I hear you and I fully understand you when you say you rather fly that try things out. I'm just the same 

The most important thing is to find something you really like and then there's not much more to it. For anyone new though who hasn't tried any of these different shaders add-ons out yet I would suggest to start with URP since it's free.

As for high contrast in URP there's actually two different options where you can choose high or low contrast. And that is in fact the only setting you ever need to worry about in URP - nothing else to decide other than if you also like to use the included sky textures as well as the sun mod.

For being a freeware tool I find URP amazing and it comes highly recommended.

1 hour ago, J van E said:

Of course you can also use PTA as a set-and-forget experience: you do not HAVE to tinker and experiment. I didn't. I use PTA, tried various preset and finally used the one I liked. Didn't tweak anything at all. So I used 'minimal settings' and I let the program do the 'hard' work and all that with PTA.

I didn't say, that you HAVE to tinker!!! I said, that you COULD / if you LIKE to tinker with settings. Of course you can set and forget. My point is, that if ENVSHADE doesn't let you change anything - so that would probably preferable. 

Could you please try to stop taking words out of my mouth, and use them to support your own conclusions?

Jeez...

7 minutes ago, Anders Bermann said:

I didn't say, that you HAVE to tinker!!! I said, that you COULD / if you LIKE to tinker with settings. Of course you can set and forget. My point is, that if ENVSHADE doesn't let you change anything - so that would probably preferable. 

Could you please try to stop taking words out of my mouth, and use them to support your own conclusions?

Jeez...

I know you didn't say that but people who don't know much about these addons might have gotten the impression that PTA is for tinkerers and ENVSHADE is for those who like things easy. And that not the case. It was just adding information to what you said, clarifying things, that's all. No need to go all 'jeez'. 

4 hours ago, J van E said:

If you don't want to tweak etc. and you don't own any of these products yet it seems the obvious choice to get ENVSHADE but as I said before: you only get one preset with it... if you don't like it, bad luck.

I'm not sure about that, my understanding is that ENVSHADE will adapt the preset depending of the conditions of your flight to provide the most suited one. So you don't have only one preset you have plenty of them but I concurs that you have to rely on the program to decide for you.

@kmax59 can you confirm ?

24 minutes ago, Bushido5 said:

I'm not sure about that, my understanding is that ENVSHADE will adapt the preset depending of the conditions of your flight to provide the most suited one. So you don't have only one preset you have plenty of them but I concurs that you have to rely on the program to decide for you.

@kmax59 can you confirm ?

Yes, would be really nice if Maxime could comment on this and help all of us understand how all this dynamic stuff really works in ENVSHADE since there seems to be quite a bit of confusion around that.

How on earth should that work? The tool isn't running in the background during a flight and it doesn't know anything about the conditions of your flight.

I think the "dynamic" thing is just marketing bla bla...

4 minutes ago, fly_edds said:

How on earth should that work? The tool isn't running in the background during a flight and it doesn't know anything about the conditions of your flight.

I think the "dynamic" thing is just marketing bla bla...

That's what I asked in their forums, but I haven't got an answer...

18 minutes ago, fly_edds said:

How on earth should that work? The tool isn't running in the background during a flight and it doesn't know anything about the conditions of your flight.

I think the "dynamic" thing is just marketing bla bla...

Unless ENVDIR is driving it.. In hence why I ask my questions here, I will wait until the developer respond.

Simbol

Would be really cool if there indeed are some dynamic parts included because that would differentiate ENVSHADE quite a bit from the competition.

2 hours ago, Bushido5 said:

I'm not sure about that, my understanding is that ENVSHADE will adapt the preset depending of the conditions of your flight to provide the most suited one. So you don't have only one preset you have plenty of them but I concurs that you have to rely on the program to decide for you.

I think it works the same as with PTA: certain settings get applied under certain circumstances (time of day, altitude). Nothing new here. No shaders are being modified during use. And you only have one preset (formerly known as PTAbsolute but I suppose with some changes and/or enhancements). Would be nice if the dev would acknowledge this so we can get this rumour out of this world. The fact that he seems reluctant to answer all the questions about this, tells something. The longer people think ENVSHADE is something totally new and not just another standalone PTA preset, the more sales he will make. (Yes, yes, yes, I am trying to provoke an answer LOL )

Guys, forget about any dynamic changes, its not reshade which hooks into the output layer of your Direct-X graphic card (which would allow changes while P3D is running). It simply overwrites the P3D shader files which are being loaded during initial start up. Also it doesnt talk to P3D through simconnect or any other interface, thats why it doesnt need to be running in the background like ASCA for example. Changing the shaders on the fly would require P3D to reload the world (like when you change certain graphic settings while P3D is running), however i dont think its even possible to force P3D to reload shaders while its running. 

I agree that the description (https://togapjcts.wixsite.com/toga/envshade) is a bit misleading (Marketing blabla as Sebastian already stated), things like "Brightness variating with weather, time of day, sun and moonlight" could imply that its indeed dynamically based on weather and time of the day. What that means it that it strives to provide a balanced reproduction of the world around you, independent of weather and time of day. 

So unlike most PTA presets which are either great in daylight and terrible at night or the other way around, its a balanced shader set, thats why some changes a rather subtile when applied. 

 

2 minutes ago, Woozie said:

Changing the shaders on the fly would require P3D to reload the world (like when you change certain graphic settings while P3D is running), however i dont think its even possible to force P3D to reload shaders while its running. 

There are ways to declare post processing shaders on the fly via source code to different cameras, and these can be driven depending of variable conditions.

http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/sdk/cameras/custom_post-process.html 

Again I will leave Karmax to answer this, it is his product.

Regards,
Simbol

1 minute ago, simbol said:

There are ways to declare post processing shaders on the fly via source code to different cameras, and these can be driven depending of variable conditions.

http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/sdk/cameras/custom_post-process.html 

Again I will leave Karmax to answer this, it is his product.

Regards,
Simbol

That doesnt look like "on the fly" to me. Its rather a camera/view point based custom shader, similar to night vision view. I run ENVSHADE on a networked PC and monitored communication between SIM pc and networked PC, there's no talking at all in regards to ENVSHADE. 

 

But yes, ultimately its up to @kmax59 to shed some light on this. But better keep your hopes low if you expect any dynamic shader injection

1 minute ago, Woozie said:

That doesnt look like "on the fly" to me. Its rather a camera/view point based custom shader, similar to night vision view. I run ENVSHADE on a networked PC and monitored communication between SIM pc and networked PC, there's no talking at all in regards to ENVSHADE. 

 

But yes, ultimately its up to @kmax59 to shed some light on this. But better keep your hopes low if you expect any dynamic shader injection

It would depend, I could develop a tool that monitors the weather from ASP4 and change camera definitions to use different custom post processing shaders, so it would be on the fly without the need of SimConnect or any network access.

Maybe the key is ENVDIR and that is why it is required, in any case I don't expect @kmax59to reveal the engineering behind it as that would be unfair, instead I expect him to explain what the product does.

Regards,
Simbol

Other than curiosity, does knowing how the watch works make it a better watch? It tells time.

Envshade applies a shader preset. It would be nice to know if it does it dynamically but I've been using it for a while now and all I can say is I like it. Whether it's dynamic or not, I don't care because, unless I'm using a network analyzer or process monitor, I COULDN'T TELL - and neither would any of you. 

I find the whole discussion humorous over a $5 product.  

As to which is better - I'll give the same answer I gave someone else - let me borrow YOUR eyes and I'll tell you what looks good to you.

Vic