Potential improvements for sky colors

[Waldo Pepper 1,953]

Anyone else notice the BMP textures in FS-Base with names like "sky_afternoon_0",  "sky_dawn_3",  etc

[Alvega 2,125]

58 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

The best settings are still MorThe2nd's values?

Guess that depends on personal preference. Now you can compare them without having to exit the sim, so it's easier to decide which ones you prefer.

[bobcat999 8,503]

38 minutes ago, Waldo Pepper said:

Anyone else notice the BMP textures in FS-Base with names like "sky_afternoon_0",  "sky_dawn_3",  etc

Strange. Why would they need them?

[Biology 1,347]

1 hour ago, bobcat999 said:

Strange. Why would they need them?

Those are identical to the FSX sky textures and not used, so if I had to guess they were either left there when Asobo was studying FSX code or added for some weird backwards compatibility reasons.

Edited October 13, 2023 by Biology

[V1ROTA7E 718]

2 hours ago, Waldo Pepper said:

Anyone else notice the BMP textures in FS-Base with names like "sky_afternoon_0",  "sky_dawn_3",  etc

It’s probably used as an underlay for the weather and time description when setting up a flight. 

[Biology 1,347]

@Drunq sorry for bothering but how does your live memory changing tool works? I run MSFS on Linux so I was trying to make a similar tool that runs natively on Linux, but I couldn't make much progress.

[Tuskin38 6,635]

23 hours ago, turbomax said:

Seb in last Q&A: "a completely revamped graphics engine"

Didn't he said atmospheric engine not graphical?

 

Speaking of sky textures, can the night sky texture be edited? The star texture is so low res.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Tuskin38

[Drunq 98]

1 hour ago, Biology said:

@Drunq sorry for bothering but how does your live memory changing tool works? I run MSFS on Linux so I was trying to make a similar tool that runs natively on Linux, but I couldn't make much progress.

Not at all!

Linux is unfortunately a domain I know very little about, so I may not be of much help in that regard. However, I can provide a brief explanation of how my patch works on a Windows.

Essentially, the patch is a .dll file that has been renamed to .asi. This renaming is done so that the asi-loader recognizes it and knows to inject it into the game's process. The specific asi-loader I use is called Ultimate-ASI-Loader, it imitates the behavior of a Windows .dll the game tries to load (dinput8.dll in this case) and also additionally loads any .asi's found in the root directory. It's abusing the fact that Windows first looks for the .dll the game is trying to load in the root folder of the application and in case it doesn't exist, it looks in "C:\Windows\System32" which it then does.

Anyway that's how the .asi (.dll) get's loaded into the game's process. Because of that fact, I have read and write access to the game's memory at that point. All I do is search for a specific pattern of bytes I need to modify in the game's memory, which in this case is "C3 64 2A 3A E3 8B F6 3A 07 42 B2 38" (representing 3 floats of 4 bytes each: 0.00065, 0.001881, and 0.000085). Once I locate this byte pattern, I retrieve the memory address pointer, which allows me to make the necessary modifications.

[turbomax 3,305]

1 hour ago, Tuskin38 said:

Didn't he said atmospheric engine not graphical?

Sebastian in last Q&A: "our revamped color engine in MSFS 2024 will be much better".

Edited October 14, 2023 by turbomax

[turbomax 3,305]

10 hours ago, Biology said:

how does your live memory changing tool work

https://github.com/ThirteenAG/Ultimate-ASI-Loader/releases

DESCRIPTION

This is a DLL file which adds ASI plugin loading functionality to any game, which uses any of the following libraries:

• d3d8.dll
• d3d9.dll
• d3d11.dll
• ddraw.dll
• dinput.dll
• dinput8.dll (x86 and x64)

.....

.....

.....

 

Edited October 14, 2023 by turbomax

[Drunq 98]

15 hours ago, Biology said:

@Drunq sorry for bothering but how does your live memory changing tool works? I run MSFS on Linux so I was trying to make a similar tool that runs natively on Linux, but I couldn't make much progress.

Btw, If you are using Proton/Wine on Linux you can probably still run it: https://cookieplmonster.github.io/setup-instructions/#proton-wine

[turbomax 3,305]

Before-After examples with MorThe2nd colors, using the Drunq's latest version 1.2.1, based on Biology's initial research, without and with clouds, 6:00 p.m. at KJOT (slight color banding artefacts due to reduction to 256 colors of GIF-animation format)

 

 

6:00 p.m.

 

6:30 p.m.

 

6:40 p.m.

 

and absolutely no difference at 12:00 noon

slightly edited MSFS2020.ARPC.ini that I used, toggle keys: CTRL INS

; WARNING: Do not leave values blank; remove the entire line.

[COEFFICIENTS]

; Biology initial colors:
;RED = 0.002723
;GREEN = 0.001831
;BLUE = -0.000083096

; MorThe2nd colors:

RED = 0.00508
GREEN = 0.00318
BLUE = 0.0

; Enable the live editing functionality
; When enabled, changes to the coefficients reflect in-game when saved
LIVE_EDITING_ENABLED = true; default war false ; Set to 'true' to enable live editing

[TOGGLE]
; Enable the toggle functionality
ENABLED = true; default war false ; Set to 'true' to enable the toggle feature

; Key code for toggling (See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/inputdev/virtual-key-codes)
KEY_CODE = 0x2D ; default: INSERT

; Enable or disable key modifiers
HOLD_ALT = false ; Set to 'true' to use Alt as a modifier
HOLD_CTRL = true ; Set to 'false' to disable Ctrl as a modifier
HOLD_SHIFT = false ; Set to 'true' to use Shift as a modifier

Edited October 14, 2023 by turbomax

[NovemberUniform 157]

Okay, I could need some help. Sorry if this was asked already. The thread is quite long by now. I just don't want to brick my sim. 

I need to convert my Ms store version from legacy to modern install. I found the topic in the MSFS2020 tips and tricks forum, posted by @bobcat999. There is a link to parallel42 describing the procedure.

Eventually, I get asked to choose a drive, where to install 'this game' and that it requires 157 GB.

It sounds like this will be the real and final location of all the sim files!? I thought, my legacy sim install will only be altered in a way, keeping the current install location. 

Can anyone shed some light on this for me, please? Thanks. 

[turbomax 3,305]

2 minutes ago, NovemberUniform said:

Can anyone shed some light on this for me, please? Thanks. 

in my case, while it said 157 GB, it only moved 2 GB.

[NovemberUniform 157]

2 minutes ago, turbomax said:

in my case, while it said 157 GB, it only moved 2 GB.

Thanks! Yes, I have read that elsewhere. Are these 2GB placed in the specified install location (it defaults to c:\XboxGames)? So all the old MSFS install files remain, correct?