I just upgraded to P3Dv4 coming from P3Dv3.2 and figured I would give this PTA a go after reading lots of good things about it and how it transforms your simulator into something looking more real than ever.

So far I've only tried the preset called MattDavies_v1.1 that comes with PTA and pta2-preset-thopat-2_1 which I downloaded. Of these two I prefer the MattDavies one I think but might play around a bit more with the thopat one as well. Also noticed looking at the description of pta2-preset-thopat-2_1 that you're supposed to adjust both the HDR as well as many other settings which I didn't do at this time so maybe that will make things a lot better. Found it very dark unless it was during full daylight.

What I really would like to ask is about the integration with ENVTEX. There's a box in the ENVTEX interface where you can put in the path to PTA but I don't really understand the point doing that since PTA comes with its own UI where you simply choose your preferred preset (or make your own settings) and then hit apply.

Will do some reading in the documentation as well but thought I would just throw out a quick question here too hoping for some good advice how to use these two programs together for best results.

I agree that it does get a bit confusing. If you have PTA mod for modifying shader files, I think it is best to use it separately from ENVTEX and turn off ENVTEX shaders. ENVTEX specializes in injecting textures. PTA specializes in manipulating shaders.

I had the same integration pronlems, ended up going to Rex and ASCA. REX has its own PTA foles to chose from which seems to work well.

I just bought v4 last night but will wait for 4.1. Within 3.4 I have been using thopat and yes you need to play with your lighting to your liking. I find it amazing.  

Personally I think people set their sim up way too dark. There is a good reason why pilots were ray bans when flying.

2 hours ago, Nyxx said:

I just bought v4 last night but will wait for 4.1. Within 3.4 I have been using thopat and yes you need to play with your lighting to your liking. I find it amazing.  

Personally I think people set their sim up way too dark. There is a good reason why pilots were ray bans when flying.

Exactly! When I first used PTA and Ultimate Realism Pack, I opened up the sim, took one look, and said to myself "The sun finally came out!" I never realized that the sim never looked as if the sun was shining, even on a cloudless day! I could never go back to flying without these amazing addons!

 

Russ

Thanks for the input and tips guys!

I still don't really understand why you want to point out PTA in ENVTEX even after reading the ENVTEX doc but I'll just continue to play around with it.

Just downloaded URP which comes with a nice UI and all, very nice being a freeware/shareware tool!

Not sure though if I'm supposed to use either PTA or URP or both at the same time?

Things are getting a bit confusing here now...I have ENVTEX, PTA (which I bought yesterday) and now URP.

I figured I would spend this weekend actually flying and seeing what P3Dv4 is all about but right now I'm afraid I'll spend most of the weekend tweaking cloud and sun textures and trying out different HDR settings 

Hi guys !

I see you are a bit confused with the PTA integration feature, I must admit it can look unclear at first.

Currently this PTA integration only allows to export our own PTA preset (called PTAbsolute) to your PTA folder so you can load them easily into PTA. That said, we are looking into a full integration with PTA, meaning that PTAbsolute should be installable directly from Envtex without launching PTA itself (but you will still need it).

Also, ticking the "Use PTA" switch prevents the Envtex "shaders" feature to be enabled and prevents conflicts with PTA.

 

About URP and other presets, I recommend being careful because despites of our requests to the famous presets creators, they are using some extreme values with some tweaks that are creating an incompatibility with Aurora effects, resulting in not seeing them during night and seeing them as a black wave during dawn dusk. That's why we really recommend to use PTAbsolute instead which is fully optimized and compatible with Envtex.

We are going to provide a very important update to this preset in the next few days that will surely make it much more attractive than now thanks to tweaks which were never seen yet.

 

Hope this will help you :)

Thanks Maxime for this very good explanation as well as for the heads-up using some other presets together with Envtex.

Much appreciated!

On 9/29/2017 at 7:15 PM, Nyxx said:

I just bought v4 last night but will wait for 4.1. Within 3.4 I have been using thopat and yes you need to play with your lighting to your liking. I find it amazing.  

Personally I think people set their sim up way too dark. There is a good reason why pilots were ray bans when flying.

I use v4, PTA and the thopat, find ITT very dark, especially at night.

Does anyone know how to lighten it, any help/advice is appreciated.

Even a preset if available will be helpful.

Thanks

5 hours ago, kmax59 said:

We are going to provide a very important update to this preset in the next few days that will surely make it much more attractive than now thanks to tweaks which were never seen yet.

Where will you announce when this new preset is available? 

1 hour ago, ozflyer said:

I use v4, PTA and the thopat, find ITT very dark, especially at night.

Does anyone know how to lighten it, any help/advice is appreciated.

Even a preset if available will be helpful.

Thanks

See the Mega Presets thread.

There are multiple presets to choose from.

2 hours ago, ozflyer said:

I use v4, PTA and the thopat, find ITT very dark, especially at night.

Does anyone know how to lighten it, any help/advice is appreciated.

Even a preset if available will be helpful.

Thanks

I still haven't bought PTA because all screenshots I see look too dark and the colors are too saturated. Very unrealistic. I've been told you have to see it in action in order to appreciate it but I just don't dare to spend money on it. I also absolutely HATE tweaking (after having done it for many years) so I will also HATE fooling around with all the possible options and settings (which seems to be necessary even with presets you can download). Whenever I see screenshots that look real to me I might get it but until then I still don't get what all the fuss is about. 

Also: after getting back to P3D I see ENVTEX is mentioned a lot: seems to be something like REX textures: do we really need more textures? It all looks the same to me but maybe I am not looking good enough. I still love my free HDE v2 clouds.

Still, these are interesting developments... just don't know if it is all worth the money and trouble.

1 hour ago, J van E said:

I still haven't bought PTA because all screenshots I see look too dark and the colors are too saturated. Very unrealistic. I've been told you have to see it in action in order to appreciate it but I just don't dare to spend money on it. I also absolutely HATE tweaking (after having done it for many years) so I will also HATE fooling around with all the possible options and settings (which seems to be necessary even with presets you can download). Whenever I see screenshots that look real to me I might get it but until then I still don't get what all the fuss is about. 

Also: after getting back to P3D I see ENVTEX is mentioned a lot: seems to be something like REX textures: do we really need more textures? It all looks the same to me but maybe I am not looking good enough. I still love my free HDE v2 clouds.

Still, these are interesting developments... just don't know if it is all worth the money and trouble.

Well you said it, You do need to see it in action and there is no going back afterwards.

As for being too dark just adjust the lighting within v4 it really is that easy. Also PTA it's not hard to tweak to your liking within it.

Is it worth the money and trouble? DL PTA, DL thopat. See the sim looking like nothing you have seen before is that a lot of trouble? It's only £15. Have many people do you read that have un installed it?

If you Don't Dare it really is your loss. I spent around 30 mins getting it how I like, you never have to touch it again. P3D looks wasted out, bland and void of depth without it. But like you I thought it looked fine before I saw the light.

People monitors are all different with different colour casts and contrasts levels. Looking at photos is almost a waste of time. But its upto you 

You can bring a horse to water but you cannot make it drink  

But like everyone its your Sim enjoy it how your please 

@Nyxx is absolutely right there. Full Ack. I use the Thopat preset and it is so nice. I agree, the nights are pretty dark. But that's the same in reality. On my last night flight from Greece to Germany all i could see where some lights on the ground, the rest was pitch black - and that's what I get in P3D.