6 hours ago, fppilot said:

Do you not fly?

I think the exact opposite; instead of tweaking, tinkering and toying with tools he is actually using the sim for what it was made for: flying.

Edited September 4, 20241 yr by orchestra_nl
grammar

44 minutes ago, timest said:

1 hour ago, Redge said:

I love the weather pre-SU5 as much as anyone, but that's not what this add-on appears to be doing. In this screenshot comparison, It's only changing the environmental lighting (and maybe some ozone/visibility settings too). The clouds are identical in both shots (give or take a minute's difference), they're just lit differently. This add-on sadly won't give us the great clouds and weather we had pre SU5, but it looks like it'll allow us to tweak the atmospheric visuals to our liking in a way that we haven't been able to do so far. I'm really looking forward to this!

Both screenshots are lit identically, evident by the light filtering through and illuminating the bottom cloud layer. The goal was to showcase the much-needed ash cloud fix, along with a few other additions. I’d also like to highlight that these features are fully adjustable, giving you control over how much processing you want to apply.

I think you're misunderstanding what @Redge is trying to say.

When you say "both screenshots are lit identically", what you mean is that the sun is in the same place in the sky in both shots.

When @Redge talks about "changing the environmental lighting", what I believe they mean is that Atmos changes the way the effect of the light on the scene is computed. (This is what the term "lighting" is typically used to describe in computer graphics.)

2 hours ago, timest said:

REX Atmos is all about blending realism with customization. It’s not just about replicating reality, it’s about letting you shape your own experience. Think of it as a way to make the simulation work for you, not just a one-size-fits-all approach.

Completely agree with you on that.

Edited September 4, 20241 yr by GSalden

2 hours ago, rob0203 said:

¡Estoy deseando que llegue este!

También pensé que cuando se lanzó MSFS, todos los foros estaban llenos de comentarios sobre que ya no necesitábamos ningún complemento como con Prepar3d.

Ahora empiezo con MSFS: BeyondAtc o FSHUD, Active Sky, Lorby AAO, FSUIPC, Mobiflight, AutoFPS, MS popout panel manager y luego también REX atmos y tal vez incluso algunos más..............................

It is the exaggeration that is always made by a very noisy part of the community, but MFS has a lot of room for improvement and I for one am glad that such add-ons are coming out as Asobo seems to have no intention of giving us a solution. 

From lighting and colors, clouds and weather rendering, very large trees, areas where the photogrammetry only gets worse and not better etc.

2 hours ago, timest said:

The goal was to showcase the much-needed ash cloud fix

Well it's only a fix to the colour/contrast/saturation/etc, the same cotton candy clouds are still there they only look different.

Which is of course all you can do, what worries me is Seb said practically the same thing in a Q&A about getting rid of the ash clouds by changing similar in MSFS2024, that doesn't solve the problem of far too many cotton candy clouds which has been prevalent since SU7. Of course it's a wait and see with that though, fingers crossed.

43 minutes ago, MarcG said:

Well it's only a fix to the colour/contrast/saturation/etc, the same cotton candy clouds are still there they only look different.

Which is of course all you can do, what worries me is Seb said practically the same thing in a Q&A about getting rid of the ash clouds by changing similar in MSFS2024, that doesn't solve the problem of far too many cotton candy clouds which has been prevalent since SU7. Of course it's a wait and see with that though, fingers crossed.

Simplified yes i understand what you mean, but it is definitely not a matter of color/contrast/saturation change, there is much more involved with this in computer graphics.
This addon will make changes to the atmosphere and how it interacts with the clouds and environment.
Just like a flashlight in a pitch dark room will make the room differently compared to 10 flashlights pointing in each direction or with heavier intensities as a super simplified example.

if you want to learn some more about volumetric rendering, you can check this paper : https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1223894/FULLTEXT01.pdf
I am with 10000000% certainty that everyone at Asobo/X-Plane/P3D working on graphics/engine has read this paper.

Volumetric clouds in FS2020 were in fact quite white in the alpha builds and pre-xbox builds, unless u were in a storm condition which had grey shifting clouds which is normal.
Like this :


So Asobo clearly changed something in the meantime, which i assume is they adjusted the parameters of ambient light absorption on clouds or it's scattering strength.
Getting rid of the ash clouds is fully possible without having to resort to raytracing or raymarching with computationally expensive rays.
I'll put on my tinfoil here and frankly say that Asobo clearly didn't see this as a priority to spend the effort onto at the given time as they were working on multiple projects and FS2024 and other areas of the sim.

You can't tell me these are the same parameters as what we have now.
These are all shots i took myself at basically ultra settings, i've been with MSFS since day 1 :

28 minutes ago, FinalLightNL said:

You can't tell me these are the same parameters as what we have now.
These are all shots i took myself at basically ultra settings, i've been with MSFS since day 1 :

These are lovely shots of the original weather rendering we had in MSFS. But one thing to note... I think each of these shots is (generally) facing towards the sun. Even today in MSFS, the cloud colours look much more realistic when facing towards the sunshine, than facing away from it. We only ever get the volcanic ash type clouds when looking away from where the sun is in the simulator.

