Jim Robinson

Appreciate the comments guys! :smile:

I just liked the way this one came out. ReShade MasterEffect "Realistic Lighting" with some modification, PTA atmospheric scattering only (alternate version, slider 3.0), I think the sky textures were from HDE v1. Took this a while back, still running v3.2 at that point.

The C90 GTX mod will probably work without modification, lol.

My understanding is it's not LM that stands in the way of a gmax gamepack, Autodesk simply won't allow it. If you have the FSX MS gamepack though and you can export an FSX-native .mdl from gmax, MCX can add the z-bias material setting and export a compliant z-bias GP using the P3D SDK-supplied compilers. Jim

You're welcome Josh, glad it worked. Have fun with your training! :smile:

I'd try the Flight1 registry repair tool, run it, navigate to your FSX SE installation and show it where fsx.exe is located. It should make a dummy FSX MS reg key pointing to your FSX SE installation. That should bluff the Carenado installer into installing in FSX SE.

Three words Sam, "Non-Disclosure Agreement". Likewise I appreciate you taking the time to read what I had to say. :smile:

Not sure if you're implying I'm opposed to or reluctant to use the new z-bias GP tech, if so that is not the case. Let's put things into perspective though, the problem is the z-bias tech simply didn't work and we all had that figured out a month after v2.0 went public. Only in this very latest v3.3 release has it even become somewhat viable because up until last Wednesday shadows didn't work on z-bias GPs, remember the post on Orbx about KSQL's P3D-native GP being "fixed" by the v3.3 patch? We haven't "had 3 years to get onboard" with z-bias GPs, we've had a week and one day and it's still not up to speed with what we had in an FS2002 GP. I understand LM is looking into the shortcomings and that's wonderful. You will see devs flock to this new tech in droves now because of the bump/spec/detail/precip opportunities that weren't possible in FS2002 style GPs. This notion the community seems to have about devs being lazy or reluctant to use the new tech because they can't use the same GP in FSX and P3D is complete nonsense, there isn't a dev on the planet that doesn't wanna do something cool with the bump/spec and it's really not that big a deal to export a GP for each sim once you've built the model, it's just that it hasn't worked up until a week ago. That said I think we're about to see some of the most amazing groundpolys that have ever been seen in a flight simulator. Jim

OK, I'm asking at this point that some kind of seasonal provisions for P3D-native ground polys be considered because as it stands LM hasn't provided a completely suitable alternative to the "evil FS2002 groundpoly". Even if some kind of naming convention controlled the swap of multiple .bgls as "wi" or "fa" loads season-specific LC textures, whatever it takes. Moving forward I guess it'd be acceptable to build GPs consisting of asphalt & concrete only, where a seasonal change (or lack thereof) wouldn't be hugely noticeable, that's actually a hell of a lot easier, but that doesn't help much when you built the problem GP 3 years ago before z-bias was a gleam in any developer's eye using "current tech" (2cm as per Russ White!) and spent a couple months building custom seasonal textures. Fine by me if this airport dies right along with FSX, I haven't received a penny off it since 2014, I couldn't care less and it's not technically my problem, it's Orbx's problem, but since I'm the one with the source files and the txt file that tells me which material should be assigned to which layer and which material should be transparent or not (there are 280 materials!) I speculate I'm pretty much the only human on the planet capable of pulling this off and that's why I'm doing it. Lastly, I was on the LM beta team at one time via Wes Bard but suddenly the "solution developer's" forum went dead and was eventually locked. Obviously the betas are being conducted in a forum I don't have permissions for now.

Indeed KSQL's GP seems to work well. Guess I just needed some reassurance it could in fact be done. Looks like the trick might be using negative values for z-bias. Well that's a finger pointing in the right direction anyway I hope, lol. I also noticed that some of the old, old style Orbx lights with the attached effects (think FTXLights_Day.exe, FTXLights_Night.exe era, lol) are suppressing autogen in v3.3. These are placed as autogen library objects, that method was obsoleted when the FTXG lights replaced them and they've apparently been removed from the default.xml now. One of these old style lights placed in the autogen wipes out an entire autogen cell in v3.3, I don't know if that's because of the attached .fx nature of the models or the fact that they're now missing from the default.xml but they do cut a nice 1.2 km swath in the autogen :smile: I deleted them all from the ,agn and everything came back. They just need to be replaced with FTXG lights - 2 years ago.

