Environment Force Discussion Thread

[fakeflyer737 991]

Any one notice clouds forming and dissipating? 

 

I could care less about shaders, we have so many shader programs. 

 

 I wanted to purchase EF but I'm not convinced its worth it. Any videos on those clouds ? 

[timest 472]

3 hours ago, J van E said:

...But only in combination with SkyForce! T

 

Well, yes, but also REX Texture Direct/Soft Clouds Enhanced Edition as well. We are also working on an API that will allow other texture products the opportunity to work with Environment Force.

[Wennerholm 44]

EF works great but not in conjunction with PTA. You do not need PTA or any shader software when you have EF, IMHO.

[aerostar 42]

33 minutes ago, cyyzrwy24 said:

https://www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/forums/index.php?/topic/50809-rex5-environment-force-and-rex4-texture-direct/

I meant the Mini UI Tweaker in the SIM....  it has disappeared and I cant get it back.....   there is no icon minimised in the the bottom bar for it,  only for the Main UI 

[TravelRunner404 596]

11 minutes ago, fakeflyer737 said:

 

Any one notice clouds forming and dissipating? 

 

Weather changes slowly but I do notice changes. 

One way to see how it works is load up a flight where it’s raining w/ overcast but set your default weather in P3D to sunny. If you use the Skyforce weather engine and set the top slider in EF to 5 or 10 minutes, you can slowly watch the weather go from sunny to rain over that time frame. It’s a little extreme but it will illustrate the change in a slightly dramatic fashion. 

 

Which brings me to a question about the first time weather loads...shouldn’t there be an option to have the first weather loading be instant? It’s a little weird to drop into the plane and have this 5 minute cloud/weather morph. Seems the first injection should be instant since it’s setting the original scene for the day. 

Also, if you use the Skyforce weather engine does SF need to be open with EF? Or does EF have it’s own engine?

[Wennerholm 44]

7 minutes ago, aerostar said:

I meant the Mini UI Tweaker in the SIM....  it has disappeared and I cant get it back.....   there is no icon minimised in the the bottom bar for it,  only for the Main UI 

.

Edited May 1, 2019 by Wennerholm

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, timest said:

Well, yes, but also REX Texture Direct/Soft Clouds Enhanced Edition as well. We are also working on an API that will allow other texture products the opportunity to work with Environment Force.

Correct, as the initial quote already stated ('Requires Sky Force or Texture Direct'). 😉

Concerning the API: that's nice but 'allow the opportuinity' means you are giving other developers the opportunity to make use of EF. That is a great idea but do you really think HiFi Simulations will spend time (and money) on making their addons work with the competition and hence make their own product(s) (in this case ASCA) redundant...? I highly doubt it. 😉 So until that happens it's EF plus SF/TD only. Besides, relying on promises of things to come when you buy a new product seldom is a clever thing to do. 😉 I've heard 'we are working on it' enough to know better (not pointing at REX only here, btw!)

If your API will eventually get released and makes use of ASCA, ENVTEX, etc. right away, out of the box, without the need for the various developers having to work on it, then it would be a different story, of course: in that case I stand corrected.

[bosflo 53]

Not sure if I am getting everything I want. I have done a few flights using environment force and skyforce but I don't see a difference in what I had before using active sky. The clouds still "change" when flying but I don't see the groundbreaking technology for building skies unless I am doing something wrong. Has anyone else seen the difference? I don't use PTA or shaders and don't have any idea what they do. I just have a basic setup, but I think that the weather injection has improved in skyforce because I didn't see the cloud popping from before. Thanks

[David Roch 1,975]

14 minutes ago, aerostar said:

I meant the Mini UI Tweaker in the SIM....  it has disappeared and I cant get it back.....   there is no icon minimised in the the bottom bar for it,  only for the Main UI 

Same for me here.
Any suggestion please?

Edit: fount it (bottom left corner 😉

Edited May 1, 2019 by David Roch

[aerostar 42]

Which icon, only see the Main UI icon....   have tried all

 

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, bosflo said:

The clouds still "change" when flying but I don't see the groundbreaking technology for building skies unless I am doing something wrong. Has anyone else seen the difference?

