REX Sky Force - Cloud Model Sync Explanation

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, SmokeDiddy said:

Just wondering if the Hotfix fixes this issue or maybe I have another issue.

Never had that. I did get .net errors which the hotfix should fix. However, yesterday evening I got another .net error anyway.

6 minutes ago, Dio said:

1) at FL410 I noticed clouds below this FL forming a big grid, (is there any solution?  I doesn't look realistic)

2) Sky Colors look faded (or it's just me?) 

 

I also noticed there in certain situations: an overcast sky that would abruptly stop in one hard straight line and the holes in the sky were squares. However, I don't know if this is a problem of SF or AS or a combination of both...

And I use the skies from ENVTEX running through ASCA so I can't comment on the SF skies.

5 minutes ago, David Roch said:

No that "shouldn't" be necessary but that might help! :-)
It's like if AS16 is keeping some data in cache somewhere.

Well, I will give it a try!

[Dio 8]

It was like flying over a chess board....

[B777ER 2,485]

After reading these last two pages the seeds of doubt are once again being planted in the SF3 field.

[B777ER 2,485]

1 hour ago, J van E said:

Well, actually, I just did reinstall P3D v4 two weeks ago. At the time I installed SkyForce I didn't have any other texture addon installed yet. Only yesterday I installed ASCA and ENVTEX. Now, if I am failing to use SF properly on a rather new install of P3D, ANYONE can fail. I am not the only one who is using these addons together. Hopefully REX will come up with a simple solution. If there is one.

You should have posted the steps you did in that guide from your earlier post in the REX forum so they can see who you have your set up.

[Dio 8]

2 minutes ago, B777ER said:

After reading these last two pages the seeds of doubt are once again being planted in the SF3 field.

I think that many developers will benefit a lot from it, we are using their software, we just say what we see ...

[kurtb 121]

well starting prp3d first then SF then AS - no difference same clouds same look as if loading SF first then AS then prp3d- doesn't make sense

[geolpilot 88]

2 hours ago, J van E said:

At this moment there is NO WAY of telling if what you see actually is SkyForce...!

J, and others suspecting they are not seeing SF clouds, check this;

1. Go to your P3D_root_directory\Weather\clouds folder.
2. Look for a file CloudArtFiles.xml in there (order by file name and it will be at the bottom of the long list).
3. This file should be 224kb size if it is the REX SF cloud structure control file. You can open it in word and it should have  a header saying it was " Created by REX and SkyForce 2017"
4. Has a lot of element sections defining which cloud models are used, and how they should be mixed to show even more cloud variations, cloud shadows etc.
5. If this is what you see then Skyforce has installed its models

This can be confirmed by looking for .cld files dated at the last time you installed a Skyforce structure set (order by date modified). There should be 1161 .cld files if Skyforce has installed its cloud models

If you only see 307 ASCA*.cld files then you only have ASCA models installed. The ASCA CloudArtFiles.xml is also only 69kb in size, and if opened has a heading section "ASCA Cloud Art File". So far fewer models and model variations defined.

If you see that the CloudArtFiles.xml file is 70kb in size, and when opened has a header "By Niniane Wang 09/2002" (yep that is FS2004 stuff still hanging in there!!) it just means that neither Skyforce nor ASCA models are set to be used.

NB. If you at anytime manually injected only Sky textures without Cloud models from ASCA (after a Skyforce cloud structure install) , ASCA puts this old default xml  file back in there so that default FSX models will be used, so that may be why you see it there. This will cause SF cloud structures not to show! I wonder if this is why people using ASCA for sky textures only may be losing their Skyforce models? I suggest from what I have seen (only tested manual injection of ASCA sky files, and this it what it did to the CloudArtFiles.xml, not tested dynamic injection yet), do not use ASCA for sky texture installation. Use the SF sky textures, ENVTEX, or PTA-SF presets. These should not tamper with the CloudArtFiles.xml installed by SF.

Then go to your simdirectory\Textures folder.

1. Sort by Date Modified.
2. At the date and time you last installed a texture set for clouds from Skyforce, there should be a few (only a few!) updated .bmp files. 2 of these are cumulus01.bmp and cumulus02.bmp. Open these with a image viewer (if DXT1 format was installed will have to use DXTbmp to view them. If enhanced bmp files were installed, then windows viewer should open them).
3. Do the more detailed of the 16 tiles in these images look like the texture that you chose from Skyforce? If yes, then Skyforce textures have been loaded into your sim. If they look less detailed than what you see in the SF interface then they are either ASCA texture sheets, or even worse, defaults. If this is the case, and you are certain you installed cloud textures from Skyforce, something is up with permission settings, or sim path settings within the Skyforce program.

Remember to get Skyforce models, an install must be made from the GUI interface accessed from the square block icon, left hand side panel.

To get Skyforce textures an install must be made from one of the sets in the GUI accessed from the cloud icon, left hand side panel.