Thank you Jim, I happen to have that scenery but wasn't aware the GP used the new tech. Trying to fix a problem FS2002 GP in v3.3 that I built myself a few years back, have had no luck whatsoever with the new z-bias technique in about 24 hrs of fighting with it, the airplane always ends up submerged in the GP, lol. I'll install KSQL and check it out. Thank you Jim, I happen to have that scenery but wasn't aware the GP used the new tech. Trying to fix a problem FS2002 GP in v3.3 that I built myself a few years back, have had no luck whatsoever with the new z-bias technique in about 24 hrs of fighting with it, the airplane always ends up submerged in the GP, lol. I'll install KSQL and check it out.

Can someone name a commercial scenery available now that uses the new z-bias technique for it's groundpoly? I don't want to hear fifteen "my GP doesn't flicker, therefore my developer is on the bandwagon" replies from people that don't know where the GP .bgl is located, I want to hear from someone that has successfully built or can positively identify a GP in a commercial scenery compiled with the P3D SDK using the z-bias method for layer separation. I'd like to purchase the scenery and take a look please. Thanks

Wow that's amazing Rich, beautiful shot!

Pop each one open in it's own tab and then switch back & forth between the tabs. I'm not hugely into some of the drastic changes you can make with all these shader tweaks, HDR, post-processing, etc. so my intent was never to demonstrate the extremes of their capabilities, the difference is rather subtle.

Sethos thanks for the reply and information. Yes the V key is the default screenshot key in both FSX and P3D, it saves a .bmp in %userprofile%\Pictures\Flight Simulator X Files or %userprofile%\Pictures\Prepar3D v3 Files respectively. I found a bunch of .pngs in the root P3D folder, the ReShade Assistant put a symbolic link there so I guess that's why it's outputting the screenshots there. I followed your suggestion and googled the key bindings, now have that tied to the V key and unset the key in P3D's key assignments. An added bonus is that the .pngs are about half the size of the former .bmps so I don't need to clean out my screenshots folder so often! For posterity here are the necessary steps: -In the ReShade folder find ReShade.fx and open it with Notepad -Add these two lines anywhere in the file, save #pragma reshade screenshot_location "C:\\Users\\Jim\\Pictures\\Prepar3D v3 Files" #pragma reshade screenshot_key 86 You'll need to substitute your own screenshot folder for "C:\\Users\\Jim\\Pictures\\Prepar3D v3 Files" but you must either escape the backslashes in the path by doubling them up (\\) as shown above or you can also replace them all with forward slashes (/). Make sure to keep the quotes in place if there are any spaces in the path string. I chose to output the screenshots into the same folder P3D always puts them in because that's where I'm used to having them, you can put them wherever you want. "screenshot_key 86" is the "V" key. To unset the key assignment in P3D go into Options > Settings, click Controls on the left and then click the Buttons & Keys tab. Under Event Category select Simulator Events then click on Capture Screenshot in the pane below and finally click the Delete Assignment button below. Now when you press the V key in sim ReShade will store the screenshot as a .png with the full ReShade effect visible and P3D will no longer output the .bmp. I found in FSX/DX10 that the V key does in fact capture the ReShade effect so no further action is necessary to use ReShade in FSX. ReShade off: ReShade on: ReShade off: ReShade on: Here are a couple attempting to show P3D Tweak Assistant's atmospheric scattering effect. I need to play with the options a lot more, currently I'm using only the atmospheric scattering and I've got the "General Shadows Intensity" bumped up just slightly. To me the blue haze on the mountains makes a big difference, the sim now looks much more like what you see in YouTube videos from the real world. Much happier with my screenshots now, thanks! Jim

I just started using ReShade (in P3D v3.2) so maybe I'm a little late to the party, I guess since it's a post-process injection a person shouldn't expect to capture it with the V key? You know, I have a whole folder full of screens I've snapped since I installed ReShade/MasterEffect but in flipping through them this morning trying to sort out the good ones it just became apparent that they all suck and completely lack the pizazz they had at the moment I pressed the V key. I tried a couple comparisons with reshade on/off using the V key and sure enough, they're exactly the same - no reshade. I also tried a couple comparisons using just the PrtScn key and it's an entirely different story, PrtScn seems to capture the reshade effect just fine. Has this been the experience of others using ReShade? I'm guessing so? Dangit, I had a cool nostalgic surprise all cooked up for you guys but I guess I'm gonna have to do the flight again, the v key screens I got look terrible because I have everything else (HDR, PTA) set up to look good with ReShade on and it looks horrible without it! Well, that sucks, I guess FSScreen gets pressed back into service but from my experience that rules out FSX/DX10 w/reshade completely because you can't capture FSX/DX10 with the PrtScn key, all you get is black ... *sigh*

It's OLC which is OpenLC (landclass). FTX Global installs some OLC entries as does either OpenLC Europe and OpenLC AK/CAN. You should put the blue OLC one just above Edwards_AFB and the orange FTX one just above that. All your other airports should appear above them, that way they'll layer on top. If you have any mesh or another wide area landclass (ie Cloud9, FSGenesis, UTX LC etc) it should go between Edwards_AFB and OLC so your Orbx will layer on top of it, then you'll see Orbx within the coverage area and the other landclass everywhere else.

