Does ASCA or ENVTEX improve volumetric clouds in P3D v5?

[jimh 23]

@coastaldriver.  Thank you for sharing your settings and contents of your volumetric.cfg.  I'm a flightsimmer since FS5, and now too ancient to experiment with the complexities myself.  I've just climbed a little PC12 out of North Germany, in pouring rain with an overcast of dark blue grey clouds, emerging at 18,000 ft., from an infinitely gradual lightening, to a raft of clouds, stretching into the horizon.

In all these years I've never before had such a realistic experience, in any of the Sims.

Best Regards, Jim

[coastaldriver 920]

jimh . Glad to pass on to the community this information. I know it has its detractors but compared to the past True Sky and EA is the best I have ever seen any sim work! 

[Dirk98 354]

13 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

Glad to pass on to the community this information. I know it has its detractors but compared to the past True Sky and EA is the best I have ever seen any sim work! 

Coastdriver thank you so much for taking the time sharing your settings, if you could also add your AS settings that would make a complete wonderful package for EA/TS dummies. After trying EA/TS I couldn't switch back to 2D clouds even with all its shortcomings.

[coastaldriver 920]

Dirk um ok there are a few but then again not. Here are the settings I use that give me the best results: In your Options Menu. First I run EA ON in P3D so a lot of AS will not work as it can not over come those parts controlled by EA in P3D . Not a problem.

General options - up to you here what ever suits.

Simulator Depiction Options 

Suppress Local Weather Changes - unticked

Depict Hurricanes - selected

Prevent ASP3D EA volumetric cloud control - selected (This stops AS from trying to control volumetric clouds)

Enable detailed EA Clouds - selected

Cloud Options

Maximum cloud layers  - I have set at 9

Maximum cloud turbulence - I have set at 50%

Maximum cloud icing - i have set at 50%

Prevent Thunderstorms when CB reported. I have selected. This stops you getting thunderstorms with CB and will only generate a thunderstorm when TS's are reported by metars etc. This is correct a CB is not a thunderstorm and the real met reports differentiate between CB as a cloud and a TS which is reported differently to a CB.

Minimum Cloud draw distance I have set at 150 nm

Maximum Cloud draw distance I have set at 150 nm

Force BKN to 7/8ths - selected (BKN is a value from 5/8 to 7/8) but the exact value is not given in met reports the cloud is just reported as broken so I let AS force it to 7/8. 

P3D Low cloud offset - I have set to 2 or just above zero. But note it does not apply when EA in on anyway. So does nothing.

Multi layer thunderstorm clouds - selected. 

Cloud Motion effect - not selected and does not apply in EA mode

Cloud Motion effect offset - again does not apply in EA mode. 

Wind Options

Maximum surface wind - I have set at to 50 knots (above that is Hurrican forces so your not going flying anyway)

Maximum wind turbulence - I have set at 30% - that is enough who wants to battle severe turbulence which gives you an out of control aeroplane. 

Turbulence effect scale I have set at 70%. thedefault value. I find this effect varies depending on the aircraft model and its flight dynamics. Some are ok some handle turbulence poorly.

Maximum wind shear I have reduced to 20% which is more realistic. 

Force ATC wind lock - not selected. 

Disable winds aloft - not selected

Interlayer wind interpolation - Selected. I want the program to work this out rather than experience weird wind direction shifts at different altitudes. 

Enhance Turbulence - not selected. 

Wake turbulence strength - set to 20%.

Maximum downdraught rate is set to 3500 this is about correct for a severe Thunderstorm in real life. 

Maximum updraught rate is set to 3500 again this about correct for a severe Thunderstorm in rea life.

Realistic thunderstrom up and down draft rate - selected.

Random light chop percentage set to 25% (that is about enough and pretty representative of chop in real life)

Visibility Options

Enable wing fade effect - does not apply with EA on.

Fog layer generation - selected. 

Disable default haze layer - not selected i allow P3D EA to generate a correct haze effect. 

Minimum surface visibility - set at 200nm (in other words as far as I can see at altitude) this stops AS and P3D fighting for how far you can see and lets P3D do it. 

Maximum surface visibility - set at 100nm again I do not want an artificial vis level set but let EA and what is on the weather reports to generate what it is. Again this stops AS conflicting with P3D. Unless you want something different for IFR but not really. 

In Cloud visibility reduction - selected but again this does not apply in EA mode either. It is automatically done. 

Low altitude VolFog horizon adjustment I leave set at 0 again does not apply in EA mode anyway. Same for High altitude VolFog.

Audio options and Message Options 

Personal preference. I really like the tuneable ATIS that AS does and the voice selection is random and is a nice touch for those places where there is no formal ATIS anyway. One of the more clever features of AS. 

That is about it - I am stopping AS from fighting with what EA and Vol Cloud is doing in the sim and just let it provide the necessary data for the sim to do the work. Seems to work out ok. 

I find I get a realistic representation of cloud and turbulence with these settings. And you soon find out that the lack of animated windsocks at airports is a real pain because you have no visual clues as to wind shear or where the wind is coming from, in real life the windsock is a very valuable pilot aid both for take off and landings. So you will get caught out from time to time with crosswinds - it would be nice if P3D had animated wind socks at every airport but only a few addons with SODE actually do this for you. 

Longwinded response I know but easier than a bunch of screen shots.

 

Edited December 1, 2021 by coastaldriver

[pgde 571]

Coastaldriver -- would be interesting to know your system specs. Thanks!