I suspect some users may not be doing this, though would have been forced to do both at initial install. After messing around with other system like ASCA, its easy to forget to do both!

Edited January 8, 2018 by geolpilot
ASCA putting the old FS9 xml file in the \weather\clouds directory WILL not COULD cause SF cloud models not to show

[Nyxx 6,993]

53 minutes ago, geolpilot said:

J, and others suspecting they are not seeing SF clouds, check this;

1. Go to your P3D_root_directory\Weather\clouds folder.
2. Look for a file CloudArtFiles.xml in there (order by file name and it will be at the bottom of the long list).
3. This file should be 224kb size if it is the REX SF cloud structure control file. You can open it in word and it should have  a header saying it was " Created by REX and SkyForce 2017"
4. Has a lot of element sections defining which cloud models are used, and how they should be mixed to show even more cloud variations, cloud shadows etc.
5. If this is what you see then Skyforce has installed its models

This can be confirmed by looking for .cld files dated at the last time you installed a Skyforce structure set (order by date modified). There should be 1161 .cld files if Skyforce has installed its cloud models

If you only see 307 ASCA*.cld files then you only have ASCA models installed. The ASCA CloudArtFiles.xml is also only 69kb in size, and if opened has a heading section "ASCA Cloud Art File". So far fewer models and model variations defined.

If you see that the CloudArtFiles.xml file is 70kb in size, and when opened has a header "By Niniane Wang 09/2002" (yep that is FS2004 stuff still hanging in there!!) it just means that neither Skyforce nor ASCA models are set to be used.

NB. If you at anytime manually injected only Sky textures without Cloud models from ASCA (after a Skyforce cloud structure install) , ASCA puts this old default xml  file back in there so that default FSX models will be used, so that may be why you see it there. This could cause SF cloud structures not to show! I wonder if this is why people using ASCA for sky textures only may be losing their Skyforce models? I suggest from what I have seen (only tested manual injection of ASCA sky files, and this it what it did to the CloudArtFiles.xml, not tested dynamic injection yet), do not use ASCA for sky texture installation. Use the SF sky textures, ENVTEX, or PTA-SF presets. These should not tamper with the CloudArtFiles.xml installed by SF.

Then go to your simdirectory\Textures folder.

1. Sort by Date Modified.
2. At the date and time you last installed a texture set for clouds from Skyforce, there should be a few (only a few!) updated .bmp files. 2 of these are cumulus01.bmp and cumulus02.bmp. Open these with a image viewer (if DXT1 format was installed will have to use DXTbmp to view them. If enhanced bmp files were installed, then windows viewer should open them).
3. Do the more detailed of the 16 tiles in these images look like the texture that you chose from Skyforce? If yes, then Skyforce textures have been loaded into your sim. If they look less detailed than what you see in the SF interface then they are either ASCA texture sheets, or even worse, defaults. If this is the case, and you are certain you installed cloud textures from Skyforce, something is up with permission settings, or sim path settings within the Skyforce program.

Remember to get Skyforce models, an install must be made from the GUI interface accessed from the square block icon, left hand side panel.

To get Skyforce textures an install must be made from one of the sets in the GUI accessed from the cloud icon, left hand side panel.

I suspect some users may not be doing this, though would have been forced to do both at initial install. After messing around with other system like ASCA, its easy to forget to do both!

Thanks for that, All good but good to be able to check. 

[geolpilot 88]

And now for some not so good news.

I followed up on that serious thunderstorm activity in Botswana late yesterday. At Maun, 7 January 17h00 GMT there was the kind of thunderstorm activity that the bush pilots featured in the BBC series (search "Bush PIlots" on YouTube) have to cope with at this time of year, while ferrying the well-healed to lodges in the Okavango Delta.

So I set ASP4 to historical weather at that time and the base reflectivity map in ASP4 was full of red an magenta cells. Excited I started up SkyForce, loaded up the Carenado Caravan 208 at Maun at that same date and time, and sure enough it was raining, thunder and lighting effects were definitely SF (nice), as were the CB clouds. Took off and headed for some magenta cells.

Sure the CBs where there, intense rain, but no rain shafts (and there should have been). Only misty stuff underneath the CBs where rain shafts should have been. Circled around and through these magenta radar areas a number of times (at 2000ft off the ground NOT something you do in RW as if caught in a down-draught you may have less than a minute to impact!). No rain shafts.

Then a .net "unhandled exception error" crashed my sim (REX they are still there). P3D would not restart after that until I rebooted, and so on ....... the life of a virtual pilot handling systems in addition to planes and weather!

So-------. It looks like only the SF weather engine will call for rainshaft models. ASP4 / AS16 will not have those defined in their weather models!

Wanted to see if SF weather engine would then show these, but no way to load historical weather with the SF engine! Dang! So only way to hunt for rainshafts seems to be using the SF engine in real time, and go to where there is heavy thunderstorm activity right now!

