P3D v5: No sun glow/shine

[BerndB 349]

54 minutes ago, BMW969 said:

In P3Dv4.5, the sun looked great. Clouds too)

They broke the old engine and didn't create a new one.

 

 

Nice Pic, Alex. This is how the Sun should look like. I´am too missing the big and bright corona in V5. I use already EnvTex and -shade. Maybe the guys from TOGA-Projects can create an acceptable corona for us. 🤔

If i remember correctly in v4.5 i have seen a separate texture file called "suncorona" in the maindirectory of P3D. Maybe this is missing somehow in V5.

Edited July 28, 2020 by BerndB

[OzWhitey 3,353]

v5.0 is a transitional step between the old, dated graphics and DX12+Enhanced atmospherics/TrueSky.

It makes sense to provide the old engine for those who wish to use it for various reasons, but it wouldn't make sense for the developer to spend time and effort tweaking it.

Equally, the new EA graphics are still in beta an have some obvious flaws (sun, jaggies where clouds meet mountain, some objects showing too clearly through cloud, obvious cloud patterns in some instances from high altitude).  

I'm confident LM will fix the sun, just like they modded the moon. I have no doubt that they're aware of these issues, hence EA being officially called beta.

The question is whether it gets fixed by v5.1, and how long in the future we're talking here.

I don't see any of the issues with EA as being deal breakers. Whilst I like eye candy, the reality is that the v4 screenshot posted above is unrealistic - you do not get lens flare if/when you look into the sun! That degree of lens flare is not even something that you would typically see in a photo, rather it's something we've got used to from Hollywood movies which use CGI to achieve the effect, and the games that copy them. (Note that optical lenses have had coatings on them since the 1940s to try and avoid flare, which in photography is usually considered a bad thing!)

Personally, with all its flaws I think EA is one of the strongest features of v5, and I use it for every single flight. 

[LHookins 3,103]

2 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

That degree of lens flare is not even something that you would typically see in a photo

But... but... I *LIKE* cheesy lens flare! 😄 😄 

Hook

[OzWhitey 3,353]

1 hour ago, LHookins said:

But... but... I *LIKE* cheesy lens flare! 😄 😄 

Hook

I guess we need to ask ourselves what we are trying to achieve here.

1. I want to simulated flying in the fictional universe that the Transformers films are set in - currently not supported.

2, I want to simulate a flight where I spend the entire time looking through a 1930's Soviet-built lens that has Vaseline smeared on the filter - currently not supported.

3. I want to simulate flights where the sun - which appears as a disc without lens flare in our world - is represented in the sim by a disc without lens flare - LM can help you here!

🙂

By the way, P3D v5 does include lens flare, selectable as an option in the "Lighting" menu. It's subtle, but even that is more than you'll see in the real world, where lens flare is absolutely not a thing that human eyes do!*

* There are some exceptions to this, with cataracts being the most common example. Could one of the older Avsimmers - say, anyone over 70 - pop outside and take a good, long look at the sun - thanks! Let us know if you get any lens flare. I think there might be a little, probably a bit less than what LM provides in sim - so v5's 'lens flare' option is presumably simulating flight with severe cataracts or uveitis that the FAA does know about yet.

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2020 by OzWhitey

[LHookins 3,103]

I wonder if I can find an old, probably cheap multi-element lens that produces the same amount of lens flare we see in the sims.

Cataracts:  Been there.  No multi-element lens flare though.  The major effect was that all point light sources were surrounded by what looked like thousands of needles radiating out from the light, and they were rainbow colored.  Actually an attractive effect if it wasn't too distracting.

Shortly before surgery I visited a motorcycle shop that had a Harley with lots of chrome on the engine, sitting in direct sunlight.  Lots and lots of highlights, each with it's thousands of rainbow colored needles.  Gorgeous.  I forgot to hook up a string of Christmas lights to see what that was like.

