REX Sky Force - Cloud Model Sync Explanation

[geolpilot 88]

1 hour ago, Bernard Ducret said:

how can such a set cover a huge geographical area with so different weather systems, that for me is really difficult to understand

Mmmmm, this got me thinking for a while. 

Question: with clouds, what is the main criteria for their classification - color (texture) or structure?

Think you would agree it is the cloud structure that is key here, and that is exactly what REX SF will be changing dynamically along the way over even the longest of routes, depending on the weather encountered in real time.

The texture just puts the white/gray tones onto the cloud structure (structure = a collection of sprite planes in a cloud model defining the shape of the cloud), and can artificially make the structure appear a little different (maybe more wispy, patchy). So in Toronto it may be cold and snowing with low grey overcast. Summon stratus models and put the textures on that. In the SBGR area with thunderstorms summon the cumulonimbus models according to storm intensity and height and put a set of textures on those. The model is paramount here (cloud form/shape), the texture set chosen secondary, so regardless of which 3D cloud texture set you have picked, the clouds will look realistic in form according to the weather encountered. Basically choose a texture set for 3D clouds and cirrus, install and you can forget about it from then on - will still have a pretty realistic depiction of clouds varying by weather state along the entire route.

Except if you want to get a bit more pedantic, and want say more wispy, windblown 3D clouds. Same cloud models, but now with textures that have wispy-edge strands and blow- apart pieces applied to the model (like the Aeonian set 09 in SF) that reflect higher winds around the clouds. But you would have to check winds aloft, and where these are in relation to storms, to know to chose and install this set. But this is really fine detail, and for the most part will not affect the sense of realism. I doubt even ASCA handles this subtle difference. Time will tell, maybe REX in future will update SF so that these more subtle variations in texture sets will load dynamically as well as changing structures. Hope so, but for now perfectly happy myself with the on-route variation, and most will not notice a texture issue, except maybe if they chose a real hard-edged texture set when they have a preference for more fluffy clouds (Soft Clouds). So in SF chose a  set that seems pleasing to your eye, and you will be good to go. Only a meteorologist / cloud specialist is going to notice that the fine details of cloud texture does not quite match up to wind conditions, atmospheric stability or stage of development. The rest of us will just be taking in the spectacular cloud formations and structures.

As for sky textures, you can leave that to dynamically update from ASCA or ENVTEX if you wish, rather that use the ones with SF. With that mix of varying cloud structures from SF and skies from ASCA should have some really variable skies long a long route.

Rob

[Nuno Pinto 1,397]

After reading through the entire thread (unless i missed something) i still don't know if it's possible to use ASV4 with SF where AS provides the weather and SF provides the cloud variations required by the current weather.

 

Can this be done? Thank you.

[Denco 48]

7 minutes ago, Nuno Pinto said:

After reading through the entire thread (unless i missed something) i still don't know if it's possible to use ASV4 with SF where AS provides the weather and SF provides the cloud variations required by the current weather.

 

Can this be done? Thank you.

Yes, this is the best way to use Sky Force.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Nuno Pinto said:

After reading through the entire thread (unless i missed something) i still don't know if it's possible to use ASV4 with SF where AS provides the weather and SF provides the cloud variations required by the current weather.

 

Can this be done? Thank you.

Yes. Disable all weather engine options in SF (everything on the Options > Engine page should be off) and that's it. Keep SF running, start AS, start your sim and AS will inject weather and the SF textures will be used. (Well, as long as you installed any, of course. Also make sure the Cloud sync option is enabled to inject structures if needed.

[pete_auau 1,159]

8 minutes ago, Nuno Pinto said:

After reading through the entire thread (unless i missed something) i still don't know if it's possible to use ASV4 with SF where AS provides the weather and SF provides the cloud variations required by the current weather.

 

Can this be done? Thank you.

actually  if  you would  have  read  the  sf  manual  that was  out  for  3  weeks  or  so  its  stated  in the manual   that  any weather  addon  can be  used

[Nuno Pinto 1,397]

Thanks everyone for the prompt responses. Peter, i missed that, i'll look into the manual and that will definitely help me decide whether i need SF or not.

Cheers!

[Nyxx 6,993]

5 hours ago, pete_auau said:

Yea  when i look  outside  wish  i  can  brighten the  clouds  up abit  as well

Pete,

I would strongly suggest if you don't have it to get/use PTA as its changers the sim into another world its not the best GUI in the world but the option and how to use them is easy.

Since using SF I agree more light on top would be nice here is the option in PTA and I am going to change this from the default 1 to 1.2.

Because you have control over all the option, this is why imo PTA over just Envshade is so good.

 

 

[Bernard Ducret 790]

Robin, thank you for your detailed answer regarding my question on long-haul trips.

