Adjust wave size P3D v5

[VHOJT 172]

Hi all,

Sorry for the spam!

Is there any way to adjust wave size in P3D v5?  In v4 you could use PTA.

They look very large from cruise altitude in an airliner.

Cheers,

Rudy

[cyyzrwy24 127]

12 hours ago, VHOJT said:

In v4 you could use PTA.

In V4.5 you could have a lot's of other nice things....Weather (clouds specially), water.... I wish we have this performance and weather like in 4.5....

[Tim_Capps 474]

At some point I picked up a texture fix on SimMarket to make the waves smaller. I was really, really tired of the swells on lakes, for example. Depending on altitude, I think it does look a lot better. But low, it can also create a sort of moire effect at times, even with antialiasing maxed out. Still, I like it better than the original water texture, but half the time the glassy look suits me better. It was ten bucks... worth the option to avoid a pet peeve of mine, but it's like the never-ending discussion of clouds. We're just never going to dial in perfection, and tastes differ.

[VHOJT 172]

19 hours ago, Tim_Capps said:

At some point I picked up a texture fix on SimMarket to make the waves smaller. I was really, really tired of the swells on lakes, for example. Depending on altitude, I think it does look a lot better. But low, it can also create a sort of moire effect at times, even with antialiasing maxed out. Still, I like it better than the original water texture, but half the time the glassy look suits me better. It was ten bucks... worth the option to avoid a pet peeve of mine, but it's like the never-ending discussion of clouds. We're just never going to dial in perfection, and tastes differ.

Cheers for that.

That's what I loved about PTA in v4 - you could pretty much do whatever you wanted.  Accounted for all tastes!

[coastaldriver 919]

Wave motion is handled differently now in P3DV5. It depends on two factors whether or not you have an NVIDIA graphics card and have Accufeel by A2A installed. P3DV5 uses the underlying algorithims developed by NVIDA for waves, that will in turn be responding to or interpreting what the wind settings are in your system or are being delivered via your weather engine.

Two points - wave motion - is that how it looks when you flying over it or are you using a flying boat or amphibian where your vehicle is actually on the water..

If it is just flying over it what you see will depend on the winds the sim is being fed. It looks generally reasonable to me and I have to say as old ex maritime pilot It is very rare indeed to see a completely smooth or glassy sea, If the wind blows - waves start, harder it blows the bigger they get.  The only place you will ever see a completely waveless sea is in the middle of the null zone of the Atlantic and Pacifics (The Sargasso seas) but there is still an underlying swell moving the water. 

If the latter that is your simming with an amphibian or a flying boat then be aware that Accufeel will now work against you with waves due to the NVIDIA system so if you go into the ACCUFEEL main dialogue box untick all the boxes relating to water behaviour that will stop the program from making the waves worse. 

Just remember it does not take much of a wind for reasonable waves to develop and persist. NVIDIA have captured wave behaviour well now when I sim I actually pay attention to what the winds are doing because it will be replicated with the waves in the sim. 

You can find a fix to smooth out the visual appearance of the waves - there is another thread here with the links at AVSIM dealing with changing the way the ways look from an aircraft flying over it. That looks allright to me too but it does not stop the waves!

Edited February 1, 2022 by coastaldriver

[VHOJT 172]

1 hour ago, coastaldriver said:

Wave motion is handled differently now in P3DV5. It depends on two factors whether or not you have an NVIDIA graphics card and have Accufeel by A2A installed. P3DV5 uses the underlying algorithims developed by NVIDA for waves, that will in turn be responding to or interpreting what the wind settings are in your system or are being delivered via your weather engine.

Two points - wave motion - is that how it looks when you flying over it or are you using a flying boat or amphibian where your vehicle is actually on the water..

If it is just flying over it what you see will depend on the winds the sim is being fed. It looks generally reasonable to me and I have to say as old ex maritime pilot It is very rare indeed to see a completely smooth or glassy sea, If the wind blows - waves start, harder it blows the bigger they get.  The only place you will ever see a completely waveless sea is in the middle of the null zone of the Atlantic and Pacifics (The Sargasso seas) but there is still an underlying swell moving the water. 

If the latter that is your simming with an amphibian or a flying boat then be aware that Accufeel will now work against you with waves due to the NVIDIA system so if you go into the ACCUFEEL main dialogue box untick all the boxes relating to water behaviour that will stop the program from making the waves worse. 

Just remember it does not take much of a wind for reasonable waves to develop and persist. NVIDIA have captured wave behaviour well now when I sim I actually pay attention to what the winds are doing because it will be replicated with the waves in the sim. 

You can find a fix to smooth out the visual appearance of the waves - there is another thread here with the links at AVSIM dealing with changing the way the ways look from an aircraft flying over it. That looks allright to me too but it does not stop the waves!

Thanks for the detailed information 🙂

Oh no - I dont want to stop the waves.  I just thought from 36,000 feet they look far too big?  Or more to the point - the texture of the water depicting the swell - it just looks too big.

Do you think they look too big from 36,000, say?

Edited February 1, 2022 by VHOJT

[coastaldriver 919]

VHOJT - a lot of how the sim looks is subjective but I have to say from altitude the wave pattern and size looks about right to me. Remember an altitude of 36,000 ft is still only a vertical distance of about 5-6 nm which is not much at all. I have to also say on a personal level I guess I find that the wave pattern is approximating the general wind direction being fed to the sim and I generally find the odd white cap or wave that I can see very realistic. The size seems ok to me as well. In other words it does not look odd or unrealistic to me.