I'm not sure Scott, I merely haven't tried RSP because it doesn't work with v3.1 and I haven't updated yet. Here's the P3D Tweak Assistant thread with the download links and stuff: http://www.avsim.com/topic/489018-prepar3d-tweak-assistant-pta/ I'm currently only using the atmospheric scattering effect, I loaded a PTA preset and didn't really like it so I went back to default and at this point just trying one tweak at a time so I can see what they do. Here's a shot with HDE v1 sky textures, my ReShade Master Effect realistic lighting (tweaked), the sim's HDR on, and PTA with only the atmospheric scattering. I'm using the vignette in MasterEffect and I have the radius too large and maybe a little dark in this shot, still working on that. Somewhere near Page, AZ:

MasterEffect.h Just got it working myself thanks to your suggestion Scott, loving it! I'm currently liking the "Realistic Lighting" preset but with some options turned off in MasterEffect.h. Been experimenting with the P3D Tweak Assitant rather than RSP though because I'm still on v3.1 and PTA has a special version for v3.1. Too early to tell... :smile: Jim

The PC-12 has a bright white VC light so I replaced the VC light in the CJ2 with the one from the PC-12 and also added a couple more down lower where they light up the panel better. If you have the PC-12 installed you can replace the [Lights] section with this: [lights] light.0 = 10, 12.50, 0.00, 3.00, fx_vclightcarpcd light.1 = 10, 14.0, -1.60, 1.50, fx_vclightcarpcd light.2 = 10, 14.0, 1.60, 1.50, fx_vclightcarpcd If you don't have the PC-12 you can replace fx_vclightcarpcd with fx_vclight which is a default effect and also fairly bright. This is the light you turn on by clicking the blue lens above you near the cabin curtain. Jim

That happens when you run the throttle full open and with the mods I think you'll find you're exceeding the limit on ITT using full power at altitude. Once you pass through about 18,000' ITT becomes your limiting factor, if you power back to keep ITT around 760° or so the throttle will work normally when it's time to reduce power for the descent. Same thing happens on the C90 GTX if you run it firewalled for a while, not sure what causes it as I'm pretty sure throttles don't "stick" in the real world if you run 'em firewalled, lol. Jim

Well the formatting wasn't exactly coming out like I expected so I just slapped the code tags around it, all the while wondering how you managed to pull it off, lol. Also, I just happen to have the T. Duke too so consider those reference charts stolen! Very nice and thanks!

You're welcome Bjoern. :smile: Good idea on the chart Frank, I just made one for the C90 GTX. Cabin 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 -------- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Aircraft 11.4 12.7 14.1 15.5 17.1 18.7 20.2 21.7 23.4 25.0 26.9 Note the cabin altitude selector maxes out at 10,057' which just barely allows you to cruise at FL270 under most atmospheric conditions, lol. Jim

There's a dial on the console where you set the cabin altitude before takeoff. Click/drag or roll your mousewheel on the right knob to adjust. The airplane loads in the sim with that dial set to sea level (8' actually). The fuselage can structurally withstand 5 PSI differential pressure so if you leave the cabin altitude at sea level that pressure will be reached at about 13,000' and the light will come on to tell you the pressurization system isn't capable of maintaining the target cabin altitude. (the outflow valve is dumping air to keep the fuselage from exploding although this is not modeled) IIRC: cabin altitude of 8' - light comes on at about 13,000' cabin altitude of 8000' - light comes on at about 23,000' cabin altitude of 10050' (max) - light comes on at about 27,000' Jim

I'm about 500nm SSW in the Idaho panhandle and it's fairly green here yet but drying out much earlier than normal. I've lived on this piece of land 26 years and up until 2014 the frost has always left the ground (the mud dries up) completely on Apr 15th give or take a day or two. In 2014 the frost went out on Apr 1st, in 2015 the frost was out by the 3rd week of Mar, this year everything was dried up by Mar 8th or 5 full weeks earlier than what I observed to be normal over a 23 year period. I'm actually loving it because I hate everything about winter, but the drastic change over the last 3 years is a little alarming. I got a light shower this morning which helps somewhat but we need about 6" of rain before July or I fear the entire area will go Okanogan. My sincere condolences to those who have lost their homes and best wishes for those that have been evacuated and probably don't even know whether they'll have homes to return to. I wish I could forfeit my wet morning here in Idaho somehow and send the moisture up to the folks in Fort McMurray.