After surgery, everything was brighter, bluer and had texture.  Within 12 hours of getting out of surgery I was able to return my desktop to higher resolution and reduce the size of text.  Bluer:  Cataracts impart a slightly yellow-brown color to everything and reduce brightness.

For anyone contemplating that surgery, it was dead simple, done through a tiny hole on the side of the cornea that didn't even need stitches, and they replaced the lens with a fixed-focus lens.  Various options are available and by the time you need it they'll probably have a good variable focus lens.

Hook

Edited July 29, 2020 by LHookins

[GSalden 4,656]

This is what we see with our eyes as the sunlight is too bright for us and at sunset many times the light is diffuse :

https://www.awakenthegreatnesswithin.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Sunset-Quotes.jpg

With a camera without filter it more looks like his :

https://earthsky.org/upl/2013/09/sunrise-red-sea-Graham-Telford-e1489764712368.jpg

Myself I like it how we see it with our eyes. 

://earthsky.org/upl/2013/09/sunrise-red-sea-Graham-Telford-e1489764712368.jpg

 

Edited July 29, 2020 by GSalden

[BerndB 349]

8 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

I guess we need to ask ourselves what we are trying to achieve here.

1. I want to simulated flying in the fictional universe that the Transformers films are set in - currently not supported.

2, I want to simulate a flight where I spend the entire time looking through a 1930's Soviet-built lens that has Vaseline smeared on the filter - currently not supported.

3. I want to simulate flights where the sun - which appears as a disc without lens flare in our world - is represented in the sim by a disc without lens flare - LM can help you here!

🙂

By the way, P3D v5 does include lens flare, selectable as an option in the "Lighting" menu. It's subtle, but even that is more than you'll see in the real world, where lens flare is absolutely not a thing that human eyes do!*

* There are some exceptions to this, with cataracts being the most common example. Could one of the older Avsimmers - say, anyone over 70 - pop outside and take a good, long look at the sun - thanks! Let us know if you get any lens flare. I think there might be a little, probably a bit less than what LM provides in sim - so v5's 'lens flare' option is presumably simulating flight with severe cataracts or uveitis that the FAA does know about yet.

 

 

 

Rob, we are not talking about the lensflare, we talk about the bright and wide halo or corona apearing around the Sun in reality and this is mainly what´s shown in the pic from Alex. If you compare it to the actual unrealistic white dot which shall be the Sun, there is no doubt how it has to be.  The place where you could see a Sun like in V5 actually is on Mars, which is more far from the Sun an because of the very thin athmophere you don´t have the raleyscattering like in ours.

The same Halo apearance you can see in the surce from Gerard.

But i agree to what you mentioned about EA.

Edited July 29, 2020 by BerndB

[SolRayz 392]

If LM could reproduce this, it would be much appreciated. Thanks. 

[GSalden 4,656]

2 hours ago, SolRayz said:

If LM could reproduce this, it would be much appreciated. Thanks. 

This is TrueSky:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ghj28z8ye3tyz39/Foto 29-07-2020 12 11 09.jpg?dl=0

[SolRayz 392]

2 minutes ago, GSalden said:

This is TrueSky:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ghj28z8ye3tyz39/Foto 29-07-2020 12 11 09.jpg?dl=0

What happens when your pan your viewpoint from left to right? For me, the glare cuts out abruptly. Maybe there is nothing that can be done about this. 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

13 hours ago, BerndB said:

Rob, we are not talking about the lensflare, we talk about the bright and wide halo or corona apearing around the Sun in reality and this is mainly what´s shown in the pic from Alex. If you compare it to the actual unrealistic white dot which shall be the Sun, there is no doubt how it has to be.  The place where you could see a Sun like in V5 actually is on Mars, which is more far from the Sun an because of the very thin athmophere you don´t have the raleyscattering like in ours.

Whilst I personally like good-looking sun effects, what I'm pointing out is that most of the effects that we like are "Hollywood" rather than realistic, such as the "lens flare to 11" image that BMW posted earlier in the thread.

