B17 released

[sightseer 895]

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

The haze color is controlled by the bottom row of each sky color texture. In other words, the color of the first row of the sky textures determine the color of the haze.

 

Murmur, I know that's part of it but theres more to it - at least at sunset.  Ive made the bottom rows of my sunset tests very dark and yet the haze is still a light blue (with the 'mount' texture).  It changes with each texture you choose so it must be changeable via the textures or sunglow files.  I guess it could be datarefs but I hope not because Im still too new to X Plane to want to modify things that way.  Besides that, Ben says datarefs may suddenly change or even disappear and apparently they are very intent on making haze level a constant.  but hopefully not color as that would make things difficult for sky designers.

 

[Murmur 3,941]

1 hour ago, sightseer said:

Murmur, I know that's part of it but theres more to it - at least at sunset.  Ive made the bottom rows of my sunset tests very dark and yet the haze is still a light blue (with the 'mount' texture).  It changes with each texture you choose so it must be changeable via the textures or sunglow files.

Correct, it's also determined by some specific datarefs that control atmosphere scattering. In particular, if you search for all the datarefs with the term "raleigh" in it, you'll see that each of them influences the haze color and appearence. Each specific sky texture also has a corresponding specific "raleigh" dataref that controls the amount of Rayleigh scattering.

[GusRodrigues 1]

21 hours ago, jh71 said:

I know this script, but it is on purpose, it is not a bug...  . 

On purpose or not, is broken.

9 hours ago, Novation said:

Nope, not to me, but maybe I'm stupid?

I'll keep using the script, as long as it works, until its improved offically..... if it is.

ditto. It is broken. It doesn't matter if is intentional or not, it shouldn't behave like that. I understand time constraint to release RC and final builds of the sim, but cockpit lightning during dusk/dawn is one of the best selling features of the sim. And LR left it (intentionally) broken from day 0.

[soaring_penguin 428]

3 hours ago, GusRodrigues said:

On purpose or not, is broken.

ditto. It is broken. It doesn't matter if is intentional or not, it shouldn't behave like that. I understand time constraint to release RC and final builds of the sim, but cockpit lightning during dusk/dawn is one of the best selling features of the sim. And LR left it (intentionally) broken from day 0.

Could we please stop beating a dead horse? A bug is sth that is unintentionally broken and needs fixing asap, because it makes the program unusable. This is a workaround for incorrect lightning/shadow in the cockpit. 

In my line of field, we call such an implementation "a feature, not a bug (sic)". That is what I did above. Sorry if my humor escaped you.

By the way, it has been this way since at least the start of XP10. There is a workaround with datarefs, but it is incorrect also (but I agree, it looks very nice under the correct conditions).  Laminar has plans to improve on this. In the mean time, I plan on enjoying the most visually pleasing civil flightsim yet. Yesterday I did an evening helicopter flight over the French provence with the bell 429 (you must search the .org, the best freeware chopper out there, and xp11 compatible). I could almost smell the lavender !

[Jimm 437]

1 hour ago, jh71 said:

There is a workaround with datarefs, but it is incorrect also (but I agree, it looks very nice under the correct conditions).

Anything that can be fixed with Datarefs means that Ben and the rest of the team can simply implement the correct values, and hardcode it, similarly to how the clouds were magically fixed. 

[Mountain Man 142]

9 hours ago, GusRodrigues said:

...cockpit lightning during dusk/dawn is one of the best selling features of the sim.

It thought it was the flight modeling.

[sightseer 895]

17 hours ago, Murmur said:

Correct, it's also determined by some specific datarefs that control atmosphere scattering. In particular, if you search for all the datarefs with the term "raleigh" in it, you'll see that each of them influences the haze color and appearence. Each specific sky texture also has a corresponding specific "raleigh" dataref that controls the amount of Rayleigh scattering.

 

OK.  thanks, Murmur.  I'll keep looking.   It took me a couple of years to notice the nuances of FSX lighting so I guess Ive got time.

[Longranger 148]

8 hours ago, Jimm said:

Anything that can be fixed with Datarefs means that Ben and the rest of the team can simply implement the correct values,

The only problem: The pixelated shadows would be back. It is simply a question which problem is more obvious.

And since they know what the longterm solultion will be, they won´t put any work into this problem.

That´s the reason why it is a feature. A well know system behaviour that isn´t really wanted, but it wouldn´t be worth to really fix the problem.

[Jimm 437]

4 minutes ago, Longranger said:

The only problem: The pixelated shadows would be back. It is simply a question which problem is more obvious.

And since they know what the longterm solultion will be, they won´t put any work into this problem.

That´s the reason why it is a feature. A well know system behaviour that isn´t really wanted, but it wouldn´t be worth to really fix the problem.

Not sure what you're getting at, but I do know that if a dataref exists for a feature, then either LR will take care of it, or we can.  I haven't had an issue with pixelated shadows, since I discovered the datarefs that cover that and can manually set the values and place it all in a Lua script...pretty simple.  it's pretty well common knowledge that Ben has stated that there is still so much to fix, but for now, they need to get the release product out the door, then they can tackle the rest and release it as a patch. 

[Longranger 148]

6 minutes ago, Jimm said:

 Ben has stated that there is still so much to fix, but for now, they need to get the release product out the door, then they can tackle the rest and release it as a patch. 

Not for the cockpit. The cockpit doesn´t matter anymore, since it will get a totally different environment together with an In-Game editor. It is no longer worth to put any work into this system.

The same reason why many of the effects didn´t get any updates. They will be replaced.

[Jimm 437]

1 minute ago, Longranger said:

Not for the cockpit. The cockpit doesn´t matter anymore, since it will get a totally different environment together with an In-Game editor. It is no longer worth to put any work into this system.

The same reason why many of the effects didn´t get any updates. They will be replaced.

What is the problem with the cockpit?  If you are referring to cockpit shadows, again, this is easily fixed with dataref settings.

[hjsmuc 393]

When you are talking about cockpit shadows you mean the ones which can be fixed with the max and min shadow_angle dataref, right? If not, I'd like to learn about other dataref fixes for the cockpit.

[Longranger 148]

32 minutes ago, Jimm said:

What is the problem with the cockpit?  If you are referring to cockpit shadows, again, this is easily fixed with dataref settings.

The cockpit is a general PBR problem. In general the PBR algorithms have the normal behaviour of the eyes integrated into their algorithms.

In the Cockpit you have some places that are in the sun with 100.000 Lux and some in the shadows with 10.000 Lux. In principle you wouldn´t be able to see the instruments that are in the shadow. But our brain uses itself and the limitations of the eye to get around the problem. We don´t really see the image that we believe to see. It is more an animated memory rendering that is constantly updated with tiny details that we want to see.

So the brain tries to move the eye into a position where it isn´t so bothered by the sun. It opens the iris as far as possible, throws away overbright areas, highlights the dark areas and adds this information to our brain image. 

The normal game engine can't really handle these effects, but game engines can do. So he wrote http://developer.x-plane.com/2017/02/maybe-x-plane-is-a-first-person-shooter/  .

It will be another game changer. Older cockpits will look outdated. Game designers get faster better results and Ben gets rid of a whole array of borderline problems.