[Guest]

Spend the entire afternoon comparing clouds from ASCA, ENVTEX and SkyForce. Conclusion so far: SkyForce make the skies look more diverse and fuller. What I specially noticed is where ASCA and ENVTEX keep the clouds in one 'layer', SkyForce has more clouds sticking so things look less flat. Unfortunately I had dynamic skies enabled (ENVTEX through ASCA) so I haven't been able to make screenshots that have the exact same lighting but here is an example of what I mean with 'layer' and 'flat'. Take note to look at the CLOUD formations, not the color! (Also don't mind the airplane LOL something went wrong while saving the flight for testing!)

ASCA

ENVTEX

SkyForce

As you can see ASCA and ENVTEX are rather similar (ENVTEX is mainly softer) while SkyForce has less holes and there is more going on. Obviously the remaining question now is: which picture is closer to real life...?

If you’re trying to test this and the clouds look different with the same setup, the test isn't correct! In all my tests the clouds were the EXACT SAME after doing them again, even after testing other programs in between! I had saved the flight in pause using slew AND I set Active Sky to use the sim time (historic weather) so weather would be the exact same everytime. 

Anyway, for now I will stick with AS weather, ENVTEX skies (dynamic through ASCA) and SkyForce clouds. As I said I don't know which one is the most realistic but at this moment SkyForce gives me the most interesting skies.

 

[carlito777 712]

10 hours ago, geolpilot said:

I think this was a perfectly valid question and I see no answer yet for this, so let me give it a try. At least this is how I think it works, but obviously REX and HIFI have been in this game a long time, and have their methods which neither party is going to divulge (competition  is really stiff in this field now!). While we will never know exactly how they do it, what I say below is merely an attempt to show it is perfectly possible to read the in-sim weather condition at, around and ahead of the aircraft, in fact at any lat/long (with a flight plan supplied even better for setting up the sky environment way ahead of you, which is why both HIFI and REX advise that displayed conditions will be more accurate if given a flight plan).

If you look inside your P3D Modules folder at the FSUIPC document on FSUIPC offsets, painstakingly compiled by the wizard Pete Dowson, you will see literally pages of weather-related offsets that programmers can read, and in some cases write to, to discover what the weather environment is like in the sim at present, and take actions accordingly. The list is long, but temps, pressures, wind speeds, wind directions and variability of these, gust strengths, local surface and level specific temps and dew points, updrafts and down drafts injected by applications into the sim, various levels of cloud types, cloud bases, ceilings and altitude, visibility oktas - and the list goes on. More than enough info for a system like SF to "peek" into the sim, see what weather is like at the aircraft (I guess they have ways to query anywhere around and ahead of the craft), since they can also see exactly where the aircraft is headed to etc, and then do their magic with their algorithms to decide what cloud models and textures would be appropriate to inject. They can inject whatever the sim will accept, even new models and textures beyond what was originally "standard", as long as they conform to the SDK rules. I mean, if ORBX can break new "ground" with the surface environment, way beyond what was "standard", or we even believed possible, why not the Devs specializing in modelling and texturing the atmosphere. Sure its not a fixed environment but all the variables are there in-sim to define the current state and energy of this ever-changing air-mass, and then dynamically model it accordingly.

So to me its not at all far-fetched hype if REX claims they can asses the weather in the sim (even when that comes from another devs weather engine) because there are so many standard "hooks" into the sim to get the requisite variables (and more-than-likely these programmers have even more tricks up their sleeves to plug into the sim's current weather to get exactly the information they need). From this it is definitely possible to determine the "atmospheric energy" at various scales, and at various places, and so to inject their "new" and appropriate 3D cloud-model structures into the sim with correct associated textures.

So, even using FSUIPC offsets, a sim query can report-back heavy precipitation, high turbulence, strong updrafts and strong downdrafts being injected by a weather application, mixed wind directions and velocities inferring strong wind shear around, with cumulonimbus cloud type. So therefore it does not take a genius to know that there are serious thunderstorms in the area of the aircraft. So instead of that "standard", almost insipid sim CB, we now have injected for us a towering, massive, ominous-looking cumulonimbus with a dense rain shaft at base, a massive anvil full of ice at top, and all the visible features that say "high energy atmospheric area - stay well away!".

So while I understand your skepticism (I am also, and always will be a skeptic), I am just trying to suggest it seems unfounded in this case, as the facts are that it certainly is possible programmatically. Really I think all credit is due to REX in this case for what must have been hundreds of man-hours of work (thousands more likely), to pull all of this together.

 

Thanks for your explanation. BUT...

I do understand that there are tons of variables on which a weather programme can base the depiction of the weather. But it is still the WEATHER ENGINE and not the texture programme which decides where to display which type of cloud. So if you use AS as the weather engine, then this is the programme which interacts with the sim and which actually places cloud formation in the virtual sky. So how can a weather engine place cloud structures which are completely new in the sim? If up to this point the weather engine has only known four different types of clouds, how can it now place other types without an update. I would assume you would have to update the code of AS for it to be able to take advantage of all the new cloud types. This is still a mistery for me and hasn‘t been answered yet. 

