Environment Force Discussion Thread

[colartkit 4]

Can EF be installed on networked client pc?  The manual says it installs into P3D.  Anyone tried it?

[av8r13 15]

hello all,

love this product. the only issue i am having is that when the sun is out (in auto mode) everything is way too bright. to the point of washing out the scenery.

does anyone know how to correct to this in auto mode?

i know that there is an EF topic but was hoping to avoid reading 14 pages for this one small issue.

[Pete Dowson 558]

Okay. I have problems.

I installed Env Force last night and thinks looked okay. This morning when loading P3D4.4 afresh, the P3D screen was entirely black. the menu appeared on pressing ALT, but nothing else.

I assumed it had somehow corrupted my shaders, so I stopped it running and reinstalled the Shaders folder from a copy I'd taken beforehand. No difference.

I ended up reinstalling everything after many more abortive attempts to get my P3D4 back to normal, inclding uninstalling Env Force, and then things were okay.

So, I took a backup immediately, and tried again. I thought with a fresh install it can't go wrong ... but it did!

Rather than go thought all this again I decided to go through a more low level sequence of elimination, which took me most of the rest of the day. And I found it. Not the reason, but the way to stop it happening:-  turning HDR off in P3D.

I had ENV FORCE only running in auto mode. I've not discovered the in-sim menu yet so I don't know how to enable or disable HDR in that.  I'm not really interested in tweaking it -- that's why I never use ENVTEXT, ENVSHADE, TomatoShade or PTA. And I have stopped ASC running, and I don't run Sky Force 3D (though it is installed, for the textures), which pleases me as that's two fewer processes running.

Does anyone here have any idea why or how HDR being enabled in P3D can conceivable render an all black screen, day or night?

I will, of course, report on the REX support forum -- in the morning. It is late here and I am tired and off to bed now.

Pete

 

 

[Nemo 1,305]

6 minutes ago, Pete Dowson said:

Okay. I have problems.

I installed Env Force last night and thinks looked okay. This morning when loading P3D4.4 afresh, the P3D screen was entirely black. the menu appeared on pressing ALT, but nothing else.

I assumed it had somehow corrupted my shaders, so I stopped it running and reinstalled the Shaders folder from a copy I'd taken beforehand. No difference.

I ended up reinstalling everything after many more abortive attempts to get my P3D4 back to normal, inclding uninstalling Env Force, and then things were okay.

So, I took a backup immediately, and tried again. I thought with a fresh install it can't go wrong ... but it did!

Rather than go thought all this again I decided to go through a more low level sequence of elimination, which took me most of the rest of the day. And I found it. Not the reason, but the way to stop it happening:-  turning HDR off in P3D.

I had ENV FORCE only running in auto mode. I've not discovered the in-sim menu yet so I don't know how to enable or disable HDR in that.  I'm not really interested in tweaking it -- that's why I never use ENVTEXT, ENVSHADE, TomatoShade or PTA. And I have stopped ASC running, and I don't run Sky Force 3D (though it is installed, for the textures), which pleases me as that's two fewer processes running.

Does anyone here have any idea why or how HDR being enabled in P3D can conceivable render an all black screen, day or night?

I will, of course, report on the REX support forum -- in the morning. It is late here and I am tired and off to bed now.

Pete

 

 

Probably you have to wait longer. De-compiling shaders when a flight gets loaded needs at least 25-30 seconds and in certain situations even longer. During this process the screen remains black.

[glider1 90]

5 hours ago, Nemo said:

I'm out of game. After three days fiddling and tweaking I've not got Environment Force to give me acceptable results in "Automated Mode" with SF3D and Active Sky. Luckily I could go back to my former combo:

SF3D (no skies) +  ASP4 + ASCA (only skies) + EnvShade.

which is good enough for me at the moment. Maybe I'll give EF another try when REX comes up with a "real" weather engine. Until then ...

Bye.

Yeah lots of stuffing around here too. You may have hit a bug which has taken me six hours to find. In manual mode general settings you can select whether you want to use P3D HDR. It doesn't actually work for me you have to do another step to get P3D HDR to work. I also have to navigate the envforce mini panel on the simulator screen and scroll down until you get to the option "turn on hdr". Hit that and all of sudden P3D HDR settings you are used to have effect in automatic mode which makes the scene look the way you used to have it before Envforce. Then go back to auto mode and Envforce adjusts the scene with P3D hdr enabled too. Currently this has to be done each time you run a scenario.

Edited May 4, 2019 by glider1

[ZKOKQ 984]

..

Edited May 5, 2019 by ZKOKQ

[geolpilot 88]

I am afraid I am with @Nemo and others on this one. I have supported REX for many years, and enjoy Sky Force, and this post is not at all intended to denigrate REX's valiant efforts, or their very ambitious EF product,  but this is my experience so far....

Initial Install went OK, but like many I did not enjoy the brightness and overdone bloom. OK could control that through the mini UI. Installed the Tech Update and was able to use Tomato shade and not get greyed-out cockpits (I want to use TS for aircraft reflections on non-PBR enabled models).