[coastaldriver 920]

Yeah - I am using an Intel I5-10500 (6/12 cores) running at 4.8GHZ with 16GB RAM. Mag B460 Motherboard with a 500GB primary SSD and then a 2TB SSD second drive. My GPU is an NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super. (8GB). I let P3D control my FPS at 30 but otherwise cloud, water etc with EA ON I run unlimited. I only keep my scenery levels at the recommended settings from ORBX. Cooling is provided by paste coolers on the motherboard and GPU both. 

I have a standard LG HDR Monitor. Because I am old fashioned I have a simple logitech joystick and use keyboard and joystick nothing else but I do have a quality mechanical gamers keyboard simply because the soft keyboards do not have the precise response and control that a gamer keyboard has and they are more robust. I let NVIDIA control the monitor and its output.

I keep only P3D on the main SSD and all my scenery etc is on the secondary drive and I let the scenery library manager control that even for all the addons (some 200) and a lot of ORBx stuff that works just fine. 

I get a completely smooth no stutter and no problem sim experience. Load times vary but given the scenery etc not too bad no issues once it is running no delays at all. I have nothing tweaked or altered from what it can do out of the box! I run simple to complex simulation models from simple singles to complex study level jets without any issues at all. I do have FSUIPC and A2As accu feel installed as addons as well. Nothing else other than AS for my weather engine. 

Compared to a lot of systems this is a middle of the road PC  (I had it built for me about a year ago) I went down the Intel/NVIDIA route because that is what LM were using. 

Edited December 1, 2021 by coastaldriver

[Dirk98 354]

27 minutes ago, coastaldriver said:

Dirk um ok there are a few but then again not. Here are the settings I use that give me the best results: In your Options Menu. First I run EA ON in P3D so a lot of AS will not work as it can not over come those parts controlled by EA in P3D . Not a problem.

Simulator Depiction Options 

Prevent ASP3D EA volumetric cloud control - selected (This stops AS from trying to control volumetric clouds)

Enable detailed EA Clouds - selected

Cloud Options

Maximum cloud layers  - I have set at 9

Minimum Cloud draw distance I have set at 150 nm

Maximum Cloud draw distance I have set at 150 nm

Force BKN to 7/8ths - selected (BKN is a value from 5/8 to 7/8) but the exact value is not given in met reports the cloud is just reported as broken so I let AS force it to 7/8. 

Wind Options

Maximum downdraught rate is set to 3500 this is about correct for a severe Thunderstorm in real life. 

Maximum updraught rate is set to 3500 again this about correct for a severe Thunderstorm in rea life.

Visibility Options

Enable wing fade effect - does not apply with EA on.

Fog layer generation - selected. 

Disable default haze layer - not selected i allow P3D EA to generate a correct haze effect. 

Minimum surface visibility - set at 200nm (in other words as far as I can see at altitude) this stops AS and P3D fighting for how far you can see and lets P3D do it. 

Maximum surface visibility - set at 100nm again I do not want an artificial vis level set but let EA and what is on the weather reports to generate what it is. Again this stops AS conflicting with P3D. Unless you want something different for IFR but not really. 

Low altitude VolFog horizon adjustment I leave set at 0 again does not apply in EA mode anyway. Same for High altitude VolFog.

There are a few, yes, as seen from the above.

Thanks!

 

[TurboKen 221]

On 11/27/2021 at 3:30 PM, coastaldriver said:

This is how it looks for me a few examples not exhaustive but I am more than happy now with way clouds look and yest I do get layers properly showing it just depends on the weather:

I have seen a few examples of EA looking good and I believe it has potential but for now this is why I fly with EA turned OFF and use REX for my weather, it looks far better then this.

[Dirk98 354]

On 11/28/2021 at 2:27 AM, coastaldriver said:

Here are two screen shots of my settings:

 

Coastaldriver you don't use cloud shadows on the ground? Any specific reason for that?

[coastaldriver 920]

Dirk98 I did not with 5.2as the contrast was too severe to my eyes but I now do with 5.3 in fact I let the sim  now do all reflections shadows etc for particles etc etc. with 5.3 as they have fixed up these areas of the EA visuals with 5.3 (covered in their release notes). I am now also using the 5.3 version LM supplied Volumetric Cloud config as well and parked by old mods. It looks pretty good to me as well. The shadowing is very balanced now and if you look outside and zoom to the distance and back with a cloudy sky you get the right balance of light and dark as you do in real life. I have not changed any of my AS settings for vis turb as they are all still relevant to work with the sim not against it. 

[Johnny19 344]

Just a question, since ASCA can't control clouds, can it control sky colors in EA mode with volumetric clouds on?

[threexgreen 3,142]

1 hour ago, Johnny19 said:

Just a question, since ASCA can't control clouds, can it control sky colors in EA mode with volumetric clouds on?

No, it can't control anything in EA. Only way would be to turn EA on but volumetric clouds off so you can inject cloud textures for legacy clouds.

Edited December 5, 2021 by threegreen

[Driver170 42]

I just tested Vol clouds ON. At EPKK its light snow and no snow is showing. When i turn Vol OFF i get snow?

[Johnny19 344]

36 minutes ago, Driver170 said:

I just tested Vol clouds ON. At EPKK its light snow and no snow is showing. When i turn Vol OFF i get snow?

I have sent a ticket to hifi about it, precipitation shows when you change from live to historical and than back to live which causes as to download weather snapshot.

[wardp 19]

coastaldriver - Thanks for sharing your Vol Cloud settings etc. Really enjoying EA & Vol Clouds and appreciate your work.