PTA v2.63 - Water surface tuning incompatibility

[Wanthuyr Filho 83]

18 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.

I apologise, but haven't seen anything to be changed.

You tell that 2 lines have to changed, yet you mention 5 things that have to be searched but you don't tell what has to be changed.

[Schlotterknie 35]

6 hours ago, Wanthuyr Filho said:

You tell that 2 lines have to changed

Those 2 lines have to be changed in the PTA source to make PTA itself compatible with P3D 4.4 again.
If you wan´t to tweak the water surface manually without PTA the only way to do is to manually edit GPUTerrain.fx, which is of course more of just 2 lines as mentioned above.

Those who made a backup of their modified 4.3 shaders can use the complete GPUTerrain.fx- shader file from there. As far as I tested it´s fully compatible with the 4.4 shaders as Lockheed Martin only made small changes there.

Those who don´t have a backup could also reinstall client 4.3, apply their PTA preset with PTA 2.62, backup the generated GPUTerrain.fx file, reinstall client 4.4 apply the preset with PTA 2.63 and then restore GPUTerrain.fx from 4.3 into the 4.4 shaders folder. A bit complicated, I know. But that´s at least a workaround.

Edited December 6, 2018 by Schlotterknie

[Wanthuyr Filho 83]

4 hours ago, Schlotterknie said:

Those 2 lines have to be changed in the PTA source to make PTA itself compatible with P3D 4.4 again.
If you wan´t to tweak the water surface manually without PTA the only way to do is to manually edit GPUTerrain.fx, which is of course more of just 2 lines as mentioned above.

Those who made a backup of their modified 4.3 shaders can use the complete GPUTerrain.fx- shader file from there. As far as I tested it´s fully compatible with the 4.4 shaders as Lockheed Martin only made small changes there.

Those who don´t have a backup could also reinstall client 4.3, apply their PTA preset with PTA 2.62, backup the generated GPUTerrain.fx file, reinstall client 4.4 apply the preset with PTA 2.63 and then restore GPUTerrain.fx from 4.3 into the 4.4 shaders folder. A bit complicated, I know. But that´s at least a workaround.

Thanks for the follow up! I will replace the GPUTerrain.fx with the previous one, which I have on backup.

[GSalden 4,656]

21 minutes ago, Wanthuyr Filho said:

Thanks for the follow up! I will replace the GPUTerrain.fx with the previous one, which I have on backup.

Can you let us know if replacing the Shaders will also solve the lighter grass ?

[MattDavies 320]

@Schlotterknie Glad you found a workaround although your attitude leaves a lot to be desired. I'm working on a fix as we speak.

[CFIJose 5,485]

5 hours ago, MattDavies said:

@Schlotterknie Glad you found a workaround although your attitude leaves a lot to be desired. I'm working on a fix as we speak.

Thank you. I was about to try the suggestions, but will hold for update.

I miss the water colors I had in v4.3.

[Wanthuyr Filho 83]

9 hours ago, GSalden said:

Can you let us know if replacing the Shaders will also solve the lighter grass ?

You mean default grass textures? Like the one surrounding the default sceneries runways?

I just loaded P3D after the update a few moments back, I applied my previous PTA preset as is, with no Water modification (but I did past my previous GPUTerrain.fx as discussed above, but I loaded a previously saved flight in the KBOS area which is showing pretty much snowed already. I haven't noticed any difference regarding the lightning/color/etc of the ground textures (land, water, objects, etc), but the clouds are certainly crappy, as they're much darker than were before.

Now I'm gonna try the original GPUTerrain.fx with no modifications to see what the appearance will be like.

[Schlotterknie 35]

On 12/6/2018 at 5:07 PM, GSalden said:

Can you let us know if replacing the Shaders will also solve the lighter grass

So far I didn´t notice any problems with the grass. If it´s a shader related problem, a rollback to the GPUTerrain.fx file from 4.3 indeed could help. Could also be that another shader file is affected in that case as the changes in the terrain shaderfile are very small.

