Hi,

I feel like this will weird most of you out, but I find haze / aerial perspective in X-Plane not strong enough, contrary to most people who think it is too much. Is there a way to increase Rayleigh scattering on terrain, so that everything looks more blue especially at higher altitudes? Here is how default X-Plane 11 looks like at 30000 feet with a visibility of 15 nm:

It is definitely not "washed out" enough, there is too little haze / aerial perspective.

I tried increasing the "sim/private/controls/atmo/inscatter_gain_raleigh" dataref, which seems to have some effect, but it also overexposes distant terrain. I believe this is because so much light is inscattered that the tonemapper clamps it to the maximum brightness:

I lastly tried increasing the "sim/private/controls/fog/fog_be_gone" dataref to better match the visibility. While this time the haze was strong enough, it did not look as blue as it looks in real life:

All I want is to get that strong blue haze I get with trueSKY in P3D:

Is there a way to accomplish this in X-Plane? Thanks in advance.

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by BiologicalNanobot

Yeah I agree with you.

Years ago I spent many many hours trying to get better atmospheric lighting and colors, but as you've seen, there are limits to what can be achieved. The native atmospheric scattering/lighting engine has limits in what it can do.

XP has been the first flight sim to implement atmospheric scattering (back in 2011!), but nowadays it's been surpassed by its competitors in this area.

I think we have to wait for the next major version...

Hi there is a nice lua script for enhancing/fixing/changing whatever you like to call it the sky haze, I love it! that lua script is included in this sky color preset. You can find it it at the Org, the preset is named "Gandalf's Sky Preset 2.0.0".

2 hours ago, Murmur said:

Yeah I agree with you.

Years ago I spent many many hours trying to get better atmospheric lighting and colors, but as you've seen, there are limits to what can be achieved. The native atmospheric scattering/lighting engine has limits in what it can do.

XP has been the first flight sim to implement atmospheric scattering (back in 2011!), but nowadays it's been surpassed by its competitors in this area.

I think we have to wait for the next major version...

Thank you. I have also tried xEnviro, which looks gorgeous, but it is simply too much for my puny GTX 1070.

It indeed looks like we have to wait for the next major version, and based on the foresty preview, X-Plane 12 will likely deliver in that regard:

Look at the aerial perspective at 0:42-0:58, it looks really promising.

22 minutes ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

Look at the aerial perspective at 0:42-0:58, it looks really promising.

I'm curious to see high altitude screenshots or videos. That's where atmospheric scattering is most prominent and nice to see. I think the other sims do a good job there!

I use Ultimate Weather addon.  By far better than any lua scripts in my view. Complete control of the data refs for lighting, clouds, water, reflections, sounds, shadows, wave sizes, night clouds, volumetric clouds, sun lighting, visibility, fog, night sky, sky and cloud textures....this is your one stop shopping.  You can change variables on the fly and see immediate results.

I can fiddle to my hearts content.

On 8/3/2021 at 12:27 AM, Murmur said:

I'm curious to see high altitude screenshots or videos. That's where atmospheric scattering is most prominent and nice to see. I think the other sims do a good job there!

I think I finally managed to produce the same visuals in X-Plane, using xVision and some art datarefs.

Here's the result:

@BiologicalNanobotthat looks tight, fancy sharing the xvision profile you created for this?

On 8/7/2021 at 2:26 AM, BiologicalNanobot said:

Here's the result:

Not bad at all. What altitude is that?

12 hours ago, Murmur said:

Not bad at all. What altitude is that?

Around 20000 feet.

12 hours ago, Gordon Hutchison said:

@BiologicalNanobotthat looks tight, fancy sharing the xvision profile you created for this?

It is a work-in-progress, and I will definitely share it once it's finished.

It will include sky colors, cloud and water textures as well. I'm using Cloud Art's cloud and water textures, along with Gandalf's sky colors. I got permission from authors of respective add-ons to redistribute them in an xVision preset. I couldn't find a way to contact the developer of X-Visibility, so I ended up rewriting a simplified version of it to be included in the package.

It is really tricky to get visuals right, though - xVision's fog & scattering option ruins low altitude aerial perspective, so I increase fog_be_gone to compensate for that. It is progressively reduced as altitude increases where xVision's scattering takes over.

More detail on the "ruined low altitude aerial perspective" - it is hard to explain but basically it does not look like haze, but rather a blue overlay. It is as if you are looking through blue-colored glasses:

I think it looks more realistic without xVision's fog & scattering option:

 

However xVision definitely shows its beauty at high altitude:

Whereas it does not look blue enough xVision's fog & scattering option:

Edited August 8, 20214 yr by BiologicalNanobot

On 8/3/2021 at 1:46 AM, 1st fltsimguy said:

I use Ultimate Weather addon.  By far better than any lua scripts in my view. Complete control of the data refs for lighting, clouds, water, reflections, sounds, shadows, wave sizes, night clouds, volumetric clouds, sun lighting, visibility, fog, night sky, sky and cloud textures....this is your one stop shopping.  You can change variables on the fly and see immediate results.

I can fiddle to my hearts content.

Ultraweather? As you are fiddling to your hearts contents, you convinced me to purchase the latest version via X-plane Org store. No license key at that moment. On opening the plugin in x-plane, I had to enter my email and order number in order to ask for a key. But after entering the correct items, the plugin stated that my order number wasn't valid. However, there was an mail address for support. So I explained my problem. I got an automated answer that told me that if my problem wasn't listed in their answer and if I needed an answer from a human being, I had to answer once again, including my x-plane log. That's enough fiddling for me. 35$ down the drain. This company is hiding behind an automated wall. Just so you know. 

On 8/8/2021 at 11:26 PM, BiologicalNanobot said:

It is a work-in-progress, and I will definitely share it once it's finished.

It will include sky colors, cloud and water textures as well. I'm using Cloud Art's cloud and water textures, along with Gandalf's sky colors. I got permission from authors of respective add-ons to redistribute them in an xVision preset. I couldn't find a way to contact the developer of X-Visibility, so I ended up rewriting a simplified version of it to be included in the package.

It is really tricky to get visuals right, though - xVision's fog & scattering option ruins low altitude aerial perspective, so I increase fog_be_gone to compensate for that. It is progressively reduced as altitude increases where xVision's scattering takes over.

More detail on the "ruined low altitude aerial perspective" - it is hard to explain but basically it does not look like haze, but rather a blue overlay. It is as if you are looking through blue-colored glasses:

I think it looks more realistic without xVision's fog & scattering option:

 

However xVision definitely shows its beauty at high altitude:

Whereas it does not look blue enough xVision's fog & scattering option:

If it gives you pleasure then fine. But why not wait for X-Plane 12? Fiddling around with 11 is a waste of your time.

10 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

If it gives you pleasure then fine. But why not wait for X-Plane 12? Fiddling around with 11 is a waste of your time.

I am having fun doing it. Also, while I am excited for X-Plane 12, I care about what I have now, so I wouldn't stop trying to improve X-Plane 11 until I have X-Plane 12.

Good for you! Don't get me wrong if you enjoy coding for XP11 that's great! But in reality you have to realise that there isn't much you can do to make any substantial difference other than to create CTDs and artefacts.  If I were you I would wait for XP12 and then get out the big guns!

Edited August 13, 20214 yr by jarmstro