[Denco 48]

2 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Over time HiFi got tired of people complaining about how overcast conditions killed their GPUs. They did their best to optimize overcast performance. REX in contrast, just decided to produce a dense, realistic looking overcast. That's the difference.

The only problem is, in my case, that there are people with lower GPU's who are without performance issues.

 

Further development of my case:
 

I have noticed that using the SF3D's weather engine does not push my GPU past 90% of usage. It is at around 65%. Same scenario with AS enabled instead of the REX's weather engine and my GPU will push up to 98%.

It seems that there is a problem with AS and SF3D that is causing this high GPU usage.

I keep my AS settings at their default apart from:

Force BKN to 7/8ths - off

Cloud Motion effect - off

Maximum surface wind - 200

Turbulence effect scale - 35 ( recommended setting for EZDOK users )

Maximum wind shear - 100

[David Roch 1,982]

20 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

Thanks for that, All good put good to be able to check. 

Agree, thanks a lot Robin!

[Guest]

59 minutes ago, geolpilot said:

J, and others suspecting they are not seeing SF clouds, check this;

1.  

Thanks! I will check it all!

59 minutes ago, geolpilot said:

I wonder if this is why people using ASCA for sky textures only may be losing their Skyforce models?

That's very worrying... I bought ENVTEX yesterday mainly for the dynamic sky colors...! You could of course manually install a sky color and the install all SF stuff again... but how would that work with the dynamic skies...?!

59 minutes ago, geolpilot said:

Remember to get Skyforce models, an install must be made from the GUI interface accessed from the square block icon, left hand side panel.

To get Skyforce textures an install must be made from one of the sets in the GUI accessed from the cloud icon, left hand side panel.

I did this for every test I did so this isn't it.

Anyway, I will be checking this this evening and I will report back. Great information. Not too great news, I fear...

33 minutes ago, geolpilot said:

Then a .net "unhandled exception error" crashed my sim (REX they are still there).

Had one too yesterday, after the hotfix.

33 minutes ago, geolpilot said:

So only way to hunt for rainshafts seems to be using the SF engine in real time, and go to where there is heavy thunderstorm activity right now!

Disappointing because I need historic weather. And I want smooth redraws...

BTW Robin, is there a way of seeing if and when any of those addons actually inject something into the sim? Or is this done without leaving a trace in those folders?

[B777ER 2,485]

58 minutes ago, geolpilot said:

Then go to your simdirectory\Textures folder.

1. Sort by Date Modified.
2. At the date and time you last installed a texture set for clouds from Skyforce, there should be a few (only a few!) updated .bmp files. 2 of these are cumulus01.bmp and cumulus02.bmp. Open these with a image viewer (if DXT1 format was installed will have to use DXTbmp to view them. If enhanced bmp files were installed, then windows viewer should open them).
3. Do the more detailed of the 16 tiles in these images look like the texture that you chose from Skyforce? If yes, then Skyforce textures have been loaded into your sim. If they look less detailed than what you see in the SF interface then they are either ASCA texture sheets, or even worse, defaults. If this is the case, and you are certain you installed cloud textures from Skyforce, something is up with permission settings, or sim path settings within the Skyforce program.

Remember to get Skyforce models, an install must be made from the GUI interface accessed from the square block icon, left hand side panel.

To get Skyforce textures an install must be made from one of the sets in the GUI accessed from the cloud icon, left hand side panel.

I suspect some users may not be doing this, though would have been forced to do both at initial install. After messing around with other system like ASCA, its easy to forget to do both!

Even using the SF3 GUI and having it run in admin mode these are not being updated. The only files in that directory that show updated are rex_blob, corona, flare, glow and rainbow. 

 

 

32 minutes ago, geolpilot said:

Then a .net "unhandled exception error" crashed my sim (REX they are still there). P3D would not restart after that until I rebooted, and so on ....... the life of a virtual pilot handling systems in addition to planes and weather!

 

Ya, not going to use SF3 for this reason alone. Secondary reasons is beause now it looks like dynamic skies cannot be used either. Just too much stuff not interacting in the background between these programs. Done with it. Back to just ASP4, ASCA and ENVTEX. I have a feeling HiFi will be out later this year with a whole new program. Will wait for that.

[Bruce Nicholson KMFR 20]

28 minutes ago, Denco said:

The only problem is, in my case, that there are people with lower GPU's who are without performance issues.

Are you using SSAA or MSAA and what level?

Most people without performance issues are using 2xMSAA or 4xMSAA. SSAA is very hard on GPUs, even the high-end ones.

[Denco 48]

Just now, Bruce Nicholson KMFR said:

Are you using SSAA or MSAA and what level?

Most people without performance issues are using 2xMSAA or 4xMSAA. SSAA is very hard on GPUs, even the high-end ones.

I'm using only 2x MSAA. Even if disabled it's no difference. In any case the issue is only present with SF3D combined with AS ( asca is completely disabled ). SF3D without AS doesn't have this issue.