kmax59

I've discovered another issue about groups in groups: When a group is assigned to 2 different group, enabling the 2 master group will result it getting the lower group disabled: for example if "group A" is assigned to "MASTER group 1" and also to "MASTER GROUP 2", enabling "MASTER GROUP 1" will enable "group A", but enabling "MASTER GROUP 2" will then disable "group A" as it will just change its status instead of making sur it is enabled. Cheers, Maxime

Hi Oliver, First of all, thanks a lot for the latest addition to the group feature. After using it a bit, I've discovered three issues: Deleting a group sometimes deletes another group, this seems random, I cannot find a logic to it as sometimes it works correctly If you change the name of the "group B" which is inside another "group A", activating the "group A" will triger an unhandled exception as the name of the "group B" name wasn't updated in the assignments of "group A" Restoring a backup doesn't bring back the groups (I'm not sure it is supposed to) As for my previous request, it would still be convenient to be able to disable a single scenery entry from the group page. As you said you didn't completely understand the point of such a feature, I'll try to provide a good example: Imagine you have a group named "USA California" and inside it you have a scenery for all these airports, which are pretty close in a very dense and fps intense area: KLAX KLGB KHHR KSMO KFUL KTOA KBUR FTX South California About 20 other sceneries around california Imagine today you want to fly between KLAX and KBUR, but you don't want to get all californian sceneries enabled because so much sceneries in the LAX area will completely destroy my fps, and the P3D loading time will be quite longer. You'd like to enable only KLAX, KBUR and FTX SCA, at the moment you have only 2 solutions: Searching for these 2 sceneries in the "Scenery" page but it's not really easy with a lot of sceneries installed, or you can enable the group "USA - California" then disable all the airports you don't want one by one, but the "problem" is the same as the first solution. You could possibly create a specific group excluding all the sceneries you don't want for this flight, but it wouldn't have any point as tomorrow you may fly between KLAX and KFUL and never fly again between KLAX and KBUR. Being able to enable/disable a single entry in a group would allow to find the scenery easily, as I know KLAX and KBUR are in California, you'd just have to scroll down to this group and enable the sceneries. Of course I don't want to sound insisting, your tool is absolutely fantastic and allows us to save a lot of time in scenery management, but this would save even more time if this could be possible. Hope the reason of my request is now clearer :)

Thanks a lot @Lorby_SI ! I just gave it a try and that's a very nice addition, I think I'm finally going to try using it completely and drop SCE. About the first request, I think it would be useful if you manage your group by country. This is what I do, and in one single country, there are sometimes a lot, I mean A LOT of sceneries and I don't always want to activate all of them in order to reduce loading times and microstutters, being able to enable a complete group and then unselect a few things inside the same group seems convenient to me. That said, I understand the matter you exposed, if you ever find a nice way to do it, it could be a great addition, and if not, that's already a great tool, especially with the feature you just added :) Best regards

Hello ! I'm using Addon organizer and really like it, that said I'm still using scenery config editor alongide P4AO for its group management which is still better in my opinion. Of course, I know this tool is freeware and is already a very nice and powerful one, but I think a few things could be enhanced on the group management: It would be great to be able to enable/disable some entries inside a group, without enabling/disabling all of the sceneries of the group. In the group page, being able to see which scenery entry is not assigned to any group would be very useful to build groups and/or update them, the current view is also good if you want to add a scenery in several group so it would be great to have both options (All sceneries not in this groups / All sceneries not assigned to any group). If this is ever done, I think you'd have the perfect tool to organize the sceneries. Thanks for reading and for the great freewares :-) Best regards,

Hello ! While this can sound as a really good idea at first, I actually think it's not: If this is tracking what files are installed by each addon and where, it will simply help all pirates to create RIP files of almost all addons out there. Some developers have their own methods to do the same thing, and they don't share their methods with their competitor. Your tool will also help every developer to copy other's work very easily. This would break a lot of developer's EULA and just like Simbol I don't want to see anything about TOGA referenced in such a tracking software. Sorry.

