19 hours ago, Litjan said:

This is exactly why Laminar wants to get rid of tools like reshade and others that mess with private datarefs

I'm not aware of Reshade modifying private datarefs.
How can an external graphics post-processing utility modify xplane's internal datarefs?
These filters modify the graphics after they've been generated by xplane; they can't make xplane generate something it wasn't designed to do.
For example, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that xplane doesn't have photometric light.
No Reshade filter could make xplane generate photometric light!
If such a thing were actually possible, we could apply the same Reshade filter to FS9 and we'd have photometric light in FS9 too. 😊
Obviously, that's impossible.
Reshade isn't a "graphics generator"; it's just a collection of filters to beautify (or ruin) the overall graphics after they've been generated by the simulator.

4 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

I've yet to see a tweak to X-Plane shaders that looked good in some ways and did not have consequences somewhere else. I avoid them like the plague. Default all the way.

"ALL" of X-Plane 12 lighting have consequences, even DEFAULT! Why, because lights are used for multiple items! For instance you have tower lights that run over the apron of KLAX that require a certain spill for coverage, yet the same lighting is used for wall down lighting. the spill for that is overpowering, everthing in XP12 as far as lighting has consequences and one must make sacrifices! 

22 hours ago, SayAgain said:

Curious, the only reason I can think of to use reshade in the current version of XP12, would be to improve AA which would incur a performance penalty (especially at night with a lot of lights present).  Reshade can cause issues with the depth buffer and increase input lag.  

But replacing core DLLs that a game/app was built on with alternate version (aka Reshade) so they get loaded instead of the DLLs the project was compiled with, IS going to be a source of instability.  And this is why LR put in a disclaimer.

What it means from a bug reporting perspective is that you’ll have to remove the Reshade DLLs and put the original one’s LR distribute back and then test the same scenario again to see if the bug is repeatable.  LR could detect and block its usage or they can detect and log its usage.  But either way, you reduce you bug reporting significance if you include Reshade.

I’ve used it in the past but it would be better to have access to the shader code (for Vulkan that is SPIR-V compiled from GLSL and HLSL) and work from there rather than replacing DLLs.

 

Night lighting needs a ton of help! Right now XP12 looks as if there are two or three colors that make up the entire night world, with their yellow/gold taking up about 99% of the lights. Their light bulbs are way too big to begin with and they hold that size as you look out into the distance, everything is super bright. 

11 hours ago, Litjan said:

If changing those datarefs did not constitute a code hazard with unforeseeable consequences, don´t you think that Laminar would gladly allow it? Do you think they made those datarefs off-limits just to p*** their users off and push them into the criminal world? Don´t you think they are lenient in allowing them getting changed so you CAN make X-Plane look like a Disneyland version of the world if you want to?

Come on. We both know that these datarefs would not even exist in the first place if Laminar regarded them as a nuke suspended on a fishing line. 

 

11 hours ago, Litjan said:

So for now I rest in knowing that bug report whose log.txt shows the messing with private datarefs go straight into the big round circular deposit under the desk.

Cool, this saves me from ever having to invest time into filing a bug report again beause I run a script that adjusts the private dataref for LOD bias in order to ensure a minimum framerate. (Hint: This is a feature that XP might want to have by default. It would be cheap to implement and alleviate some complaints about performance.)

 

11 hours ago, Litjan said:

Experts can mess with them - they know the consequences and have (sometimes) read the disclaimer - but when unknowing users stumble upon these hacks (or even pay money for them) and it crashes their X-Plane and I have to read "X-Plane sucks, it crashes all the time, I am going back to Blue Max!" - it makes me sad.

The problem here is the developers of these plugins or scripts who neglect maintaining them, causing all sorts of compatibility issues with newer X-Plane releases. An idea to improve this would be X-Plane keeping track of which plugin tries to write to a private type dataref and display a pop-up box if any of these datarefs is not writable or does not exist anymore. The text box would display somehing like "Execution of plugin [name] stopped because [dataref] is not writable/does not exist. Contact the plugin author for assistance". FlyWithLua already does something like this by quarantining bad scripts, but the associated error message is a bit too opaque for novices to get an idea why it did.

