mole_man

If you untick aircraft lighting and apply the preset, what does it look like? Default lighting should look OK, if a little bland. Maybe also restore your original shaders from actions menu first. If it looks OK, you can slightly adjust the diffuse and ambient to suit your taste. I am finding v4.4 requires smaller adjustments. The jagged shadow line is shadow quality, not a PTA thing. Despite using the max slider setting, you may still be disappointed. I increase the shadow map size in the cfg. In the graphics section, try increasing the map to these settings. Check your FPS before and after tweak, to see if you can take the hit. Reduce map size if you need. I think it must be power of 2 though. With these settings, the in cockpit shadows look good too. [Graphics] OPAQUE_SHADOW_TEXTURE_SIZE=4096 TRANSLUCENT_SHADOW_TEXTURE_SIZE=2048

Another one for Matt and the big rework. I saw massive performance drop in overcast conditions in v4.4. Thought to untick all cloud shading tweaks I had, and a big boost came back. I don't remember such a hit in V4.3. I have not started to put the tweaks back one by one to see which effects the most, but wondered if others were seeing the same. The hit is particularly hard with Activesky and ASCA. Cloudgroup shading maybe? Untweaked clouds don't seem as bad in v4.4 as v4.3, so that is something.

Step 1 is untick aircraft lighting and VC lighting. Apply preset, start sim and check if shading come back If it does, the settings may be too aggresive. LM have reworked moonlighting for V4.4, so look at moonlight diffuse and ambient. Default value is one, so maybe change 0.1 at a time up or down, to get the effect you are after. Diffuse is light direct from the sun/moon, ambient is the light bouncing around coming off other objects, not direct from the source. Everything look OK during the day on your aircraft?

Yay. Can't wait to get my haze back.

If anyone else is having this issue, I have found a workaround while we wait and see if v4.4 corrects it. For me at least, the issue is caused by the fx_tchdrt.fx effect which creates the particle effect around wheels on soft surface. I created an empty fx file and saved with the same name (backup original first) and now the issue has gone. You do lose the effect around the wheels of course, but for me the view from the cockpit is the most important. For an empty fx file, open notepad and paste in this text [Library Effect] Lifetime=5 Version=2.00 Radius=-1 Priority=0 [Properties] Now save it with the name 'fx_tchdrt.fx' in main effects folder, having backed up the original first.

Good thought, but I have a complete default setup to compare to and it happens on that too. At least others see the issue. Maybe LM will fix in V4.4, assuming there is no simple user fix. Just spotted a new issue. On the flight computer with many add-ons, now we have moved to November, hard surfaces with blowing snow effect around the tyres are showing the issue, but only if weather is from Active Sky. Default weather does not seem to cause the issue even if the blowing snow is there.

So if you can resist turning up the goodies it will cope it seems. It's still worth it over FSX. If you reduce details to FSX equivelent, then P3dV4 will be much smoother I think you will find. IT uses all the cores so much more efficiently. Or go for the rebuild. I fired up my monster rebuild on the very day this story came to light. Only a little experience with it before patches applied, but can not really see a difference pre and post. Laboratory condition benchmarks will reveal a slowdown, but not gadding around in flightsim really, so far. There may be more patches to come. Some less hysterical info here. http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/windows-vulnerability-cpu-meltdown-patch-benchmarked,1.html

At minimum you need a 4gb graphic card. Most scenes you load will show over 3gb of Vram use, so your sim will probably freeze

The annoying 'provide more info' comment is here; Simulator version, system spec, Major addons/utilities being used at same time. Have you upgraded the win7 to win10 on same PC? I did this on a laptop and it had unsolveable access issues on a Carenado King Air where it can not access the nav data for FMS. Desktop is on Win10 P3DV4.1, and will get over 30fps with GS1000 in all but the heaviest scenery areas.

Same issue here. The GS1000 is frustrating I find. The phenom will be off to the wreckers yard once the Aerosoft airbus is out.

Is there a shader variable linked to cloud cover that could be used in expressions? Change values according to broken or overcast etc. I can not see one listed on the PTA help section. Would love to also know where these variables are listed anyway, and in depth details about expressions. Can't find any mention in P3D SDK.

Autogen lighting is just for night lights I think, 'Autogen Emissive Lighting'? I like to keep them bright, but users could put same formulas into that section to darken nightlights with altitude. Not tested in every season/TOD yet. Will end up with many presets through the year I expect, and probably different parts of the world do not see the ground go so dark with altitude as it does in Northern Europe/USA How to vary the formula by season is the next challenge...

