Envplus is released

[gaab 111]

20 hours ago, jimcarrel said:

you just use it to make adjustments. No advantage in keeping it open.

Thanks 🙂

Gérard

[okupton 309]

On 12/30/2022 at 5:28 AM, VHOJT said:

How does it compare with RDShade?

I’m curious about this myself. I am currently running RDshade and am not sure if Envplus does anything that RDshade doesn’t. What are the main differences between the two? 

[Chris555 4]

Hello Pilots :)

Would you please share your ENVPLUS settings ( best in your opinion ) 

 

Thank You :)

[Juliett Alfa Romeo 540]

22 minutes ago, Chris555 said:

Hello Pilots 🙂

Would you please share your ENVPLUS settings ( best in your opinion )

 

[Afterburner 374]

One problem that bothers me about EA is that dawn and dusk exhibit the same colors every day, no matter the location. Even though Envplus can help refine the colors, they repeat (let me know if you have seen otherwise). In addition, it's the same color in all directions at a time; in reality, you can see a hue gradient as you pan your view away from the sun side, where the color on the sun side is more orangy, while it becomes more purplish as you pan towards the opposite side. This is well represented by Envtex sky textures in non-EA mode (and it is accounted for in MSFS), but not in EA mode, which doesn't use textures at all. Even more, the color of the clouds blends too much with the sky color (= looks too orangy) during a sunset in EA mode. In reality, when we have overcast weather conditions, the clouds transition from being white during daytime to becoming grey and dark in the evening (when looked at from the ground). In P3D EA mode and MSFS, there is too much cloud coloration in this case. Using non-EA mode with Envtex/Envshade makes them look more realistic.

The EA mode looks best during daytime in my opinion (better than non-EA). If your cockpit is still dark after applying Envplus, I recommend setting the aircraft shadow depth to 0.5, which will brighten up the inside of the airplane without causing noticeable side effects. If you use non-EA mode, you may find that the cockpit and the scenery look a little blueish. Setting the "HDR Tint" to 2 looks good on my system.

[dave2013 1,130]

15 hours ago, Afterburner said:

This is well represented by Envtex sky textures in non-EA mode (and it is accounted for in MSFS), but not in EA mode, which doesn't use textures at all. Even more, the color of the clouds blends too much with the sky color (= looks too orangy) during a sunset in EA mode.

I agree, EA still needs improvement.

Hopefully P3Dv6 will have better EA and volumetric clouds.

Dave

[Baber20 1,438]

I have a few questions. I bought envplus and envshade today. Do I need envtex aswell to get the full benefit ? Can you use envtex with EA on ? Or envtex forces you to turn off EA and volumetric clouds completely ? Since envplus is out now which further improves the visuals of EA, do we really envtex now ? Sorry for so many questions. Really new to P3D.

[Afterburner 374]

51 minutes ago, Baber20 said:

I have a few questions. I bought envplus and envshade today. Do I need envtex aswell to get the full benefit ? Can you use envtex with EA on ? Or envtex forces you to turn off EA and volumetric clouds completely ? Since envplus is out now which further improves the visuals of EA, do we really envtex now ? Sorry for so many questions. Really new to P3D.

If you use EA, you can no longer use Evntex' sky colors (and clouds if you use volumetric ones). You can still use some of the other elements, such as water textures. However, if you use EA and volumetric clouds, I would say that you won't benefit from Evntex as much as from using Envshade + Envplus.

[Baber20 1,438]

43 minutes ago, Afterburner said:

If you use EA, you can no longer use Evntex' sky colors (and clouds if you use volumetric ones). You can still use some of the other elements, such as water textures. However, if you use EA and volumetric clouds, I would say that you won't benefit from Evntex as much as from using Envshade + Envplus.

Hi. Thanks for answering. So which do you prefer? Envtex + envshade + envplus but without EA and volumetric clouds or with EA and volumetric clouds + envshade + envplus but without envtex. 

[Afterburner 374]

When it comes to natural sky colors during sunset/sunrise that vary with day and season, nothing beats Envtex + Envshade + Envplus without EA. This is my preferred mode, especially if I anticipate dusk/night/dawn during my flight.

During daytime, I have EA activated sometimes, since there is not much variation in sky color, but the atmosphere looks realistic. I never use volumetric clouds because they look rather unnatural to me, lack variation and eat a lot of performance.

If I were you, I would start with Envshade + Envplus, no matter if you use EA or not. This combination is inexpensive, and you can still add Envtex later if you find that EA is not for you.

