PTA v2.63 - Water surface tuning incompatibility

[Schlotterknie 35]

There is obviously a bug regarding the water surface tuning option. Lockheed Martin reworked parts of the water shader files which I guess has somehow been missed to be respected within the recent PTA update.

PTA 2.63 is therefore currently not fully compatible with the new shader files of P3D v4.4. You get an error message even if you try to apply the default preset 'MattDavies_Dec18.ini' which is included in the package... as long as you don´t untick the water surface tuning checkbox.

I hope this is gonna be fixed soon...

 

   Applying [Water surface tuning] to F:\Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL\GPUTerrain.fx
ERROR applying tweak [Water surface tuning]  Problem with patch #1 - Patched block not found.
   Applying [Waves size] to F:\Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL\GPUTerrain.fx
   Applying [Water saturation] to F:\Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL\GPUTerrain.fx
   Applying [Rayleigh scattering effect] to F:\Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL\FuncLibrary.fxh
   Applying [Haze effect] to F:\Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL\FuncLibrary.fxh
   Applying [Sky Fog tuning] to F:\Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL\FuncLibrary.fxh
   Applying [Turn off HDR luminance adaptation effect] to F:\Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL\PostProcess\HDR.hlsl
   Applying [Alternate tonemap adjustment] to F:\Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL\PostProcess\HDR.hlsl
   Applying [Contrast tuning] to F:\Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL\PostProcess\HDR.hlsl
   Applying [FXAA quality] to F:\Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL\PostProcess\FXAAResolve.hlsl
Preset has been applied with errors. See log above

 

[MattDavies 320]

It's been reported and responded to in basically every thread over the last 2 days 🙂

[edpatino 1,964]

Definitively people don't like to do some searching and reading.

Cheers, Ed

 

[Nightstalker 1]

It has nothing to do with people not liking to use the searchfunction, or reading..... I have the same issue, but I see no solution to the error "applying tweak [Water surface tuning]  Problem with patch #1 - Patched block not found".

My wish for christmas is for you who are kind enough to respond and have the solution/link to the solution, to share that solution or link. People search differently, maybe specific to their issue, meaning they will not find the solution searching their exact problem.

14 hours ago, MattDavies said:

It's been reported and responded to in basically every thread over the last 2 days 🙂

Matt Davies: I cannot find the threads you are referring to. I find several with error issues, but not the one regarding "Water surface tuning" that appeared after last PTA update 2.63. I have tried the suggestions mentioned in the posts regarding the other issues, with no luck.

I'm still stuck with the "water surface tuning" issue even though I have reinstalled/repaired client several times, deleting ShaderHLSL, deleting Shaderbackup and reinstalling PTA.

May you please reply with a link to the solution you mentioned?

[Nightstalker 1]

And I fell into my own argument, and the issue is statet below in MattDavies' post: 

 

However, in my defence, I would not have searched for the specific problem in a release notification thread. 🙂

And let there be no doubt...PTA has been a gamechanger in the way things look in P3D. I really enjoy the product!

Edited December 4, 2018 by Nightstalker

[Schlotterknie 35]

15 hours ago, edpatino said:

Definitively people don't like to do some searching and reading

Definetly some softwaredevelopers who claim to be professionals do not test their products for a single second before throwing them out to their customers. I´m actually not a beta or actually alpha tester but a paying customer. Do you wan´t me to appologize for opening a seperated thread regarding this major bug or what?

If there was a similar issue with my piece of software that I´m the owner, creator and seller of... the first thing I would do is to actively inform my customers at least with a big fat pinned thread in this forum here, appologize for any inconveniences, inform about the workaround and fix that problem as soon as I can instead of leaning back and writing bored, cheeky comments waiting for my customers to help themselves by searching the net for a solution.

I yesterday compared the P3D shaders from 4.3 and 4.4 to fiigure out what the root cause actually is and it´s just 2 lines of code in the affected shader file. Only 2 lines that have to adapted to make everything work again!

Fixing this issue is a matter of minutes and not days or weeks. No doctoral research study needed for that.

[edpatino 1,964]

1 hour ago, Schlotterknie said:

Do you wan´t me to appologize for opening a seperated thread regarding this major bug or what

If you want to apologize is up to you, of course. I clearly did not mean that.

I have found it's a lot easier and productive for everyone, both paying customers and developers, to do a search on the forums to see if the problem has already been addressed before. That would quickly tell you that you're not alone and what course of action is being followed to fix the issue.