Good explanation. What is AG short for? Not sure what to look at tweaking next to fine tune the effect.

Had to go a bit deeper to get it to work. Just reducing the diffuse was not getting the full effect, and was also reducing down to black higher up, so I needed to clamp it. I think I have worked out a solution, but the maths is not that elegant, and appreciate input if there is a better way to do it. The aim is to reduce the brightness of terrain, and buildings up to an altitude of 25,000 ft (more realistic for UK winter flying), then clamp it there. I have come up with; [LIGHTING_TERRAIN_LIGHTING] IsActive=1 SunDiffuseCoeff=(clamp(3.0 - (cb_Altitude/3048), 0.4, 2.4)) SunAmbientCoeff=(clamp(0.72 - (cb_Altitude/12700), 0.1, 0.6)) MoonDiffuseCoeff=1.50 MoonAmbientCoeff=1.00 [LIGHTING_AUTOGEN_LIGHTING] IsActive=1 SunDiffuseCoeff=(clamp(3.0 - (cb_Altitude/3048), 0.5, 2.4)) SunAmbientCoeff=(clamp(0.72 - (cb_Altitude/12700), 0.1, 0.6)) MoonDiffuseCoeff=0.8 MoonAmbientCoeff=0.5 [LIGHTING_TERRAIN_SATURATION] IsActive=1 SaturateRatio=(clamp(0.9 - (cb_Altitude/38100), 0.7, 0.9)) Before the tweak After the tweak Using this formula, the darkening effect does not start until around 6000 ft If you want to try the formulas, you will probably need to fiddle with the values to fit your preset, HDR lighting etc. The last two figures are the clamp figures, so you can use those to constrain the results, especially the lower figure. Set to a higher number and it won't get so dark.

Thanks alot, and I can see how the expression works now too.

Getting some great results fiddling with PTA. Thanks for the tool. I was trying to think about how to darken the terrain with altitude, reducing the light level of the ground in linear line from say 10,000 ft. Writing that expression is way beyond me. If it is possible to do, I would appreciate help in getting an expression to work.

Thanks for the explanation. Just glad to know I was not going mad.

Should say of course I am on clouds 1.6 and dx10 3.2

HI The cloud shadows do not appear on airport custom ground planes, but I do not see it listed as a known issue? Should they be visible over custom airport ground? Graeme

Are you not just seeing where the line is between hard winter (permanent snow tex) and mild winter (no snow tex) as defined by the season.bgl file? Is there another season file at play here too. Orbx perhaps?

Ran simconnect.ini and got this at startup 0.00000 SimConnect version 10.0.61259.0 0.00493 Server: Scope=local, Protocol=Pipe, Name=\\.\pipe\Microsoft Flight Simulator\SimConnect, MaxClients=64 0.00823 Server: Scope=local, Protocol=IPv6, Address=::1, Port=50900, MaxClients=64 0.01028 Server: Scope=local, Protocol=IPv4, Address=127.0.0.1, Port=50901, MaxClients=64 Does all look in order?

HI All I am trying to overcome what I think is an access issue with Simconnect. I am on windows 10, updated from win7. FSX acceleration. The trouble seems to have effected a couple of planes more complex systems, but I focus on captainsim 737. They pointed me towards a reinstaller for simconnect to get the vc working. I think they are correct it is simconnect issue and nothing to do with their model as such. Ran installer, no joy. I then changed ownership of FSX and the simconnect folders in winsxs and joy. It worked. However after restarting fsx it stops working again. More basic functions found on default aircraft like the nav/gps switch work, but nothing fancy that requires simconnect will function. Tried to recreate my steps of taking control, but it makes no difference this time. Any ideas about getting what I did once to work again and stick this time?

DO you guys see a message about the data base loading when you call up the aircraft in the free flight screen? I see nothing but I have read about people getting stuck on a percent loading figure. The spinning model jerks for a bit after loading, so I let that settle down, then strt the flight and left it sitting on the runway for about half an hour. Have contacted support. Trying this on my laptop which runs PMDG aircraft and others just fine, so spec should not be an issue. Will try it on the PC later I think.

Nope, sparkly clean install of boxed FSX with Acceleration. Win7. Have tried running installs and FSX as administrator but still no FMS. It all seems to be in correct folders with items listed in dll.xml Shame. Like the look and feel but now it just annoys me.

HI All The FMS screen is stuck on loading data base. I have updated the database to navigraph ltest cycle and tried re-installing. Avionics are on. Everything else is working. I use FSX acceleration boxed edition Any thoughts.