Environment Force Discussion Thread

[1st fltsimguy 466]

56 minutes ago, GEKtheReaper said:

Hello Bryan,

there are so many wrong assumptions in your post that I would say: Stay away from EF at this time!

The first thing you should do is read the product pages provided by REX.

Now to your Q:

REX SF3D

- is a texture pack that would replace default cloud and sky textures in the sim. Indeed It should do more to the visuals that any other cloud texture offerings on the market (e.g. rain shaft etc.) --> many of us (including me) find these textures great.

- does also include a very basic weather engine --> you should not use it if you have other weather engines (it will be updated at some point).

- has a number of X texture packs including a number of Y variations each -> as a standalone App, it will inject only variations of your selected texture pack which still means a LOT of different clouds but they are from the same texturepack! --> this is a bit confusing for some (or many)

REX EF

- will inject textures based on athmospheric conditions thus will use SF3D in all it's glory injecting different variations from different texturepacks (it's for you to decide if the injected visuals match the reported weather...I for myself can't tell if the injected Cirrus layer should be from texturepack A and not B because I'm not familiar with the entire variety of textures...they are more or less the same but still a bit different if you know what I mean)

- in addition to injecting textures it will also change the scene lighting. On a bright shinny sunny day your grounds will be more bright, ocean watter more blue and reflective etc. On a rainy day these all would change beeing more greyish, non reflective etc....

 

So above a brief description of what I understand from the REX5 product line. As you can see, the products complement eachother so you should not delete SF3D if you buy EF.

Now EF is a very powerful tool which seems to have some issues at this time. So if you are not familiar with shader changing apps (that's the part thes doeas change the scene e.g. lighting) I recomend you to stay away from it at this time.

Perfect, now I actually understand what EF does in relation to SF3D. I am not into shaders stuff, I see tons of discussion here that is quite confusing, and a way too complicated for me at this time.

Thanks for taking the time to explain this better the REX website.

[JoeFackel 760]

12 minutes ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

I am not into shaders stuff, I see tons of discussion here that is quite confusing, and a way too complicated for me at this time.

So EF and his automation mode is perfect suited for you 🙂

[Riah069 157]

Having a bit of a problem atm. If i start EV before starting P3d and dont delete the Shaders backup folder P3d will crash everytime. If i start P3d then start EV the mini UI dose not show. Anyone have the same problem?

[pete_auau 1,154]

why  not  post  at the  rex  forum  with your  issues in where  you should  post for support

Edited May 9, 2019 by pete_auau

[Riah069 157]

Because branching out on other forums and asking is a good thing.

[GEKtheReaper 364]

6 minutes ago, Riah069 said:

Because branching out on other forums and asking is a good thing.

While I generaly support this idea, I also read the very first post of this thread ;).

[pete_auau 1,154]

42 minutes ago, Riah069 said:

Because branching out on other forums and asking is a good thing.

Gerald  beat me  to it,  read  the first  post of  this  thread,  besides  you  cant  expect  the  devs  from  rex  to  comb  thru  all  the  threads  

Edited May 9, 2019 by pete_auau

[Woozie 732]

10 hours ago, fs1 said:

Most of the facts here are incorrect. You can read the manuals, for example. The auto mode for example, has the same features as the manual mode. There are many others facts that are inaccurate.

I appreciate if you have really something constructive to share. you take your time to think your statements and be precise on your affirmations.

I invite you to have a constructive discussion of the product.

Thanks,

Federico

Frederico

Invite accepted!

Actually I think my post was quite constructive, i pointed out positive things (read my introduction sentence) and a few things i see as negative. I also added a few suggestions on how this could have been handled better. All this pretty much fulfils the definition of constructive feedback. 

On the other hand, your feedback wasn't very constructive at all as you claim i posted wrong facts without actually naming these wrong facts. Please note that i was merely providing my own opinion and observations, however if there is any false information that i put up as a fact (and not an opinion), please feel free to correct me. 

And thanks for the RTFM advise! Actually i have read the manual line by line (kinda shows the level of desperation i reached at some point). About 80% of the information in the manual is a short description of what a certain switch does. Most of these descriptions are identical to the description on the GUI itself, apart from the weather smoothing description where the manual tells me it works with all weather engines while the GUI says it shouldn't be used with Active Sky...

Now, what the manual DOESN'T tell me is that EF also adds an entry to the DLL.XML file in P3D. This information would be much more important than merely just repeating what i can already read in the GUI. Do you remember that some customers stated that EF seem to be applying permanent changes (monochrome issue) to their P3D environment even though they restored shaders and launched P3D without the EF client? It appears that, due to the DLL entry, EF will still apply the current profile to P3D shaders, even though the GUI isnt running. It happened to me as well, thats why i stumbled over the DLL.xml entry while troubleshooting

(Warning, constructive feedback incoming):
Instead of just replicating the information that is already in the GUI, why didnt Rex provide a proper user guide, showing different, common shader-related setups offering tips and tricks and recommendations to ensure that all involved tools play nicely together? Or how about a simple flow chart diagram showing where EF takes influence on certain aspects of visuals and weather representation and where it interferes with other tools so we can selectively disable certain features? Or what about Fog mode manual and off? It appears that no one really understands what it does in regards to manual and auto mode. Is it dynamically and dependent on METAR data? Or is it an interpretation of the Rex engine based on certain environment variables? And then the confusion around Skyforce....Manual says that SkyForce isnt required to run in order to enjoy all the features of the EF/SF combo. Thats a bit contradictory to the information from one of the Rex devs in the official forum, where he states that SF has to be open for the morphing function to work? All that could have been included in a user guide thats actually useful

Just to emphasise again, i'm not running any agenda here and i'm not hating on REX or any of their products. I think that EF has a lot of potential and they way it changes visuals based on certain factors is very impressive and executed in a believable way. 