If you made a 'dirty' update from 4.3 to 4.4 just by reinstalling the client and content package it might be that the content.msi installler replaced some FTX Global textures with standard ones. Reinstalling FTX Global might solve such texture problems.

[Wanthuyr Filho 83]

39 minutes ago, Schlotterknie said:

So far I didn´t notice any problems with the grass. If it´s a shader related problem, a rollback to the GPUTerrain.fx file from 4.3 indeed could help. Could also be that another shader file is affected in that case as the changes in the terrain shaderfile are very small.

If you made a 'dirty' update from 4.3 to 4.4 just by reinstalling the client and content package it might be that the content.msi installler replaced some FTX Global textures with standard ones. Reinstalling FTX Global might solve such texture problems.

Agreed.

I updated all 3 modules, reinstalled Orbx global (although it freezed in the end) and also decided to use full v4.4 shaders (not using Water modifications until it's fixed) and everything looks beautiful. Except for the water which is to dark surrounding the aircraft. I only had to rework the clouds lightness because it was way too dark when I first migrated my preset from v4.3 to v4.4

Even so still thinking about trying Tomato, anyone knows if it has the Water thing working fine?

Also, does it have the post-processing part like PTA does?

[Sunny Andonov 4]

I am also suffering from the light washed out grass. Updated to 4.4 by reinstalling client and content. In addition also re-installed FTX Global but the the issue is still there. I found out if I restore the original shaders the grass looks normal, but after applying a PTA preset looks washed out and light. Any idea how to fix this issue?

[jimcarrel 688]

I know people want to use PTA, but for pete's sake, wait until Matt puts out the next version. You're just causing yourself headaches. 

[GSalden 4,656]

7 hours ago, Sunny Andonov said:

I am also suffering from the light washed out grass. Updated to 4.4 by reinstalling client and content. In addition also re-installed FTX Global but the the issue is still there. I found out if I restore the original shaders the grass looks normal, but after applying a PTA preset looks washed out and light. Any idea how to fix this issue?

Which preset did you try ?

Can you try another preset to see If that helps ?

[Schlotterknie 35]

9 hours ago, Sunny Andonov said:

I found out if I restore the original shaders the grass looks normal, but after applying a PTA preset looks washed out and light

You have to restore a shader-file that has already been tweaked by PTA 2.62 under P3D 4.3 after you applied a preset with PTA 2.63. Othwerwise you will overwrite the resored file again.

[Sunny Andonov 4]

@GSalden I used a preset from AviationLads but now I've downloaded ThoPat for testing purposes and indeed it looks much better. Something must have changed in P3D shaders, because the same Aviation Lads preset works beautifully in 4.3 with perfect green grass and no over saturation.

 

@Schlotterknie

 

31 minutes ago, Schlotterknie said:

You have to restore a shader-file that has already been tweaked by PTA 2.62 under P3D 4.3 after you applied a preset with PTA 2.63. Othwerwise you will overwrite the resored file again.

I am not sure what do you mean. Could you please clarify? I installed PTA 2.63, and the app created a backup of the original 4.4 shaders. Then I copied my preset file from 2.62 folder to 2.63 folder and applied it successfully with removing the water tunning option. When I want to change the preset I restore the original shaders and then select a new preset then apply. Is this the right procedure?

 

A screenshot from the new ThoPat preset I applied which is also made for 4.3 and PTA 2.62

 

Edited December 8, 2018 by Sunny Andonov

[GSalden 4,656]

It is only the water surface tuning that is causing issues but Matt is working on that and I am looking into a temporary hybrid GPUterrainfx file : all V4.4 , only the water parts of V4.3.

LM has made water looking more realistic in V4.4 but as was using expressions already for water surface that made it look more realistic than the default V4.3 water shader parts made it.

I want to achieve that this hybrid version can be tweaked with PTA 2.63 and will work with V4.4....