Clouds

[rickgo 64]

@coastaldriverI hear what your saying but if Legacy mode asca calls for and produces a cirrus layer, shouldnt vol clouds show the same thing when just switchng from legacy to volumetric?  I've also seen where volumetric called for multiple layers and  2 layers are there but not the 3rd layer which is cirrus. 

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by rickgo

[coastaldriver 839]

Rickgo - I do get cirrus with EA and TrueSky but it never looks like the cirrus say we are used to with REX or AS cloud textures. It is the least good feature of True Sky you only see it little patches here and there. Still working on a fix or alteration to the vol cloud config to get this sorted. It is there just not in typical cirrus sheets. 

[Dirk98 354]

On 8/21/2021 at 6:12 AM, coastaldriver said:

The only tweak I now apply is with ENVSHADE to drop back the haze effect and to pick up the depth of the sky colour.

This! Could you please elaborate more on the above? If I only could reduce the haze effect that would keep me using volumetric clouds with EA. Otherwise the enhanced atmosphere with 3D fluffy clouds becomes too fuzzy for me. I have Envshade, I'll need to update it though. As many details as possible on this issue or a link to the detailed settings would be very much appreciated.

Thank you.

[coastaldriver 839]

Dirk - sure this is shot of my ENSHADE settings, these are the only tweaks I apply to EA in P3D. The banding is coming in P3D from the way LM handles light and EA, they appear to be layering it and giving it a circular form (horizon to horizon) to follow the main light source or point of illumination - the sun. They also vary the brightness with time of day. I guess it is a trade off with this new way of dealing with light and graphics in the sim. That said I recognise a number of users have banding issues on their rigs and until I applied this shader tweaks via ENVSHADE I did too. The following settings give me an acceptable outcome but very rarely no haze at all. I also got rid of cloud shadow as this seemed to create banding aritifacts here and there as well. 

Sometime the haze is there sometimes it is not but I do not get the distinct banding. I have looked hard and long at a large number of photographs and videos from around the world - maybe 1 in 50 has no haze present. In the real atmosphere haze is a function of water vapour, dust particles, smoke, pollution etc in the atmosphere so close to the earth's surface there will always be haze unless the air is exceptional dry (Try the Chilean alta plata), Antartica or the areas where there are strong winds to blow away these particles (Great Southern Ocean). In Australia for example there is always a blue haze over land areas and mountains the reason is the presence of eucalyptus particles in the water vapour from gum trees, it is why the Blue Mountains in NSW have their name, then there is always dust and smoke about as well. Have a look at some shots of earth from space the haze band about the circumference is quite noticeable! 

Yes the met people measure water vapour carefully, every weather observation has it on it, it is called the Dew Point or DP it is shown on the metar or obs after the temp so for example this metar:

METAR YARM 231330Z AUTO 36006KT 9999 -RA SCT032 SCT047 OVC057 12/09
Q1012 RMK RF00.0/001.6

In the sim I would expect to see three layers of cloud and the vis to the horizon, note the cloud type is not given only the amount and then the temp 12 followed by the dew point DP of 09. When they are close together in value the air is more saturated which in this case is eviden by the fact there is light rain. If they had exactly the same value say 12/12 the air would be completely saturated and hence you would have cloud on the ground or FOG. The other thing about met reports and visibility readings is that it is merely a measure of how far one can see, in this case greater than 10 km. The met people do not worry about how well you can see just how far! If the vis was significantly reduced by smoke or dust then they would report that in remarks. It could be as hazy as heck but as long as they can see that far and there is nothing of significance it is not reported. You may see things very differently from the cockpit of an aeroplane but the traps and visual illusions that result there are a whole different topic. 

I hope this explains why weather engines have such a hard time giving you a picture perfect sky in the sim

Edited August 23, 2021 by coastaldriver

[Dirk98 354]

7 minutes ago, coastaldriver said:

Dirk - sure this is shot of my ENSHADE settings, these are the only tweaks I apply to EA in P3D. The banding is coming in P3D from the way LM handles light and EA, they appear to be layering it and giving it a circular form (horizon to horizon) to follow the main light source or point of illumination - the sun. They also vary the brightness with time of day. I guess it is a trade off with this new way of dealing with light and graphics in the sim. That said I recognise a number of users have banding issues on their rigs and until I applied this shader tweaks via ENVSHADE I did too. The following settings give me an acceptable outcome but very rarely no haze at all. I also got rid of cloud shadow as this seemed to create banding aritifacts here and there as well. 

Sometime the haze is there sometimes it is not but I do not get the distinct banding. I have looked hard and long at a large number of photographs and videos from around the world - maybe 1 in 50 has no haze present. In the real atmosphere haze is a function of water vapour, dust particles, smoke, pollution etc in the atmosphere so close to the earth's surface there will always be haze unless the air is exceptional dry (Try the Chilean alta plata), Antartica or the areas where there are strong winds to blow away these particles (Great Southern Ocean). In Australia for example there is always a blue haze over land areas and mountains the reason is the presence of eucalyptus particles in the water vapour from gum trees, it is why the Blue Mountains in NSW have their name, then there is always dust and smoke about as well. Have a look at some shots of earth from space the haze band about the circumference is quite noticeable!

Thank you so much.

[andreh 125]

I was under the impression that the horizon haze setting in Envshade does nothing with EA on. If you hover over it a pop up says it's has no effect on EA. Or has that changed?

[Dirk98 354]

24 minutes ago, coastaldriver said:

 I have looked hard and long at a large number of photographs and videos from around the world - maybe 1 in 50 has no haze present. In the real atmosphere haze is a function of water vapour, dust particles, smoke, pollution etc in the atmosphere so close to the earth's surface there will always be haze unless the air is exceptional dry (Try the Chilean alta plata), Antartica or the areas where there are strong winds to blow away these particles (Great Southern Ocean). 