Hello @Andrew_L, I just saw your issue so I'm taking the liberty to answer here. About your issue, this cannot be created by our textures, this has much likely something to do with shaders without a doubt, do you use PTA or Envshade?

Hello guys, I see a lot of questions about how it could be dynamic. Well, I'll try to explain this as simply as possible : P3D shaders are basically mathematic formulas. Imagine a formula like this (it is a random example of course) y = (2*x + 5*u - i^2) * j In this formula: "y" could be the sky saturation, "x" could be the time of day, "u" could be the altitude, "i" could be the precipitation level, "j" could be the visibility, As you understood, all of the variables (x, u, i, j) always change in real time, allowing y to change depending on all of them. This is why you don't need to let Envdir opened when flying in P3D, the shaders themselves are doing the job. The hard part is to find all the values, to find the right variables to use etc etc. This is basically how Envshade is working. There is already some dynamic things in the default shaders, but Envshade pushed this much much more. Hope it's clear for you all, I think it's the best way to explain this :) PS @J van E: FXAA has all to do with shaders ! It's a post-process effect !

No I didn't say it was your fault. As per the 5 max activation this is a simmarket pre-requisite, this is not something we actually decided, but we decided to work with them and we also have to apply some of their rules, as they also have to adapt to work with us. About the code and the simmarket installer, well, it accepts the code even if the first 21 capital letters followed by a "-" are not included (this is actually your serial), this works when it comes to sceneries, but when an avanced interface like ours is checking the license, then it doesn't work if the license is not complete. Please send me your license file, I will take a look at it, it won't cost you anything and may solve you issue. I'd like to tell you this is an issue and we're going to solve it but I can assure we don't receive any support request about that other than wrong licenses, I'm not saying this to say I'm right and you're wrong, absolutely not, it's just that this is the most probable reason. I understand and recognize some points of this release wasn't clear enough, we also faced a few issues and unfortunately some of you are less lucky than others, again we cannot expect all the possible bugs with only 10 computers, but we couldn't have 100 beta testers. Looking forward to your license to help you :)

Hi Lenny, There is no more issue on Envshade activation (which by the way was actually not caused by us but anyways, it doesn't matter). If you still can't get Envshade activated it's much much probably because of an incomplete authorization code. I still don't understand why many users don't paste their full code in the simmarket installer (the first 21 capital letters) but it happen to many people so I don't blame you, there's something that may be unclear. We will add the possibility to change your license by yourself in the future updates, waiting for this feature please take a look at our FAQ explaining how to solve this, or simply send us by mail your license file and your order ID, we will correct it for you and you will be good to go. About the discount, I agree it's not a lot, but we couldn't make a 50% discount on such a low priced product. We didn't decided it was too complicated, simmarket said it was and asked if we would agree to apply the discount to everyone because it's complicated for them, and I can understand so we agreed. Sorry if this launch bring you some frustration, as also being a flight simmer and not only a developer, I know how frustrating it is not being able to use the product you just bought, but you probably all know that issues often appears during an initial launch. We're doing our best to remove all the bugs before the release with our beta team but 10 users are nothing comparable to hundreds or thousands of users. Issues are almost inevitable during a release, believe me we're doing our best to solve all of the issues. We also discovered a random issue with registry keys for windows 7 and windows 8 users that may cause an app crash during the splash screen, this will be solved in a few hours. About the fact that Envtex is not integrated, well, we initially wanted to release both of the product for Envdir the same day. But after thinking about it we realized it was not a good idea at all, why? Because as I said above, bugs are inevitable during a release, releasing both products the same day would have multiplied the chances of issues by twice. The support request would also have been multiplied by twice and it would have been even harder for us to isolate the issues. As I'm providing support alone now and as we're only 2 developers in the team, it wouldn't have been serious to release both of them the same day and it would have possibly created even more frustration. However I admit we made a mistake not to be clear enough about the fact Envtex was not supposed to be integrated yet, as well as the user manual may not be clear enough. No problem I totally understand and we will do what's needed to correct our errors. Hopefully I've been able to provide a pretty good support during these last 24 hours, but I really felt the need to have someone else in this task as Envshade seemed to be a very awaited product. I hope you understand our point as we understand yours, but please be sure we are currently working very hard to solve everything as soon as possible. Once all of the important issues (i.e those preventing you to use the product) will be solved, we will create the Envtex 1.1.1 package and send it to simmarket so you'll be able to enjoy both of them from Envdir during the week-end. Considering the amount of work I have to complete until this week-end I'm not able to answer everyone here, but please feel free to come on our forum and give us your opinion on what we failed to do correctly, on what you'd like to see improved or anything else. Any constructive feedback is always welcome, we're still a very yound development team and we still have a lot to learn. Thank you all :)