It's just a matter of efficiency.

Cheers, Ed

[Schlotterknie 35]

43 minutes ago, edpatino said:

It's just a matter of efficiency

The peak of efficiency would be to test at least the most fundamental function of a product before releasing it.

It´s eventually not too efficient to have hundreds or thousands of users running around in the net looking for a solution for such a major bug.

[edpatino 1,964]

2 minutes ago, Schlotterknie said:

The peak of efficiency would be to test at least the most fundamental function of a product before releasing it.

It´s eventually not too efficient to have hundreds or thousands of users running around in the net looking for a solution for such a major bug.

I'm quite sure Matt will deliver a fix for the issue very soon. In the meantime I think you can -temporarily- uncheck that specific tweak and continue using PTA.

Cheers, Ed

[Schlotterknie 35]

1 minute ago, edpatino said:

I'm quite sure Matt will deliver a fix for the issue very soon. In the meantime I think you can -temporarily- uncheck that specific tweak and continue using PTA

I don´t need to wait. I manually edited the 2 lines in the affected shader file. Other customers who don´t know how to do that are still waiting.

And as I said before. The effort for fixing that problem is ridiculously low.

[GSalden 4,657]

1 hour ago, Schlotterknie said:

I don´t need to wait. I manually edited the 2 lines in the affected shader file. Other customers who don´t know how to do that are still waiting.

And as I said before. The effort for fixing that problem is ridiculously low.

Perhaps you could point other users to those lines and what to edit to get what effect...

That would help till an update version is going to be released..

As I am changing my Fs visuals I cannot do that right now ... 😎

 

Edited December 4, 2018 by GSalden

[Schlotterknie 35]

It will only take minutes to fix that directly in PTA but it takes maybe an hour or more to write a documentation about how to edit that one shader file separately after a PTA preset with inactive water surface tuning as been applied.

Less experienced users might even end up with corrupted shaders if they make anything wrong but I can at least point out the line numbers of the file if I find some time.

Edited December 4, 2018 by Schlotterknie

[GSalden 4,657]

There is no risk at all when making a backup of the file(s)...

You could just point to the text block(s) and which numbers need to be changed.

But if you don’t have the time it’s ok ...

Edited December 5, 2018 by GSalden

[Schlotterknie 35]

Search for "EnvironmentColor.rgb =" in the GPUTerrain.fx file.
This is the point where the reflection coefficient is defined.

The line below "BaseColor *=" defines the refraction coefficient.

Find the definition of the water granularity by searching this: "const float bias ="

Search "finalMoonColor =" for specular blend.

Serach "reflectionFresnel =" near the area of (or exatcly at) line nr 1218. Home of "Water view angle/darkness factor".

 

If you now what your doing you can do your tweaking manually there, or create a custom tweak with which you can search and replace the parts of the shader codes within a preset file. If you have backups with your tweaked 4.3 shaders it´s much easier to copy the affected shader lines/variable values from there.

As you see... not really comfortable doing this by hand. And I repeat: It´s only 2 lines in the new 4.4 shader code that cause the current PTA incompatibility. If I needed several days for fixing 2 code lines and make a new build... I would be fired pretty fast.

Edited December 5, 2018 by Schlotterknie

[GSalden 4,657]

6 hours ago, Schlotterknie said:

Search for "EnvironmentColor.rgb =" in the GPUTerrain.fx file.
This is the point where the reflection coefficient is defined.

The line below "BaseColor *=" defines the refraction coefficient.

Find the definition of the water granularity by searching this: "const float bias ="

Search "finalMoonColor =" for specular blend.

Serach "reflectionFresnel =" near the area of (or exatcly at) line nr 1218. Home of "Water view angle/darkness factor".

 

If you now what your doing you can do your tweaking manually there, or create a custom tweak with which you can search and replace the parts of the shader codes within a preset file. If you have backups with your tweaked 4.3 shaders it´s much easier to copy the affected shader lines/variable values from there.

As you see... not really comfortable doing this by hand. And I repeat: It´s only 2 lines in the new 4.4 shader code that cause the current PTA incompatibility. If I needed several days for fixing 2 code lines and make a new build... I would be fired pretty fast.

Many thank on behalve of the PTA users 😉

Now everyone who knows the way can edit the water surface manually while waiting for the PTA update.