[BUG] Cloud Shadows breaks Water FX 2.0 Max in FSX:SE

[morus-pro 0]

Hello. My name's Leandro Barreto and I need a fix for Cloud Shadows. Being a modder and programmer myself, this should be easy, I think. Everything so far is working great, except for one thing. I took a dozen of screenshots that clearly explain the problem and my thoughts about a fix. How should I upload them here? Anyway, let me explain first.

I purchased both DX10 Fixer and Cloud Shadows this week to use in a clean installation of FSX Steam Edition in a Windows 11 machine. I'm not using the new FSX beta version. But I got a couple of DLCs from Steam as well, so I can't tell if my installation is pure vanilla. Most of them are only missions and aircrafts. I think the only DLCs that change something "deeper" are the HD Airport Graphics, FTX Trees HD (both of which seem to just replace textures) and Accu-Feel (which probably wasn't even installed when I first noticed the problem since DLCs for FSX:SE in general are usually broken on installation). Only then I fixed Accu-Feel and purchased some more DLCs hoping to fix the bug, like REX Soft Clouds and Ultimate Water FX. I made them all work fine and with no conflict to DX10 Fixer, apparently, but the bug persists.

The problem happens only when I enable the scenary setting for Water FX 2.0 Max and Cloud Shadows at same time. Then some buildings cast shadows that keep floating over my screen - but only where there is ground or water. And those "shadows" change position whenever I move the camera on its Y (vertical) axis (both VC or external). Moving a bit my camera, I can overlap each shadow beneath its respective building. Strangely enough, the shadows were not even aligned to the sun, nor to the right or to the left - but always below or above its counterpart building.

At first I thought this was some weird bug on Ground Shadows that people talk about. I've read the entire manual before installation. But disabling Ground Shadows or Volume Shadows won't fix it. Tried some shadow settings on DX10 Fixer too, with no success. Disabling all options under Cloud Shadows (except METAR shading) didn't fix it either. The only fix so far is disabling Cloud Shadows or setting Water FX 2.0 slider below Max (i.e: high). The latter is a setting to cast reflections of buildings over water surface - hence the strange alignment they were presenting, always facing my camera. But it works wonderful if Cloud Shadows are disabled, so it's not a bug in FSX. And I don't wanna disable this setting because that's the only thing making my DX10 water really feel alive at the moment.

Then I thought those shadows were being created by Cloud Shadows to darken buildings beneath clouds. But there were no clouds over those buldings either. So now I have a better theory based on my own experience with hacking/injecting code. I think when Cloud Shadows is injecting itself into the Water FX (like the manual says), it is accidentally preventing the normal FX behaviour of discarding reflections for buildings that are far away from water. So I suppose "all" you gotta do for a fix is to wire up this behaviour again after Cloud Shadows finishes its job. My screenshots will show this clearly, when I figure out where to upload them.

[morus-pro 0]

I uploaded all the screenshots to imgur site. The last 3 photos illustrates my theory.
I'm using "dense" autogen on these images. The location is New York.

https://imgur.com/a/PhHSeEI



Any idea why no one else seem to have seen this bug? Maybe everyone migrated to beta version?
Not everybody can afford the new Flight Simulator, so I guess I won't be dropping FSX yet for a while.
Thanks in advance for any help.

[SteveFx 258]

The fixer and cloud shadows are not compatible with any 3rd party programs that edit shaders.  You can turn off water shaders in the fixer to work with 3rd party water shaders but you obviously won’t then see cloud shadows.

[morus-pro 0]

16 hours ago, SteveFx said:

The fixer and cloud shadows are not compatible with any 3rd party programs that edit shaders.  You can turn off water shaders in the fixer to work with 3rd party water shaders but you obviously won’t then see cloud shadows.

Yes. But that's not the problem, as you can see by comparing the screenshots below:

1) The bug appeared BEFORE I installed the Ultimate Water FX. Notice the ugly water below the Trike Ultralight:

Perharps you're thinking that "Water FX 2.0 Max" from my post title is some addon? But that's just the water settings in vanilla FSX scenary settings (low >> mid >> high >> max).

2) Your manual states that ANY changes to the water shaders would disable the Water settings in the DX10 Fixer:

Quote

Settings buttons will be greyed out if any of the files in the <FSX> ShadersHLSL
directory are found to be different to the original versions (...)

So for example should you download and install a replacement DX10 water shader
(Water40.fx) the Water Option will then be greyed out. The new downloaded shader
should work without issue but you cannot control it from DX10 Controller.

However, my Water button in the Fixer still presents the same color as the others and works normally.

3) Apparently, Cloud Shadows still work OK after I installed Ultimate Water FX (which I was really hoping to "break" the feature that generates the ghost shadows). Notice how the water quality improves below this Cessna 172 while showing nice Cloud Shadows at same time:


I know maybe there's still a conflict between them. But that's not the point. I can get rid of that addon if Cloud Shadows can be fixed. Those squared UFOs following all around me can be pretty annoying sometimes.

Anyway, if I really have to choose, I prefer water quality over Cloud Shadows, unfortunately. But I don't wanna disable Cloud Shadows because of all the built-in improvements it brings to DX10 Fixer. So, if you don't think it can be fixed, is there a way to at least keep those improvements (like SimConnect) enabled while disabling only the displaying of the cloud shadows? Another possibility, in case someone else has a working setup, would be sharing your shader files with me. Maybe my shaders were updated by Steam or some mission/aircraft addon. I'm getting tired of restarting FSX to inspect what changes.

[SteveFx 258]

Sorry I had misunderstand.

I am in hospital, so cannot really look until they discharge me.

 I think it’s a known bug (by me) which never really mattered as the fps hit of max water slider meant no one  ever used it.

my recollection is that it cannot be solved in the shader, and it was a lot of effort, but I will look.

if you untick the water shader in the fixer menus it will achieve your workaround .

[SteveFx 258]

Ok, I am able to look at it now.  

The problem is  that the fixer uses the alpha channel of the reflection render target for cloud shadows.  I think that some buildings (typically skyscrapers) that appear as reflections with water 2.0 max  are writing alpha values into the reflection RT.  These are therefore treated as cloud shadows by the fixer.

The solution  is to conditionally distinguish between the general shader being used to display these in the main RT and the reflection RT and to avoid the write to the alpha channel, whilst still applying any alpha blending that is required to draw the buildings correctly.  A complication is that the general shader can in some circumstances be used to draw clouds so care is needed to avoid breaking that.

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by SteveFx

[SteveFx 258]

If you can send me a PM with your email address I have a beta with a possible fix for you.

[SteveFx 258]

The OP seems to have disappeared.  if anyone else is interested in testing this fix then let me know.

[morus-pro 0]

Oh, hi! Sorry for the delay. You're genius! I didn't think you were going to find a fix for it. 😃

Right after our last talk, I simply reduced clouds opacity, which helped me to forget those glitches (because they also became more transparent). Clouds were still sligthly visible, just the enough so I could have water reflections and clouds at same time without noticing too much glitches. I was going to post my final settings here after some testings. But then I never found those glitches again anywhere except on New York. So I started to suspect maybe this is a compatibility issue with some custom building (from the vanilla custom autogen setting, which in mine is almost set to full). I needed more testing in more locations. But I haven't played more since then.

Gonna PM you my email. Thanks!

[morus-pro 0]

** I simply reduced Cloud SHADOWS opacity (in DX 10 Fixer)

[SteveFx 258]

I was also able to reproduce at Canary Wharf in London.