Easiest way to get "sunlight" on the ground?

[turner112 52]

Hi all-

I've seen a few add-ons (paid and free) to make adjustments to the visuals for the sunlight hitting the ground.

What's currently the "best" or easiest/most straightfoward way to make the ground look like it's being hit by direct sunlight?

Ideally... with more pronounced cloud shadows...

thanks

[Colonel X 1,430]

On 9/28/2020 at 7:23 PM, turner112 said:

What's currently the "best" or easiest/most straightfoward way to make the ground look like it's being hit by direct sunlight?

 

Ummm... set time to 12pm, clear skies. There you go.

[turner112 52]

On 9/30/2020 at 7:55 AM, Colonel X said:

Ummm... set time to 12pm, clear skies. There you go.

Oh, sorry - maybe you missed the part about making it look like it's being hit by direct sunlight?

 

[akita 429]

Are you talking about sunlight reflection on the ground? Or exposure problem in x-plane?

As for the first one, since x-plane is a physically based rendered engine what controls light scattering on the surface is essentially the roughness value, not to be mistaken with how reflective a material is, materials are always reflective, roughness have a call in mirror like reflections and obviously the other way around; a natural wood when looking at a tree does not look reflective, however, industrial wood products can almost have mirror like reflections, I'm looking at one right now one on my desktop corner, just below the screen.

To see the reflection in the most obvious way, it's called the fresnel effect where materials tend to be more reflective at lower sun angles, not in the middle of the day where the sun is at it's highest angle compared to the surface.

As for the second, this is how x-plane 11 lightning is, and some plugins might help with post-process tools/shader hacks, both not my taste, we will need to wait for v12 lightning tech which should look different from v11 and addresses exposure problems too. A new color pipeline is needed too, although looks they already have a rather good one in the mobile version I bet we see it in v12.

 

[turner112 52]

18 minutes ago, akita said:

Or exposure problem in x-plane?

That's likely it. Color is generally washed-out, and often, there isn't nearly enough contrast between cloud shadows and the ground.

Here are a few examples I shot locally (NJ). 

[akita 429]

You can hack art controls, however I think 11.50 locked many of those, I'm sure there is a way around though, many scripts are online.

There is an art control for cloud shadows, this can help with making them darker so making the contrast a bit higher.

But X-plane needs a modern lightning tech that looks to come in v12, hacking art controls may cause weird artifacts.

[mSparks 2,086]

I use Orthophoto with specular set to 0.3. gives a really nice sun reflection off the ground as if its moist.