Hello guys, Please note that Envtex is NOT yet ready for Envdir, we're going to release an update before the end of this week, then you'll be able to use Envtex using Envdir. For now please keep using Envtex from its own standalone interface. Sorry for the confusion, we should have made this clearer.

Hi again guys, Envdir 1.1.1.1 is now live, you can download it from our website, any activation or install issue due to the simmarket installer or our interface should be solved now. You can download it from here Enjoy! Wonderful screenshot !

Hello guys, Sorry if I'm not answering to you all as I'm crazyly busy right now, but I'd just like to inform you that we will be pushing a small patch for Envdir in a few minutes (about 15~20 minutes). This will solve a few minor UI issues and also a weird registry key issue that is actually caused by the simmarket installer, we found a temporary way to make sure the reg key is correctly detected even if it's not in the right place. You'll just have to redownload Envdir from our website and the installer should show 1.1.1.1. New users won't have to do anything, the simmarket installer automatically download the last version ;)

Hi Sean, What setting did you choose in Envtex's "ASCA integration"? If you use ASCA + Envtex, just set it to Envtex textures only and leave all your ASCA settings as they are. The issue could be linked by the fact that some Envtex and ASCA sky textures are completely different, while if you force ASCA to use only Envtex sky textures, they will fit much better together. Hope this will help :)

Hello guys, Just a quick update for you all. The fact that PTAbsolute standalone is not in the website anymore is simply because the last version was not compatible with P3D v4.1 and was not supposed to be updated because of the upcoming Envshade release. PTAsbolute and URP were both done by the same community member and PTAbsolute was distributed by TOGA projects, nothing more than that, it was an agreement between him and us to distribute it only from our website. The guy made a mistake by including Lockheed shaders and we didn't realize this, however I'm sure this is an honest mistake from him and he probably didn't think about it because yes sometimes it's hard to think about everything when you develop something. This will not be reproduced in Envshade as this was developped internally by our team. Also, Envshade is not a PTA preset, we've done everything manually from scratch and that's how things were solved yesterday when the other developer realized we didn't make anything wrong. I regret how the things turned out yesterday but I was trying to solve this for days and am really tired of this story not to say disgusted, informing everyone was necessary. Now I'm glad everything is solved with the other developer, I already forgot all of this story and I wish all the best to PTA and all of his other projects. We need all of the people involved in development in our community, not fighters. Envshade will be released as it was supposed to be and we don't brake any EULA. As it was said several times by users as well as us, Envshade is aimed for any users who don't want to customize anything and just enjoy, if you love tweaking and adjusting things by yourselves, then PTA is for you. Both have a whole different philosophy, it's for you to decide which one your prefer, and you are also free to use both depending on the day if you want to. Hope this finally clears things up.

Uhmmm, there was a misunderstanding here. No, my signature was actually pointing to another product which is about textures and special effects. The one that may accomplish similar things to PTA is not even released yet, and I didn't tell anything about it here. Anyways, I think I should stop here, I just wanted to tell that it's useless to put some discret attacks and subtexting.

You're not wrong about my signature Matt, as you said it's totally different from PTA, but I'll remove it from my signature to prevent such thing to happen ;) Thanks for pointing this out, I must agree. I think it was far too big anyways. On the other side, I wasn't rude but just reacted to something that begans directly and agressively in our own support groups.

