P3Dv4.5 Water and light textures still worse than FSX

[tomcatman24 15]

I am running P3Dv4.5 with various addons (scenery, airplanes, textures, etc) and I am very happy with it! WAY better performing and WAY better visually than FSX, which I flew for over 10 years on several different computers.

That said, I was looking back through some old FSX screenshots and I knew this to be true, but it struck me again how much worse the water color, water textures, airport lighting textures, and bloom effect are in P3dv4 vs. FSX. The water and lights look WAY better in FSX. Why is that? Why hasn't either P3D improved that or REX improved that?

In FSX, I used Steve's DX 10 fixer, REX Essential plus Overdrive, and REX 4 Texture Direct plus Soft Clouds to achieve the effect/look I wanted. The lights and water looked great! 

Now in P3dv4, I still use REX 4 Texture Direct plus Soft Clouds Enhanced for the water textures and the light textures but they don't come close to looking as well as they did in FSX.

I don't have a specific question because I don't think there is currently a way to get the water and lights looking as good in P3dv4 as they did in FSX but if you know how, I'd love to hear it!

And no, switching to x-plane or just waiting for the new MSFS don't count as answers. 😄 😄 

Again, I am VERY happy with my current setup and with P3dv4... except for what is listed above.

[GSalden 4,657]

 

You need :

- good water, clouds and sky textures

- a shader mod program ( Eg : PTA / TomatoShade / EnvTex / Environment Force )

 

 

Edited September 29, 2019 by GSalden

[tomcatman24 15]

Thanks. As I said above, for water textures/coloring and airport lighting textures, I am already using REX Texture Direct plus Soft Clouds. 

I also use PTA and have been using a fairly heavily modified RD Preset. 

All in all, I am happy with those results. PTA really changes the sim and it is great! 

However, with FSX, I could just inject the light and water textures from REX Essential Plus Overdrive and REX 4 Texture Direct Soft Clouds, without any other tinkering, and it looked much better than P3dv4 does. 

In P3dv4, the waves textures, reflections and water coloring just doesn't look as as good as it did in FSX. Also, the airport lighting and the lights on the airplanes aren't as realistic and don't have that beautiful bloom that they did in FSX either. 

Here's a couple examples of water from FSX.

This one shows the waves but P3dv4 doesn't

Different color water inland

Again, much better wave action and color

And again, different inland color and better wave action

In P3dv4, using REX 4 Texture Direct textures and coloring along with PTA, all my water is the same color, I can't see waves unless they are directly in line with the sun, and the water textures just aren't displaying as well.

 

[tomcatman24 15]

Also, here's some shots of the lighting in FSX with REX light textures, Steve's DX10 Fixer, and Bloom on. I can't get the lights P3dv4 to look anywhere near as good as these.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

It's really a question of aesthetics, so personal taste is a factor.

In general, shots I see of FSX look like...a sim built a long time ago.  

For example, your first FSX shot looks a lot more "cartoon-like" to my eyes than the first P3D one (which shows some pretty good reflections).

One issue that has been commented on before is the lack of visible waves at altitude with P3D. Some feel this is realistic, others miss the old REX animated waves. Certainly if you skim across the wave tops (or use a boat), the P3D water is far more complex. 

As for switching to X-plane - you DEFINITELY don't want to do that for water and waves! Might as well just switch to Aerofly FS2 in that regard! 🙂

[tomcatman24 15]

2 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

For example, your first FSX shot looks a lot more "cartoon-like" to my eyes than the first P3D one (which shows some pretty good reflections).

All of the above shots are from FSX and taken 2-4 years ago. I haven't posted any from P3dv4 yet. 

3 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

It's really a question of aesthetics, so personal taste is a factor.

Absolutely, I agree! For me, it just seems like there is no variety in P3dv4, even using REX textures. It seems like P3dv4 only shows glimmers off waves when you are looking at the water directly in line with the sun. Whereas with the same textures in FSX, they would display white caps and they would glimmer in the sun even when looking in a different direction. And by switching textures, it actually changed the wave texture and wave size but that is very minimal in P3dv4. It was an immediately noticable difference in FSX. Not so in P3dv4. Then, also color. In the shots above, there was variety of water color in FSX. For me, all my water is the same color, whether its the ocean, inland lakes, rivers, whatever.

Again, overall, I am VERY happy with P3dv4!! As much as I am disappointed with the water and airport lights, everything else is SO much better! 

I guess I was just wondering if others saw similar issues. Or if I was doing something wrong. 

[Kilo60 660]

I’m really perplexed why P3D doesn’t have inland water color different than the oceans.  

 

One thing I sorely miss from my FSX/REX days is the brownish inland canal and lake water color here in FLorida!

[tomcatman24 15]

49 minutes ago, Kilo60 said:

I’m really perplexed why P3D doesn’t have inland water color different than the oceans.  

 

One thing I sorely miss from my FSX/REX days is the brownish inland canal and lake water color here in FLorida!

Agreed! That is one of the issues I tried to raise above!

Are you using addons, like PTA or REX textures?