The problem here may be that skies in P3D look different all the time anyway, even when you only use AS with default clouds. With ASCA clouds or SF clouds the skies may look a different kind of different but who can see the difference between different and different if both are different anyway? If you get what I'm saying. 😉

If you really want to see differences take screenshots of the same situations using different addons. I think most simmers won't be able to tell differences between various weather related addons when they simply fly around or if you show them screenshots without telling them what addons were in use.

It seriously (!!!) wouldn't surprise me if there are simmers here who are excited with and brag about how their clouds have improved after they started using AS with ASCA or EF with SF ("Things look different all the time, wow!") while all the time they are looking at the same single set of textures because they've got their addons setup wrong.. LOL!!! 😂

People often see what they want to see or expect to see. Did I mention the emperor's clothes already? 😉

[Cruachan 705]

44 minutes ago, Wennerholm said:

EF works great but not in conjunction with PTA. You do not need PTA or any shader software when you have EF, IMHO.

Hi Ken,

You seem to be quite emphatic about this. I’m not suggestion you are wrong, but it would be helpful if you would relate your experiences. In my previous post I suggested this might be a possibility as REX Environment Force may be coded to use it’s own dynamic (assuming they are dynamic and applied on the fly) shader tweaks which overwrite any pre-existing tweaks applied to the shader set in ShadersHLSL. It seems unlikely that LM would share with REX the intellectual rights that would allow restoration of the default shaders in customers’ P3D installations.

So, assuming you are indeed correct, PTA, TS, etc. would become irrelevant. In fact, following this line of thought, there may not be any need to restore the default shaders prior to using REX Environment Force as EF will be applying its own tweaks over anything that has been applied before.

Please correct me if I’m wrong about this. I do not wish to give the impression that I know more than I do. Any clarification or confirmation would be helpful particularly for those of us who might prefer to stick with our static shader tweaks and, as some have experienced, risk losing the ability to restore their favoured tweaked shader set short of reinstalling the P3D Client. Not a big deal, I know, but more of a nuisance.

Regards,

Mike

[cyyzrwy24 118]

24 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

So, assuming you are indeed correct, PTA, TS, etc. would become irrelevant. In fact, following this line of thought, there may not be any need to restore the default shaders prior to using REX Environment Force as EF will be applying its own tweaks over anything that has been applied before.

That might make sense....I got dizzy from reading about this shader business last couple of days and indeed, as suspected that could be the case. They are in the same business as everyone else, strong and reputable developer that gave us a lot's of goodies over last several years and made our SIM definitely better and more realistic. They made their shader tool and offered for sale, to me as simple as that and that's how I understood from the introduction. So it is up to all of us how we are going to use it. We all have some other "shader tools"  in our toolbox but it appears that this one is stand alone. Now, just because they mentioned that their add-on is compatible with everything on the market doesn't mean it will work good on every single PC. I am not expecting anyone from REX to confirm this but so far it looks that way and carefully used wording on their web site relating to this product tells me the same thing. Again IMHO. 

We, for some reason invested a lot of time tweaking our sims to the best of our liking with current shader enhancement add-ons, but we shouldn't defend them. Personally I am with PTA, have my issues and still tweaking every time I load  the flight. Very powerful tool but very IMHO, complicated as well as very sensitive (or totally opposite) to every small change I make. 

Today I will get EF and see what will pop on my screen once I turn my SIM on. Than I will confirm if I made right statement.

Edited May 1, 2019 by cyyzrwy24

[Nyxx 6,993]

10 hours ago, xxd09 said:

Nyxx 

Where are you ?

xxd09

I got a 24-hour ban for using "X's" Sorry to anyone who that might have offended.

Two things to report.

If you find you have lost control of your lighting within the sim. In my case, nothing, even a client re-install did not put it right. Goto manual page 32, Enable manual lighting, turn it ON and you should be OK again. You will have to delete shaders etc and start again.

The second thing you all did read the manual?

Did you spot this

It also says on the next page.

But you have to follow the first one, So if you're using ASP4 turn that option off.

Am still waiting for a TS fix....

Edited May 1, 2019 by Nyxx

[Nyxx 6,993]

I do think after reading the manual a few times today that I will delete ASCA and run SF+EF with ASP4. 

I need TS for the reflections for FSL. But I do think this is going to be a huge sim changer once we can get into it and learn.