This was sub-texting, everyone now is wondering what you're talking about, as well as all of your other subtexting posts here and there. I'm probably not a genius, but I understand the game you try to play around our product. However, you are welcome to advertise PTA on our forum when you want to. Our product will probably not be aimed to the same users, and as you already know we support PTA from the beginning with the PTAbsolute presets and we will keep doing so even with our new product, not to please you of course but because we care about all the users, not only our customers. So you will find a lot about PTA on our forum, and nothing of it will be deleted just because of the release. About PTAbsolute Standalone, it was developped by someone external to our team and you know that, and mainly it was developed BEFORE you released PTA for P3Dv4, thus I wonder how we could have used it to create our standalone version. Nor you or PTA invented shaders tweaks, this exists since FSX and for a long time in other games, meaning we don't absolutely need PTA to tweak shader files, PTA is great but not completely indispensable, like all the other enhancement products, they just make life easier. Cheers

I already said that on facebook but I'd like to say again a huge thank you for your great work Thorsten ! The biggest part of the community surely is grateful for all what you did. There is no need to put some subtexting here Matt, if you want to say something about this then say it, if you don't want to then say nothing. There is nothing more than drama that you seem to happily try to spread. Your twitter post subtexts won't help anyone either. You have the gall to say I'm slating at you on social networks and forums while I said absolutely nothing wrong about you and you don't stop subtexting about your drama, and now you're putting the name of TOGA projects in your subtexts. Be careful the next step is denigration, and this we will not accept.

My apologies if I was wrong about the original finder. Your first PTA post was a bit confusing though ^^ I'm sure with a bit of learning Predrag could create tweaks too however, I came from nowhere a few months ago and now am about to release Envshade. It looks more like advanced mathematics and logic to me than pure code like c# or these kind of languages that I don't really understand.

Thank you very much guys for your kind comments and your support ! :) really appreciate it. If some of our tweaks were used without any credits, as I said, anyone who knows how can do it, and as nobody but LM own these shaders, there is nothing we can do, we can only try to protect our work. Well, wasn't PTA created to manually change the values of Predrag's discovered tweaks that were part of Realism shader pack? Doesn't smell especially funny, that's not what was said for the initial PTA release, and you know like me that most of the tweaks are just default values adjusted. Of course shaders changed since that time, but their equivalent are still there, and it's still what we are playing with. Anyone who wants to and has the knowledge can do this with a simple text editor and you know that too. Let's don't start a fight here, PTA is a masterpiece, but there must be something for those who prefer when things are simple.

