It's 05:46 according to the chronometer, and the way I set up my shaders makes clouds and the cockpit look too bright. I'm pretty darn sure that is far from realistic. I had Curves, Lift Gamma Gain, Technicolor and Vibrance enabled with custom values here and there.

[KNOSSOS 122]

Terrain brightness in RSP is not Boost light on the illuminated areas in PTA! Knossos mixed it.

Thanks for testing that, Pe11e!

Shadows intensity works as described (lower values mean deeper shadow):

 

(all other shaders default)

 

Shadows intensity default (=1.00)

 

 

 

 

 

Shadows intensity=0.5

 

 

 

 

 

Shadows intensity=0.2

 

 

 

 

 

But yes, this ratio also slightly affects overall lighting because

Overall sun lighting = Ambient sun lighting + Diffuse sun lighting.

Ambient lighting significantly affects shadows.

The second tweak (Boost light on illuminated areas) affects diffuse lighting and, of course, overall lighting. As I wrote (http://www.avsim.com/topic/486643-brighter-terrain-darker-cloud-shadows-done/page-6#entry3403232) personally I don't like that adjustment,

but include it in PTA because some people could find it useful.

Definitely my mistake was named it "Boost light on illuminated areas". I think it is good idea to rename it in next release to 'Boost diffuse lighting' or so to eliminate the confusion.

 

As for http://www.avsim.com/topic/489018-prepar3d-tweak-assistant-pta/page-9#entry3431259 :

I just set up RSP 1.1 on default P3D, set various settings on page "Terrain & Shadows", press Install and analyzed changes in shaders. Are these values correct?

(If yes, set the same values in PTA will give same results because it makes the SAME changes in shaders).

[vertigho 8]

Some screenshots from several flights tonight. The upper portion of the sky (which honestly should not be seen) is clearly oversaturated, and that's my fault. I need to adjust some of my ezdok views. Hopefully that doesn't kill the immersion *too* much. 

 

[Kensta1092 0]

Some screenshots from several flights tonight. The upper portion of the sky (which honestly should not be seen) is clearly oversaturated, and that's my fault.

The water is so realistic though. What's your rig?

[vertigho 8]

The water is so realistic though. What's your rig?

 

Haswell i7 4790K, running at 4.7 GHz.

Nvidia GTX970 running @ 1253 MHz. 

 

Far from perfect but this rig runs fairly well. Have had to scale back certain settings (notably anti-aliasing via NVI) in order to avoid GPU stutters, but with a Twitch stream running via OBS, I had ~20 frames on final in KJFK. Some mild CPU-related slowdown occurs; not stuttering, per se, but a slightly noticeable slowing of the frames in high autogen areas at low altitudes. Naturally there's some variance from scenery-to-scenery and aircraft-to-aircraft, too. The CPU also gets a bit warm with all of this going on, but goes no higher than the mid-70s. 

 

I'm just counting my blessings because I know how difficult these flight simulators can be to get running fairly smoothly. 

[Kensta1092 0]

Haswell i7 4790K, running at 4.7 GHz.

Nvidia GTX970 running @ 1253 MHz. 

Still infinitely better than an Haswell i5 4210U running at 1.7 GHz and an Intel HD 4400... If any sort of program would put a computer and its power to the test, it has to be a flight simulator.

[Pilot53 544]

Thank you for this program!  The atmospheric  scattering effect is the best thing to happen to p3d since cloud shadows!

[roi1862 611]

Am i the only one who notice that cirrus clouds are still bright at night no matter what ?

 

BTW the night lights tweak is a monster tweak ! Thank you so much for that !

[KNOSSOS 122]

Thanks guys! Much appreciated!

 

Some screenshots from several flights tonight.

Your screenshots look just... WOW. Amazing! What version of P3D? 3.3?

[Pilot53 544]

Am i the only one who notice that cirrus clouds are still bright at night no matter what ?

 

BTW the night lights tweak is a monster tweak ! Thank you so much for that !

To fix this I lowered hdr brightness in p3d settings, and turned bloom up while disabling light adaptation in PTA.  Gives a nice effect, but in the future a way to make night darker while keeping day the same would be great.

[Sethos 4,513]

Am i the only one who notice that cirrus clouds are still bright at night no matter what ?

 

BTW the night lights tweak is a monster tweak ! Thank you so much for that !

 

Yeah, my pet peeve at the moment.

[pgde 571]

Hi All:

 

I am getting the following error in PTA version 3.3 --

 

ERROR: shader file E:\Prepar3D v3\ShadersHLSL\Cloud.fx is not original Prepar3D shader and can't be used.

ERROR: shader file E:\Prepar3D v3\ShadersHLSL\GPUTerrain.fx is not original Prepar3D shader and can't be used.

ERROR: shader file E:\Prepar3D v3\ShadersHLSL\GPUTerrain.fxh is not original Prepar3D shader and can't be used.

 

This can't be right since I just did an install of P3D (3.2 Pro Plus) on another of my PCs deleted the original HLSL folder and copied the contents of ShadersHLSL back to the original spot and I still get this error.

 

Am I doing something wrong?

 

Thx

 

P.

[Guest tymk]

There are separate versions of PTA for different P3Dv3 versions -- for your version, you need to use the "Download PTA for Prepar3D v3.2" link.

 

Tym