[boez 85]

51 minutes ago, carlito777 said:

So how can a weather engine place cloud structures which are completely new in the sim? If up to this point the weather engine has only known four different types of clouds, how can it now place other types without an update. I would assume you would have to update the code of AS for it to be able to take advantage of all the new cloud types. This is still a mistery for me and hasn‘t been answered yet. 

Because the cloud structures are not hard coded but instead described by a set of configuration or descriptor files. These prescribe how many textures, what actual texture is used and in what position for a given cloud depiction and a fresh P3D install will place corresponding files for the four major types. In other words they describe how the sim will draw a given cloud type. Both ASCA and SkyForce simply modify(?) and add new ones to these configuration files.

How AS16 can use the new SkyForce structure files is a bit of a mystery* as thier file names won't be standard...perhaps it can only use the modified standard structures? (Note this latter part is a bit of guess work since I don't have SkyForce).

 

HTH

andy

boez

 

*Of course it already knows the names of any added ASCA structure files given they are from the same developer.

[pscharff 56]

3 hours ago, J van E said:

Spend the entire afternoon comparing clouds from ASCA, ENVTEX and SkyForce. Conclusion so far: SkyForce make the skies look more diverse and fuller. What I specially noticed is where ASCA and ENVTEX keep the clouds in one 'layer', SkyForce has more clouds sticking so things look less flat. Unfortunately I had dynamic skies enabled (ENVTEX through ASCA) so I haven't been able to make screenshots that have the exact same lighting but here is an example of what I mean with 'layer' and 'flat'. Take note to look at the CLOUD formations, not the color! (Also don't mind the airplane LOL something went wrong while saving the flight for testing!)

ASCA

ENVTEX

SkyForce

As you can see ASCA and ENVTEX are rather similar (ENVTEX is mainly softer) while SkyForce has less holes and there is more going on. Obviously the remaining question now is: which picture is closer to real life...?

If you’re trying to test this and the clouds look different with the same setup, the test isn't correct! In all my tests the clouds were the EXACT SAME after doing them again, even after testing other programs in between! I had saved the flight in pause using slew AND I set Active Sky to use the sim time (historic weather) so weather would be the exact same everytime. 

Anyway, for now I will stick with AS weather, ENVTEX skies (dynamic through ASCA) and SkyForce clouds. As I said I don't know which one is the most realistic but at this moment SkyForce gives me the most interesting skies.

 

The clouds of SkyForce are really nice. But sometimes I think there are too much cumulus clouds on the sky when using SF. If I watch the sky in real life, I would say there are more stratocumulus and altrostratus clouds to be seen. Therefore it is possible that your screenshot of ASCA represents the real sky more then the one with SF-clouds. But I may be wrong.

The REX-clouds were always well known for producing dramatic skies.

Patric

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, pscharff said:

The clouds of SkyForce are really nice. But sometimes I think there are too much cumulus clouds on the sky when using SF. If I watch the sky in real life, I would say there are more stratocumulus and altrostratus clouds to be seen. Therefore it is possible that your screenshot of ASCA represents the real sky more then the one with SF-clouds. But I may be wrong.

The REX-clouds were always well known for producing dramatic skies.

Yes, it's hard to figure out unless you are flying over your home with real time weather so you can compare what you see in the sim with what you see out of the (real) window. I might try just that one time. Although obviously and unfortunately I can only compare things with what I see from the ground up.

I am flying over Norway now with historic summer weather: there is an overact according to the METAR and well, SF is really giving me a white blanket! I do like what I see! Don't know of it's realistic but I like it. Of course that is indeed REX way of doing things: giving you things in abundance.

[pscharff 56]

5 minutes ago, J van E said:

Yes, it's hard to figure out unless you are flying over your home with real time weather so you can compare what you see in the sim with what you see out of the (real) window. I might try just that one time. Although obviously and unfortunately I can only compare things with what I see from the ground up.

I am flying over Norway now with historic summer weather: there is an overact according to the METAR and well, SF is really giving me a white blanket! I do like what I see! Don't know of it's realistic but I like it. Of course that is indeed REX way of doing things: giving you things in abundance.

For the moment I will stay with SF3D too, because I don't want to miss the new cloud models.

Patric

[carlito777 712]

16 minutes ago, boez said:

How AS16 can use the new SkyForce structure files is a bit of a mystery* as thier file names won't be standard...perhaps it can only use the modified standard structures? (Note this latter part is a bit of guess work since I don't have SkyForce).

Thanks for your response. This is exactly what I would suppose, too. I think as long as one uses AS16, only part of the potential of SF is used. Really taking advantage of all the new cloud models will most likely require a new weather engine that actually knows how to call those new cloud models.