Then last night I decide to try run P3D (on 4.4 client as I await LM 4.5 FPS fix), just fly and NOT test or run EF. But EF's brightness/bloom settings remained "locked in" and the P3D internal HDR sliders do nothing (/graphics/lighting, HDR on and tried set saturation to 0, which should give a monochrome view, but it stays fixed as set by EF).

So restart computer and same. Try another run with EF, and last straw, mini UI is gone.

So I uninstalled EF, rebooted, reset the Shaders HLSL from backup, cleared shader cache, ran P3D and happy days, could again control HDR brightness, bloom and saturation from P3D graphics/lighting UI. Closed, reinstalled Tomato Preset RD1.7 and am back to SF3D + ASP4 + TS.

Along the way my GSX stopped working and in investigating that I found that an entry in ProgramData/ Lockheed Martin/ Prepar3d V4/ dll.xml referring to a REX EF module DLL had been left behind, despite the uninstall. Is it this entry that locks out the normal P3D lighting controls even when not running EF!!!!???. If EF is uninstalled the REX dll referred to in this dll.xml is gone so it cannot load, and one is back to a straight P3D setup. But why, oh why not clean up the dll.xml on uninstall, and even more importantly, set the dll entry to not initialize the REX module if EF is NOT run, so users have the option to run a EF-less setup if they wish.

I also cannot confirm if the automated cloud morphing and  lighting dynamics work if using ASP4 for the weather engine. Have not seen anything change. Admittedly one needs a very dynamic weather situation to test under. But what concerns me is that the METAR information reported in the auto EF interface when running ASP4, and with EF weather data read OFF as advised if using AS, is non-sensical except for the temp/dewpoint and QNH readings at the end of the string. If this is what is reported to screen then I am seriously left wondering what values of cloud types, levels and densities are being used to model cloud morphing and lighting! Switch to read real time weather from NOAA and this METAR report makes sense. Maybe Active Sky is compatible with EF, but that does not necessarily mean it will work just as well to control auto-mode as when using REX's SF weather engine / NOAA data.

Maybe if one uses the SF weather engine this all works perfectly, but I have never been a fan of that weather engine because;

1. Historical weather cannot be used
2. I have had  a serious problem with REX's wind interpolation model, since REX Essential days. HiFi have this aspect (math) spot on.

So for the foreseeable future EF stays off my computer. Maybe when WeatherForce is released and I see that it is at least up to HiFi standards I will give it another try.

Will cross-post this later today on REX forum. Is Sat night in Phoenix and the guys may take Sunday off from hectic Hotfixing !!.

Now I see the very knowledgeable Pete Dowson is on-board the EF merry go-round, maybe he will track down some of the issues (see he has problems already). Good luck Pete!

[bakerman 31]

25 minutes ago, geolpilot said:

But why, oh why not clean up the dll.xml on uninstall, and even more importantly, set the dll entry to not initialize the REX module if EF is NOT run, so users have the option to run a EF-less setup if they wish.

Robin thanks for this, just was it the process to reinstall P3d be course of the EF leftovers.

[Pete Dowson 558]

11 hours ago, Nemo said:

Probably you have to wait longer. De-compiling shaders when a flight gets loaded needs at least 25-30 seconds and in certain situations even longer. During this process the screen remains black.

No, it was black forever unless I went into the menu and turned HDR off.

I'm going to change to 4.5 today (as I think the FPS problem which stopped me earlier will be fixed very soon), and see if that helps. I'll also delete the Shaders folder (again) and replace the ShadersHLSL folder with a backup (again). But I think I will have to delve more into EnvForce documentation and look at its HDR settings (which I perhaps wrongly assumed would default to off).

Pete

[Nyxx 6,993]

 

 

 

 

 

 

5

1 hour ago, geolpilot said:

So I uninstalled EF, rebooted, reset the Shaders HLSL from backup, cleared shader cache, ran P3D and happy days, could again control HDR brightness, bloom and saturation from P3D graphics/lighting UI. Closed, reinstalled Tomato Preset RD1.7 and am back to SF3D + ASP4 + TS.

Along the way my GSX stopped working and in investigating that I found that an entry in ProgramData/ Lockheed Martin/ Prepar3d V4/ dll.xml referring to a REX EF module DLL had been left behind, despite the uninstall. Is it this entry that locks out the normal P3D lighting controls even when not running EF!!!!???. If EF is uninstalled the REX dll referred to in this dll.xml is gone so it cannot load, and one is back to a straight P3D setup. But why, oh why not clean up the dll.xml on uninstall, and even more importantly, set the dll entry to not initialize the REX module if EF is NOT run, so users have the option to run a EF-less setup if they wish.

I totally agree EF should have a rest button. That should return P3D at to pre-EF and it should never persist when you don't even have EF open, to lock out HRD within P3D is just wrong.

I've said this many time. It's just wrong.