Here are a couple of examples of what I see in the sim. As I said I do a lot of flying boat flying so I see both aspects from altitude and on the water. It looks realistic overall to me!

This is a flight using real weather by AS from NZ to Fiji

In the cruise at F120 heading NE from the north island of NZ the winds here were fairly light: The white steaks are ship wakes from the great Global AI Ship package. 

About 120nm from Suva in Fiji, the winds had picked up and were blowing at 15-25 knots from the NW - that is what the waves look like. 

And on the water at Laucala Bay near Suva. Winds were blowing hard still from the NW with Thunderstorms about so the waves represented were about right to me as well. There is a light chop evident. 

So the waves being created are realistic in terms of direction size (not perfect by the way but not bad)

 

Edited February 1, 2022 by coastaldriver

[coastaldriver 919]

Couple more just to illustrate.

This is a tropical morning in PNG on the water. Fairly calm and normal looking to me. 

This what 60 knot winds look like in the Bay of Biscay. I dialled this in manually, setting the wind, just in to see what the waves would look like in the sim. 60 knots is hurricane force so I would expect to see seas like this.Note in all cases I am using an NVIDIA card and AccuFeel with AS providing real time weather. The black speckles were a reflection anomaly in the early version of P3D which as been fixed and I do not get it any more either.

Edited February 1, 2022 by coastaldriver

[VHOJT 172]

11 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

Couple more just to illustrate.

This is a tropical morning in PNG on the water. Fairly calm and normal looking to me. 

 

This what 60 knot winds look like in the Bay of Biscay. I dialled this in manually, setting the wind, just in to see what the waves would look like in the sim. 60 knots is hurricane force so I would expect to see seas like this.Note in all cases I am using an NVIDIA card and AccuFeel with AS providing real time weather. The black speckles were a reflection anomaly in the early version of P3D which as been fixed and I do not get it any more either.

 

These look good actually. 

You may have convinced me with your excellent screenshots and good explanation.  I'll take some screenshots on my next flight (lots of water SYD-LAX). 

Thanks again for your replies.

 

[VHOJT 172]

11 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

Couple more just to illustrate.

This is a tropical morning in PNG on the water. Fairly calm and normal looking to me. 

 

This what 60 knot winds look like in the Bay of Biscay. I dialled this in manually, setting the wind, just in to see what the waves would look like in the sim. 60 knots is hurricane force so I would expect to see seas like this.Note in all cases I am using an NVIDIA card and AccuFeel with AS providing real time weather. The black speckles were a reflection anomaly in the early version of P3D which as been fixed and I do not get it any more either.

 

Acually one more important question - what level of detail do you have water set to in the settings?

[coastaldriver 919]

VHOJT - I have water detail set to ULTRA. I do not have bathymetry enabled (I am not using a submarine) and I only have clouds and user vehicle enable in REFLECTIONS.I leave SPECIAL EFFECTS AND DISTANCE both set to medium. I have all the scenery sliders set to VERY DENSE but I do not have dynamic 3D autogen vegetation selected (for some reason it gives weird colour shading on trees between luminous green to ghostly blue) I only use EA and Volumetric Clouds. 

It may also be worth noting that your lighting colour selections will also play a part in how your water -sky looks. I spent a lot of time balancing or setting up colouring, hues and contrast with my monitor when I first installed P3D (and with the monitor controls not the dodgy WIn10 colour management panel). I know it sounds like it is a minor issue but EA substantially modifies or changes light in the sim dependent on the position of the main light source, sun or moon, the time of day, angle of view  etc etc, I found the most balanced realistic image I could find (a landscape shot with clouds and water) in other words one that compared to the view out my window and how I saw it, filled the whole desktop with it and then I tweaked the monitor settings until the comparison was even or looked the same to me! Using the NVIDIA control panel I let the NVIDIA program automatically control the rest. Getting a good image is harder than you think because anybody who has dabbled with photography knows changing aperture settings, lens quality and the use of various colour filters by photographers will change the way water, sky etc looks in any image. 

I no longer use ENVSHADE or shader tweaking either, I use only the shaders that P3D has and wants to run. 

If I could also say - I have looked at a lot of sim screenshot posts of P3D and others over the years and I was continuously struck by how different some peoples sims appeared in the screenshots which was really dependent on how they had their monitor set up and the sim variables they set as well. So there is more to this business than just the sim program! 

For what is worth the whole water sky colour thing is problematic with any simulation or graphics game because in the real world water is a colourless liquid and the sky is always hazy and is the sea really blue or is it green or even greyish - all depends on the latitude and cloud cover and other landscape reflections. Is the water clear or got particles in it is cold or hot water. So overall I am happy with how this sim looks for me. 

Edited February 1, 2022 by coastaldriver

[Tim_Capps 474]

12 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

in the real world water is a colourless liquid

Not in my neck of the woods ;-) Let's see any sim represent the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

[F737MAX 5,604]

14 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

in the real world water is a colourless liquid

2 hours ago, Tim_Capps said:

Not in my neck of the woods 😉 Let's see any sim represent the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

Water *is* a colourless liquid, until you add sediment, particles, phytoplankton, zooplankton, etc. to the mix and have depth to a significant body of water.
All this combines to create various different colours, as exampled by that picture of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers confluence.

It would be great if LM could allow for a range of different colours in their depiction of the World's water. At over 70% of the planet's surface, there is a fair amount of the stuff about.