For this reason I'll often plan my flights at specific times of the day so that I'm flying towards the sun, rather than away from it, for the best cloud rendering (yeah, I know... I should speak to my therapist about this).

What this REX Atmos add-on potentially does, is fix the light scattering, so that the clouds are lit correctly regardless of where you look.

As for the cloud formations and density in your screenshots — that's another matter. They were definitely far better and more varied at launch.

Edited September 4, 20241 yr by Redge

3 hours ago, timest said:

Both screenshots are lit identically, evident by the light filtering through and illuminating the bottom cloud layer. The goal was to showcase the much-needed ash cloud fix, along with a few other additions. I’d also like to highlight that these features are fully adjustable, giving you control over how much processing you want to apply.

I think you misunderstood my point, as described well by @martinboehme.

I think this all looks great. I'm very excited to hear more details about your tool, especially when we might be able to get our hands on it! 

6 minutes ago, Redge said:

These are lovely shots of the original weather rendering we had in MSFS. But one thing to note... I think each of these shots is (generally) facing towards the sun. Even today in MSFS, the cloud colours look much more realistic when facing towards the sunshine, than facing away from it. We only ever get the volcanic ash type clouds when looking away from where the sun is in the simulator.

I assume this is mainly due how light interacts in a screen space, this can be solved with raytracing or path tracing.
But in my understanding we won't get that, we are still limited to raymarching which is a fancier screen space technique.
But even irl clouds look better looking towards the sun haha, don't worry you are not alone in liking it that way 😂

I honestly hope we can make enough of a change to fill the needs of each of us in areas we think the sim is lacking atmospheric wise.
I do not think Atmos is the solution to all, there are many things it can't fix.
But it's a start 😁

And it'll please me till FS2024 drops in roughly 2 months.
And maybe even improve on some FS2024 areas if they support the new sim.

tho i don't think we'll see real time path traced clouds in any game in the next 10 years at least.
https://research.nvidia.com/publication/2021-03_interactive-path-tracing-and-reconstruction-sparse-volumes
you'd need way to make samples per pixel to render to denoise them properly.
but doesn't mean we can't make them look great even without RT/PT, it just requires a bit more innovative techniques that tricks the users mind.

4 hours ago, orchestra_nl said:

I think the exact opposite; instead of tweaking, tinkering and toying with tools he is actually using the sim for what it was made for: flying.

Givme a Break! Givme a Break!

Using add-ons for a more realistic experience is not tweaking, tinkering, or toying,  Far from it.  Those who have been in the sky and no longer fly are looking for more realism from the simulator. And loving when we find it!

Edited September 4, 20241 yr by fppilot

2 hours ago, FinalLightNL said:

Simplified yes i understand what you mean, but it is definitely not a matter of color/contrast/saturation change, there is much more involved with this in computer graphics.
This addon will make changes to the atmosphere and how it interacts with the clouds and environment.
Just like a flashlight in a pitch dark room will make the room differently compared to 10 flashlights pointing in each direction or with heavier intensities as a super simplified example.

if you want to learn some more about volumetric rendering, you can check this paper : https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1223894/FULLTEXT01.pdf
I am with 10000000% certainty that everyone at Asobo/X-Plane/P3D working on graphics/engine has read this paper.

Volumetric clouds in FS2020 were in fact quite white in the alpha builds and pre-xbox builds, unless u were in a storm condition which had grey shifting clouds which is normal.
Like this :


So Asobo clearly changed something in the meantime, which i assume is they adjusted the parameters of ambient light absorption on clouds or it's scattering strength.
Getting rid of the ash clouds is fully possible without having to resort to raytracing or raymarching with computationally expensive rays.
I'll put on my tinfoil here and frankly say that Asobo clearly didn't see this as a priority to spend the effort onto at the given time as they were working on multiple projects and FS2024 and other areas of the sim.

You can't tell me these are the same parameters as what we have now.
These are all shots i took myself at basically ultra settings, i've been with MSFS since day 1 :

Are those pics in live weather?  I can do those shots with custom weather but not live.  Something got bugged in live - the clouds are almost always too transparent and not formed very well.  I guess the asobo term is voxels - they need more and I can always see through even thick clouds.

7 hours ago, timest said:

 it’s about letting you shape your own experience.

 

5 hours ago, timest said:

 these features are fully adjustable, giving you control over how much processing you want to apply.

Hopefully there will be a few presets that can be set and forget with one click.

I am not at all interested in any tweaking and fiddling around with a dozen parameters.

 

8 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

Hopefully there will be a few presets that can be set and forget with one click.

I'm sure they thought of that.

I wonder why REX is allowed to do such in-depth changes to the core sim while other devs, namely those of AutoFPS and Map Enhancement, are basically a no-go zone and also you are not allowed to mention them in the official forums. I thought it is because they manipulate the MSFS code directly, so REX is not doing so?