I would even give a Buy recommendation without much consideration, as long as potential buyers are aware that it may not be a one click solution and it may interfere with other shader tools in certain cases

Edited May 9, 2019 by Woozie

[CFIJose 5,485]

3 hours ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

Perfect, now I actually understand what EF does in relation to SF3D. I am not into shaders stuff, I see tons of discussion here that is quite confusing, and a way too complicated for me at this time.

Thanks for taking the time to explain this better the REX website.

One thing not mentioned is that REX SF also adds the immersion of cloud structures and EF can be used in manual mode which opens up endless possibilities. These two addons, along with ASP4, will transform the sim each and every time you go fly, especially "awesome" if you do regional simming.

[earthdog 842]

On 5/7/2019 at 1:28 AM, skysurfer said:

Thanks for the reply.

You got me on that one. That's the problem. There are so many programs and they all do difference things so it is hard to understand how it all would work together. Some people have good understanding how it all work, some don't. That is why I am here. One simmer suggests do this, another one says do that. Huh..

This is what Nyxx suggested:
"You just use SF & EF with ASP4. You would be fine now with PTA, if you get way to much bloom turn HDR off within the EF mini UI also pointed out a few pages ago."

So do I use PTA or not with EF? If you are saying it is not wise to use overlapping tweaks in both EF and PTA then what do I use? ENVSHADE? So much confusion here.. 

Thanks 

 

 

The fact is , that EF doens;t have all the options yet. For example you cannot alter VC lighting which for me is crucial as i spent all the time in there 🙂 

Yes you could combine PTA with EF and maybe reshade but at that moment i think that trying this will take valuable time off flying.

As i said Reshade with ambient lighting is a huge imrpovement for me. 

So until EF or any other tool comes up with all-in-one solution i will stick to what pleases my eyes and i will try to use my reduced free time to fly and tweak less. And i am saying this by being a person that has dedicated a lot of time to tweaking and understanding having also IT background....IT guys love to tweak but even for me it came a day where i have to decide to invest my time better. It is called a flight simultion for a reason. That is Fly...If it was a Tweak Simulator things would be different 🙂

my 2c.

[A320wolf 27]

Hi guys!

I'm one of those simmer who prefers ASCA+ENVText instead of REX Textures.

Anyway for what I know/understand AS+ASCA dynamically change/inject texture inside P3D while you're flying, in the same way now REX EF+SKY FORCE 3D work.

So you don't need necessary REX EF to change dynamically your textures. If I use AS+ASCA+ENVText + EnvShade, I should remove only Envshade and use REX EF to have dynamically changes of shaders.

On REX website I can also read that its cloud component provides more accurate properties to clouds as they dynamically transition on the fly : this means that it works with AS in this sense.

Can someone confirm these things?

Thanks a lot!

Bye, Max

[fs1 295]

9 minutes ago, earthdog said:

The fact is , that EF doens;t have all the options yet. For example you cannot alter VC lighting which for me is crucial as i spent all the time in there 🙂 

Yes you could combine PTA with EF and maybe reshade but at that moment i think that trying this will take valuable time off flying.

As i said Reshade with ambient lighting is a huge imrpovement for me. 

So until EF or any other tool comes up with all-in-one solution i will stick to what pleases my eyes and i will try to use my reduced free time to fly and tweak less. And i am saying this by being a person that has dedicated a lot of time to tweaking and understanding having also IT background....IT guys love to tweak but even for me it came a day where i have to decide to invest my time better. It is called a flight simultion for a reason. That is Fly...If it was a Tweak Simulator things would be different 🙂

my 2c.

Yes, new features are coming soon.

Federico

[Nyxx 6,993]

11 minutes ago, fs1 said:

Yes, new features are coming soon.

Federico

Developers and the use of "soon"............lol

That's not a dig at you Federico it just we hear that a lot, PMDG idea of "soon" with the NG was over a year later.

We just have become very cynical and /rolleyes when we hear "Soon", perhaps I should not use "we".as that implies am talking for everyone. 

Edited May 9, 2019 by Nyxx

[fs1 295]

13 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

Developers and the use of "soon"............lol

That's not a dig at you Federico it just we hear that a lot, PMDG idea of "soon" with the NG was over a year later.

We just have become very cynical and /rolleyes when we hear "Soon", perhaps I should not use "we".as that implies am talking for everyone. 

As soon as we fine tune the HDR (imminent), we’ll start implementing these. If you want to add yours to the features request list, you are welcome.

Federico

Edited May 9, 2019 by fs1

[Axis3600 50]

I noticed that when the weather is covered with EF the FPS goes down well compared to before ...

Edited May 9, 2019 by Axis3600
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