I fly a lot so I know what you are saying about haze. I'm not against haze but as it is in P3Dv5.2 there's too much of it, the picture becomes quite bland, and as I mentioned in combination with volumetric clouds my sky environment is always too fuzzy no matter what the wx is. I've even used Reshade only for sharpening, so I'll see what Envdir can do. 

Thanks again.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Dirk98

[Dirk98 354]

Another issue that I will need to investigate yet - soon as I disabled volumetric clouds I noticed very nice multiple cloud layers that I hadn't seen or noticed with vol clouds. Any comments?

Thanks.

PS: Active Sky here.

[coastaldriver 839]

6 minutes ago, andreh said:

I was under the impression that the horizon haze setting in Envshade does nothing with EA on. If you hover over it a pop up says it's has no effect on EA. Or has that changed?

Correct which is why I have atmospheric scattering set to very low, sky saturation to high and vertical visibility to high they do control the light better and hence to my view reduce the haze effect. All this program is doing is manipulating the shaders used! It cannot control EA or True Sky!

[coastaldriver 839]

11 minutes ago, Dirk98 said:

Another issue that I will need to investigate yet - soon as I disabled volumetric clouds I noticed very nice multiple cloud layers that I hadn't seen or noticed with vol clouds. Any comments?

Thanks.

PS: Active Sky here.

Dirk interesting as the word is that this only affects the cloud draw distance - there may be a relationship here between cloud generated by True Sky depending on what AS is calling for to be displayed by True Sky in the sim irregardless of using volumetric clouds config - something I will investigate further myself. It would be nice if LM could explain this all a bit better for all us than they have at present! 

Edited August 23, 2021 by coastaldriver

[coastaldriver 839]

Dirk I just tried this with the weather reported above at YARM using AS. 

First AS with Vol cloud off:

Now AS with Vol Cloud ON and set back to Ultra

I am seeing the layers in the metar with vol clouds ON better and I also am getting the improved light and shading effects with that cloud layering. 

[pgde 570]

Where is the OVC at 5700 in the second picture?

[mikeymike 335]

6 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

Dirk - sure this is shot of my ENSHADE settings, these are the only tweaks I apply to EA in P3D. The banding is coming in P3D from the way LM handles light and EA, they appear to be layering it and giving it a circular form (horizon to horizon) to follow the main light source or point of illumination - the sun. They also vary the brightness with time of day. I guess it is a trade off with this new way of dealing with light and graphics in the sim. That said I recognise a number of users have banding issues on their rigs and until I applied this shader tweaks via ENVSHADE I did too. The following settings give me an acceptable outcome but very rarely no haze at all. I also got rid of cloud shadow as this seemed to create banding aritifacts here and there as well. 

Sometime the haze is there sometimes it is not but I do not get the distinct banding. I have looked hard and long at a large number of photographs and videos from around the world - maybe 1 in 50 has no haze present. In the real atmosphere haze is a function of water vapour, dust particles, smoke, pollution etc in the atmosphere so close to the earth's surface there will always be haze unless the air is exceptional dry (Try the Chilean alta plata), Antartica or the areas where there are strong winds to blow away these particles (Great Southern Ocean). In Australia for example there is always a blue haze over land areas and mountains the reason is the presence of eucalyptus particles in the water vapour from gum trees, it is why the Blue Mountains in NSW have their name, then there is always dust and smoke about as well. Have a look at some shots of earth from space the haze band about the circumference is quite noticeable! 

Yes the met people measure water vapour carefully, every weather observation has it on it, it is called the Dew Point or DP it is shown on the metar or obs after the temp so for example this metar:

METAR YARM 231330Z AUTO 36006KT 9999 -RA SCT032 SCT047 OVC057 12/09
Q1012 RMK RF00.0/001.6

In the sim I would expect to see three layers of cloud and the vis to the horizon, note the cloud type is not given only the amount and then the temp 12 followed by the dew point DP of 09. When they are close together in value the air is more saturated which in this case is eviden by the fact there is light rain. If they had exactly the same value say 12/12 the air would be completely saturated and hence you would have cloud on the ground or FOG. The other thing about met reports and visibility readings is that it is merely a measure of how far one can see, in this case greater than 10 km. The met people do not worry about how well you can see just how far! If the vis was significantly reduced by smoke or dust then they would report that in remarks. It could be as hazy as heck but as long as they can see that far and there is nothing of significance it is not reported. You may see things very differently from the cockpit of an aeroplane but the traps and visual illusions that result there are a whole different topic. 

I hope this explains why weather engines have such a hard time giving you a picture perfect sky in the sim

Mind sharing your P3d  settings also?

Thank you 

mike

[coastaldriver 839]

Sure Re P3D settings for graphics and world (EA) this worked the best for me with a LG HDR Monitor and an RTX2070 Super GPU. I am using ENSHADE with the above settings. I have the volumetric cloud config file as it was installed with HF1 (No changes there). 

DISPLAY

WORLD

LIGHTING

The shadow settings got rid of that pixallation or saw tooth pattern on some shadows in the cockpit and the light settings for me seemed to have improved the dark cockpit syndrome (Not perfectly but ok with very dark interior VC textures). I let LM/NVIDIA set the display settings for the card and left it changing the vsync made no real improvement for me. I wind back the autogen but that is a personal preference the card and system is capable of running at ultra settings for all of this. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by coastaldriver

[coastaldriver 839]

3 hours ago, pgde said:

Where is the OVC at 5700 in the second picture?

It is the bluer looking background coloured cloud upon which the other is showing! There are three layers there! AS is also telling me via the popup window that the cloud display is being amortised by AS. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by coastaldriver