Hello guys, Thank you very much for your interest in Envshade ! I'm sorry to read that some of you doubt of our honesty about the "dynamic" shaders. We wouldn't announce that if it was not the case. To clear up things, yes Envshade will be similar to PTA, simply because it's also there to tweak your shaders, however, if similar tweaks are included, we also have some tweaks that PTA doesn't have, or at least it does it differently. I don't really consider it as a real PTA competitor because it also have a fully different philosophy, if you like "click & use" products, then this is definitely for you, if you prefer to customize everything by yourself then you should look at PTA. About hiding our code, yes this is also the purpose of this product, and this is why I added this comment on our facebook page because someone (a troll probably) suggested we were not right to sell our products, why would we be less rightful to sell our work than other developers? There is nothing we want to hide to the community, all developers do their best to hide their work to other's eyes, that's part of any business. This doesn't mean we are not opened to work with other developers and that we will take your money by selling you something you already have. Envtex was created because I felt, myself as a simmer, that the other offers on the market were not fully giving satisfaction. I had the same thoughts about PTA, some users simply don't want to tweak everything themselves and/or download tons of preset to find the good one. Envshade started by PTAbsolute, during this summer we worked at creating an advanced preset for PTA, at this stage we started to think about an alternative to PTA, considering how advanced was our preset and what happened with some preset creators and REX (but I'd like to insist it was not their fault and things were solved during gentlemen's discussion). In a nutshell, someone created a preset using our work which included some custom tweaks developped from scratch without any credits, then REX asked them to use their preset and they accepted, making our work being used by our main competitor to promote their product. That's now solved and REX kindly added us to their credit files, we didn't feel fair to ask them to put this tweak out now that they were already using it. Shaders tweaks are practically not owned by Matt, me or anyone but Lockheed Martin. PTA or Envshade just plays with existing simulator variables, and if it was possible, only one guy could really own it : Predrag Drobac who has initiated shader tweaks with Realism shaders pack some months/years ago. The base tweaks used by PTA and Envshade are still the same (and don't worry Predrag knows that). Thus, considering how unrespectful some people can be and the consequences, we decided to keep working on a standalone product, we kept enhancing it and we now have something very advanced. As PTA doesn't offer any protection for us, preset creators. we don't think it's absolutely fair that other developers can freely use tweaks we made with hard work to make money with it or enhance their reputation using our own work and without a "thanks" (I am not a coder initially but a long-time texturer and a beginner in modeling, coding is absolutely new to me, fortunately we have a coder in the team who can help but still, developping Envshade was not easy). Is it completely different from PTA in the results? No there are many similarities, but you won't have to tweak anything, the compatibility with Envtex is optimal, transitions will be much smoother, many many things will adapt by themselves depending on environment variables that are available in shaders data as explained on the website. Envshade also required some user interface development which can be very costly, we thought it would be fair to sell our product with a low price in order to: Bring something new with a different philoshophy from PTA (which is an absolutely great program and I will keep encouraging Matt Davies to develop it, I am fully willing to work with his team if there is any point to do this) Bring very advanced tweaks adjustements and a few new tweaks Get the money from UI development back Better protect our adjustments & new tweaks Be sure we, at TOGA, will always be fair with the community and we will always be willing to tell you why we decide this or this, I'm a long-time FS user who is not only a developer but also a user who buy his products like everyone, and as a user I don't like to feel fooled either. Hope this answers correctly your questions and doubts, (Sorry for the looong post and possible spelling errors I wouldn't have seen)

Hi Simbol, Thank you for the kind words :) I'd be glad to work with you on this if we can reach better results using both our knowledge, I'll contact you shortly by private message here on avsim once I am less busy with Envshade !

Hi all, I see some of you are wondering if Envtex can be used in 4.1 so with a bit of delay here is our statement about it: http://togaprojects.proboards.com/thread/318/prepar3d-v4-1-envtex-envshade?page=1&scrollTo=1860 About Envtex 1.1.1, it should come at the same time as Envshade, which isn't far at all, however, in case it would be delayed for any reason, we will release the Envtex update before. @simbol I saw that you were talking about enhancing P3Dv4 precipitation effects, this needs some shaders rework and we already did that for the next version, however, if you have some other great ideas to enhance it further, why not to use both of our knowledge to push something even greater for the community? At TOGA we will always be opened to work with other teams one way or another, if you're interested, don't hesitate to contact me ;)

Hi guys ! I see you are a bit confused with the PTA integration feature, I must admit it can look unclear at first. Currently this PTA integration only allows to export our own PTA preset (called PTAbsolute) to your PTA folder so you can load them easily into PTA. That said, we are looking into a full integration with PTA, meaning that PTAbsolute should be installable directly from Envtex without launching PTA itself (but you will still need it). Also, ticking the "Use PTA" switch prevents the Envtex "shaders" feature to be enabled and prevents conflicts with PTA. About URP and other presets, I recommend being careful because despites of our requests to the famous presets creators, they are using some extreme values with some tweaks that are creating an incompatibility with Aurora effects, resulting in not seeing them during night and seeing them as a black wave during dawn dusk. That's why we really recommend to use PTAbsolute instead which is fully optimized and compatible with Envtex. We are going to provide a very important update to this preset in the next few days that will surely make it much more attractive than now thanks to tweaks which were never seen yet. Hope this will help you :)

Hi airernie, My message was posted on november, of course I saw Keven's answer since then, and I am already loving chaseplane, couldn't do without it actually !