[Pete Dowson 558]

2 hours ago, geolpilot said:

Now I see the very knowledgeable Pete Dowson is on-board the EF merry go-round, maybe he will track down some of the issues (see he has problems already). Good luck Pete!

Well, I don't know what to do. I'm afraid all this is not in my area of "knowledge". 

I've replaced the ShadersHLSL folder from default, deleted the AppData Shaders folder, and installed 4.5. Result: still only black screen in HDR mode.

But the situation is worse than that: the sky only ever has shades of gray. And the ground is so dark it mostly looks black.

I ran EnvForce and went into its Manual mode, and turned HDR off there (oddly it was on by default). This is after updating EF with the released "technical update 1".

I've no idea what to do to get my P3D4 looking good again. It is completely useless, horrible, as it is. I don't want to have to do a complete restore from backup yet again. It takes so long to get everything back the way I want it.

So I need some ideas, please. What, apart from the Shaders folder in AppData\Local and the ShadersHLSL subfolder in P3D's folder, has an affect on the display colouring, brightness, etc?

Time for me to post on the REX support forum I think.

[LATER]

I've uninstalled EF (its Tech Update first, then the program proper). I removed its entry in the ProgramData DLL.XML.  Enabled SkyForce and ASCA. So I'm pretty much back to where I was (as I thought) ...

... Started P3D4. Still gray sky colours and black ground -- except for airport buildings runways and aprons. Autogen trees are white, as are buildings. it looks absolutely awful! The only good thing is that I can now switch on HDR and have brighter sky grays. But I've no idea how to get the proper colours back. I'll restore stuff from backup bit-by-bit. Will take a while, rebooting each time, but I'd like to know which files are truly responsible as it doesn't appear to be the Shaders or ShadersHLSL stuff.

Pete

 

Edited May 5, 2019 by Pete Dowson

[Nemo 1,305]

29 minutes ago, Pete Dowson said:

Well, I don't know what to do. I'm afraid all this is not in my area of "knowledge". 

I've replaced the ShadersHLSL folder from default, deleted the AppData Shaders folder, and installed 4.5. Result: still only black screen in HDR mode.

But the situation is worse than that: the sky only ever has shades of gray. And the ground is so dark it mostly looks black.

I ran EnvForce and went into its Manual mode, and turned HDR off there (oddly it was on by default). This is after updating EF with the released "technical update 1".

I've no idea what to do to get my P3D4 looking good again. It is completely useless, horrible, as it is. I don't want to have to do a complete restore from backup yet again. It takes so long to get everything back the way I want it.

So I need some ideas, please. What, apart from the Shaders folder in AppData\Local and the ShadersHLSL subfolder in P3D's folder, has an affect on the display colouring, brightness, etc? 

Time for me to post on the REX support forum I think.

Pete

 

Do you also have graphical issues when you don't run EF. If yes, you could try to disable the REX entry in the Program Data dll.xml.

[threexgreen 3,139]

13 minutes ago, Pete Dowson said:

But the situation is worse than that: the sky only ever has shades of gray. And the ground is so dark it mostly looks black.

My sim just suffered the same. In my case, EF steals half my frame rate as soon as it's cloudy which is simply unnacceptable. Something seems to be way off there. I was testing around to try and make sense of the performance issue and in the process I did several client reinstalls in order to restore default shaders. After one reinstall I was loading up P3D to let it set itself up and the sky is now gray/brownish and the ground textures are pitch black. Another client reinstall didn't help.

 

31 minutes ago, Pete Dowson said:

So I need some ideas, please. What, apart from the Shaders folder in AppData\Local and the ShadersHLSL subfolder in P3D's folder, has an affect on the display colouring, brightness, etc?

I just downloaded and installed the 4.5 client (I was still on 4.4) and my sky and ground are back to normal. Before the update I also deleted the shaders folder in AppData.

[Pete Dowson 558]

Went to REX support forums and found this thread under "Awaiting hotfix".

https://www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/forums/index.php?/topic/50921-black-an-white-textures/

I haven't used PTA or other shaders (I do have ENVTEX and ENVSHADE but haven't been using them on this PC). However, my visuals look just like the ones shown in the above thread.

So, is the "HotFix" not the same a "Technical Update #1"? I thought it was, hence my perplexity.

Maybe I should install and run ENVSHADE to see if that fixes my problems?

Pete

 

[Pete Dowson 558]

22 minutes ago, Nemo said:

Do you also have graphical issues when you don't run EF. If yes, you could try to disable the REX entry in the Program Data dll.xml.

Yes. I wasn't running EF for most of the tests. It made no difference running or not. I have now disabled the DLL (as I thought I mentioned) -- I didn't know about that till one of the posts above mentioned it. 

20 minutes ago, threegreen said:

I just downloaded and installed the 4.5 client (I was still on 4.4) and my sky and ground are back to normal. Before the update I also deleted the shaders folder in AppData.

I'm afraid it made no difference for me, except for the 30%+ degradation in frame rates and stuttery performance. Need the P3D4.5 Hotfix for that, I know.

Pete

 

Edited May 5, 2019 by Pete Dowson