You mention a corona appearing around the sun in sim. Well, real world there's no visible corona under standard conditions. I've done quite a lot of solar photography, and the sun just appears as a disc if you expose it correctly, very similar to what is shown in-sim. To get a nice corona effect, you need to take photos at different exposures and manipulate in photoshop. You can also see a corona, of course, during a total solar eclipse, but in everyday life its not visible.

On a side note, I just ran a quick Google and found an article I hadn't seen before with some of my annular eclipse photos from a few years back: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-10/eclipse-chasers-flock-to-the-pilbara/4682396 

In the first photo, the sun appears as a disc (which is what you typically get out of the camera when you're exposing to preserve detail). The second photo has a shimmering appearance around the edge due to heat haze. In the final photo, there's a bit of a glow around the edges just after sunrise which is probably due to a number of factors, one of which may be corona as the sun itself is overexposed.

However, these are all what the camera sees. The human eye would not be able to look at the sun and see even a faint corona, just blinding light.

Again, I'm all for a good-looking environment - I like the RDR2 picture posted above - but the question of how to represent the sun in the simulation is an interesting one.  

 

[GSalden 4,656]

8 hours ago, SolRayz said:

What happens when your pan your viewpoint from left to right? For me, the glare cuts out abruptly. Maybe there is nothing that can be done about this. 

This is correct as your viewpoint center pans too.

Try it in real life.

 

[GSalden 4,656]

6 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

Whilst I personally like good-looking sun effects, what I'm pointing out is that most of the effects that we like are "Hollywood" rather than realistic, such as the "lens flare to 11" image that BMW posted earlier in the thread.

You mention a corona appearing around the sun in sim. Well, real world there's no visible corona under standard conditions. I've done quite a lot of solar photography, and the sun just appears as a disc if you expose it correctly, very similar to what is shown in-sim. To get a nice corona effect, you need to take photos at different exposures and manipulate in photoshop. You can also see a corona, of course, during a total solar eclipse, but in everyday life its not visible.

On a side note, I just ran a quick Google and found an article I hadn't seen before with some of my annular eclipse photos from a few years back: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-10/eclipse-chasers-flock-to-the-pilbara/4682396 

In the first photo, the sun appears as a disc (which is what you typically get out of the camera when you're exposing to preserve detail). The second photo has a shimmering appearance around the edge due to heat haze. In the final photo, there's a bit of a glow around the edges just after sunrise which is probably due to a number of factors, one of which may be corona as the sun itself is overexposed.

However, these are all what the camera sees. The human eye would not be able to look at the sun and see even a faint corona, just blinding light.

Again, I'm all for a good-looking environment - I like the RDR2 picture posted above - but the question of how to represent the sun in the simulation is an interesting one.  

 

Your camera might see a disk.

Because the sun is too strong for our eyes we see diffuse and scattered light.

And at sunset, because of the atmospheric conditions the sunlight we see that wide scattered light :

https://www.physicscentral.com/explore/pictures/sunset.cfm

[BerndB 349]

1 hour ago, GSalden said:

Your camera might see a disk.

Because the sun is too strong for our eyes we see diffuse and scattered light.

And at sunset, because of the atmospheric conditions the sunlight we see that wide scattered light :

https://www.physicscentral.com/explore/pictures/sunset.cfm

I absolutely agree to you Gerald. The pic posted by SolRayz shows the more realistc scattering around the Sun (not meaning the lensflare left hand of the horse). Actually i can see the Sun out of my Officewindow on a clear sky and if i put my sunglases on, i can´t see the sun as a sharp cycle. I see a big bright white/yellow bulb getting brighter towards its center, like on the pic with the horse yust more brighter and more white, because we have nearly lunchtime. I need my whole flat hand to cover it for my eyes, but i know that the Sun itself can be covered by a 2 EUR coin.

The sun in V5 appears how you could see it only thru a welding visor.

[BMW969 126]

On 7/27/2020 at 11:49 PM, Benzhangar said:

 

My weather is suddenly updated in Active Sky. Is this normal for v5?