[Baber20 1,438]

33 minutes ago, Afterburner said:

When it comes to natural sky colors during sunset/sunrise that vary with day and season, nothing beats Envtex + Envshade + Envplus without EA. This is my preferred mode, especially if I anticipate dusk/night/dawn during my flight.

During daytime, I have EA activated sometimes, since there is not much variation in sky color, but the atmosphere looks realistic. I never use volumetric clouds because they look rather unnatural to me, lack variation and eat a lot of performance.

If I were you, I would start with Envshade + Envplus, no matter if you use EA or not. This combination is inexpensive, and you can still add Envtex later if you find that EA is not for you.

Ok great. But I have seen people use EA with Active Sky and are still able to use envtex clouds ? How is this possible ? Doesn't EA turn off envtex sky and clouds because they are textures and not shader based?

Edit. I read up on this. Looks like you can still use EA with envtex clouds If you move the volumetric cloud slider to full left.

 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Baber20

[Baber20 1,438]

Ok so I decided to get REX 5 Skyforce for clouds and use AS for weather engine. Couple this with envshade and envplus, the results are just astounding. I couldn't be happier. And this is me coming from MSFS and Xplane 12. Currently doing a long haul from Narita to Amsterdam in the PMDG 748f and I am seeing some very interesting and extremely realistic cloud scapes. This is further enhanced by envshade and envplus which results in photographic lighting. I have EA set to on. 

Great job Toga Projects.

Edited January 20, 2023 by Baber20

[newtie 533]

On 1/18/2023 at 3:29 PM, Afterburner said:

One problem that bothers me about EA is that dawn and dusk exhibit the same colors every day, no matter the location. Even though Envplus can help refine the colors, they repeat (let me know if you have seen otherwise). In addition, it's the same color in all directions at a time; in reality, you can see a hue gradient as you pan your view away from the sun side, where the color on the sun side is more orangy, while it becomes more purplish as you pan towards the opposite side. This is well represented by Envtex sky textures in non-EA mode (and it is accounted for in MSFS), but not in EA mode, which doesn't use textures at all. Even more, the color of the clouds blends too much with the sky color (= looks too orangy) during a sunset in EA mode. In reality, when we have overcast weather conditions, the clouds transition from being white during daytime to becoming grey and dark in the evening (when looked at from the ground). In P3D EA mode and MSFS, there is too much cloud coloration in this case. Using non-EA mode with Envtex/Envshade makes them look more realistic.

The EA mode looks best during daytime in my opinion (better than non-EA). If your cockpit is still dark after applying Envplus, I recommend setting the aircraft shadow depth to 0.5, which will brighten up the inside of the airplane without causing noticeable side effects. If you use non-EA mode, you may find that the cockpit and the scenery look a little blueish. Setting the "HDR Tint" to 2 looks good on my system.

I recommend setting the aircraft shadow depth to 0.5, which will brighten up the inside of the airplane without causing noticeable side effects.

Where did you find out how to do this? This has to do with a post I just made, I think :>)

[okupton 309]

Whelp I’m having a tough time with TOGA projects.  Everytime I inject textures/shaders with Envdir it completely messed up my addons.cfg and I have to reactivate all of my installed addons.  I have posted about this on their forum but haven’t gotten any help. There are others who also posted about the same issue. Has anyone else encountered this and been able to resolve this issue?  Really annoying as I can’t tweak Envplus to my liking because it messes my sim up every time.

 

thanks

[Bob Scott 7,721]

15 hours ago, okupton said:

Whelp I’m having a tough time with TOGA projects.  Everytime I inject textures/shaders with Envdir it completely messed up my addons.cfg and I have to reactivate all of my installed addons.  I have posted about this on their forum but haven’t gotten any help. There are others who also posted about the same issue. Has anyone else encountered this and been able to resolve this issue?  Really annoying as I can’t tweak Envplus to my liking because it messes my sim up every time.

That's odd...I just made a couple shader tweaks with Envshade, and wrote it out to the sim, and neither add-ons.cfg file (one in ProgramData, the other in AppData\Roaming) was touched in the process.

What you could do is take a snapshot of your config with Lorby-SI P3D Addon Organizer using the one-click backup tool, and then restore that backup after running Envdir--that'll restore your add-ons.cfg and other config files to what you had before Envdir ran.  I don't see any entries in the add-ons.cfg files that pertain to Envshade/tex/plus anyway.

It does have me wondering a bit--I run the TOGA apps from a remote PC, and the docs say that the Program Files and AppData folders need to be shared on the server PC, but there is no setting in the application to point the apps to the networked location of those folders...so now I wonder if some of the needed file changes aren't being made...