 

11 hours ago, Litjan said:

It´s a bit like substance abuse. Yes, life is drab. Yes, a bottle of wine for breakfast can really brighten your day. But you need to know what you are doing (avoid the cheap Lambrusco)!

Considering the outburst in the first paragaph, some cheap Lambrusco would be called for right now. 😉

1 hour ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Night lighting needs a ton of help! Right now XP12 looks as if there are two or three colors that make up the entire night world, with their yellow/gold taking up about 99% of the lights.

I have noticed that if I run the default lights.txt then open X-plane 12 in windowed mode instead of Full Screen mode, the city lights look exceptionally bright and much more realistic. IMHO. They don't look that nice in full screen mode. My vid card is a 5070.

9 minutes ago, dolph98 said:

I have noticed that if I run the default lights.txt then open X-plane 12 in windowed mode instead of Full Screen mode, the city lights look exceptionally bright and much more realistic. IMHO. They don't look that nice in full screen mode. My vid card is a 5070.

I'm running a 4090 board myself in full screen mode. I put the default lights back into the right visual computer/monitor along with the ground tiles, I'll have another look in windowed mode.

Discovered something today, dont know when it happened, but it seems ATC now uses parallel runway ops, Sittin at KSMF sacramento watching AI traffic im messing around with and here comes 2 landing at same time with left plane slight behind right   on runway 17l and R went quiet well.

17 hours ago, efis007 said:

Reshade isn't a "graphics generator"; it's just a collection of filters to beautify (or ruin) the overall graphics after they've been generated by the simulator.

Ok, so all of the graphics experts working at Laminar have it wrong, and reshade is actually harmless!

I will let them know at once!

8 hours ago, Litjan said:

Ok, so all of the graphics experts working at Laminar have it wrong, and reshade is actually harmless!

I will let them know at once!

Maybe you should! Because the EXPERTS "BEN" in particular once told me that 3D rain effect is "IMPOSSIBLE" for those of us with full flight decks. Yet I was able to pull this off myself. Does that make me better than the experts? Nope, it just means my request was not a priority with L/R! Same more than likely holds true for re-shade! 
 

 

Edited January 21Jan 21 by Mike_CFII_MEL

13 hours ago, Litjan said:

Ok, so all of the graphics experts working at Laminar have it wrong, and reshade is actually harmless!

I didn't say Reshade is harmless; I said Reshade doesn't change Xplane's datarefs.

As for whether Reshade could crash XP12, I think it depends on the user's misuse.
If the user uses too many post-processing filters, the chances of the entire platform becoming unstable also increase.
If, on the other hand, the user uses a few filters to make only small (but effective) corrections, then Reshade is less likely to interfere enough to cause a crash.

I use Reshade with XP11.55 Vulkan (XP11 only) and haven't had any problems.
I usually only use three filters in XP11 (a light/color correction, a sharpness adjustment, a bloom adjustment), and these three small corrections are enough to make XP11 similar to XP12. In fact, these filters act precisely where XP11 lacks detail compared to XP12.

In XP12, however, I don't need to use Reshade because:
- XP12 already has better lighting than XP11
- XP12 already has a sharpening filter in its default menu
- XP12 already has the bloom effect built in
This is why I don't use Reshade with XP12.

The lighting in XP12 looks to uniformed, bulbs too big and has a game type look to it, just jump to 3:45 into this video with default lighting.
 

 

Jump to an hour and three minutes, not so uniformed looking. At 16:04 into the video (when paused) would make for a nice screen grab.
 

 

Edited January 21Jan 21 by Mike_CFII_MEL

 

There are a couple of issues. One being around for years involving ai and pushback. Think i finally discovered issue by pure chance. Second also invilving ai but might involve feeware that use boorowed fmod sound. Started back in last release. If 2 planes use the same FMOD sound. Xplane will throw up an error telling you a plane is using a copied fmod, wont tell you which one than it will close and you wont get past that till you remove offending plane. Problem when its ai but had that with default a330 as its loaded after ai it seems.