KNOSSOS

Yes we are dealing with clouds shadows on terrain, not shading of clouds themselves. The values below 1.0 bring the artefacts and actually useless.

Only if you set the ambient light higher. When you make lit areas of terrain brighter by increasing Diffuse sunlight, the shadows become relatively deeper. When you decrease Ambient sunligth the shadows (unlit areas) become deeper. Increasing diffuse light together with decreasing ambient light make the constrast between lit and shadowed areas stronger. I tried to illustrate this relationship in Terrain lighting tweak images in PTA2. Regards,

I've tried Ben's recommendation twice - with my current driver 376.09 and the previouse one (don't remember the driver #). No changes at all. (i7 6700K@4.5GZ GTX1080OC, 16GB DDR4 3200, 4K res. monitor)

Not special tweak for this now. I know some adjustment that allows to lighten up clouds shadows separately. But it's impossible to make them darker. You can try this adjustment by using new custom tweak ablitity in PTA 2.0 beta. In Cloud.fx find the block return float2(1.0f-cColor.a,In.z); and replace it with return float2(1.05f-cColor.a,In.z); (or 1.06...1.1, but slighlty). Higher value means brighter shadow. I'll try to find universal solution for separate clouds shadows adjustment: it have been asked too often. And add in PTA as a built-in tweak if it possible. No, so many internal changes, it's no possilble, sorry. But you can use 1.62 and 2.0 at the same time for awhile - just to look at 1.62 parameters: Before start PTA2.0 in PTA1.62 use menu command "Restore original P3D shaders". When original shaders restored to sim, make install procedure of PTA2.0 - to allow the tool to find original shaders. After that you can start 1.62 anf 2.0 simultaneously to see at paramters. Hope it helps.

Many thanks Jeff! Enjoy!

In XP11 beta now not so comfortable as in XP10 or P3D. I can't say I could run it all maxed out at 4K. VC also takes so much FPS. Hope it's beta related troubles.

Yep, FPS looks very weird now. I think it is beta limitation and will be optimized in stable release. Look: almost empty lanscape and so high CPU utilization. And no full load of GPU and CPU (i7 6700K@4.5GZ GTX1080OC, 16GB DDR4 3200, 4K res. monitor) Also VC view is too gluttonous and get ~30-40% of FPS. I've sent to LR a bug report about it.

BTW, you can include these adjustments into your preset by cfg tweak in PTA:

Unfortunately, zero's trimming is now not possible due to ability to use expressions in parameters. Sorry for that.

Many thanks for your support captains!

Hello folks! PTA 2.0 (beta) uploaded to site. I'd appreciate any feedback you can provide regarding the beta version of tool. Send it please to trifonov.geo@gmail.com. How to install PTA 2.0: 1. The format of ini files used to store presets was changed in PTA 2.0. All presets from the previous version of tool are NOT compatible with version 2.0. Please reconfigure the required presets in the new utility in accordance with release notes and your PTA 1.X version presets. 2. It's highly recommended to install PTA 2.0 in a new directory separate from previous version of the tool. 3. Before installation please make sure that you have the original (no tweaked) shaders in Prepar3D. If you are already using PTA 1.X you can restore original shaders by menu command "Actions - Restore original P3D shaders". 4. When original shaders restored, unzip distribution archive in separate directory. At first start PTA 2.0 should automatically detect target P3D version, find proper P3D installation directory, shaders cache directory, and create backup of used in tweaks shaders to \SHADERS_BACKUP subdirectory in main PTA directory. Config files, used by tool, will backup to \CONFIG_BACKUP. Release notes: 1. New tweak "Clouds light scattering". 2. New tweak "Aircraft lighting". Old tweak "Aircraft brightness tuning" now is a part of new tweak. 3. New tweak "Autogen lighting". Old tweak "Adjust autogen ambient sunight" now is a part of new tweak. 4. Lighting tweaks for terrain was grouped into a new tweak "Terrain lighting". If you did not use all these tweak, just leave unused parameters with a default values. 5. New tweak "Autogen emissive lighting". 6. New tweak "Terrain saturation." 7. Old tweaks for luminosity of urban areas at night grouped into a new tweak "Urban areas lighting at night". If you did not use all these tweak, just leave unused parameters with a default values. 8. Rayleigh scattering effect now has the new option "Exclude clouds". When checked, effect will not apply to clouds. 9. New tweak "Sky fog tuning". 10. New tweak "Sky saturation". 11. New tweak "Specular lighting". 12. Reflection, refraction and granularity water tweaks was grouped into a single tweak "Water surface tuning". If you did not use all these tweak, just leave unused parameter with a default value. 13. Like in post-processing effects, all parameters of the shader's tweaks can use now not only simple values but various expressions with shader's variables. (Please see documentation for detail info.) 14. You can restore default (initial) parameters values for a single tweak. 15. In addition to the PTA built-in tweaks you can also use create your own tweaks. Use this feature if you have some manual corrections that need to be applied to the shader files. These edits will be applied immediately after built-in tweaks in order specified in the list. IMPORTANT! There is no error detection provided! To locate the errors in your code please activate an option "Content Error Logging" in General section of P3D settings. (Error message appears at sim exit). 16. The logic of preset saving was changed. The option "Autosave preset on exit" removed from the tool. Now you will be asked only if preset was modified. 17. New option that allows to receive a notification when the new version of tool released. (Update is checked once in 3 days). 18. User interface redesigned. Sliders removed but you can use mouse wheel (or Ctrl+mouse wheel) to change values. Some improvements and new skins. Kind regards,

Hi José PTA provides the ability to make some adjustments in shaders. You can use it alone. No touching of sim setup requred. URP provides the ready solution based on PTA tweaks (and demands PTA) and contains sky colors, tweaks and the other goodies. Thats why it's a good idea to use ready solution as a start point. Anyway using PTA you can make additional tuning of ready solution in accordance with the personal preference later. Regards,

Cloud shadows extended size (Clouds tab) slightly affects the size of shadows. The depth of the shadows has no separate adjustment. When you make lit areas of terrain brighter by increasing Diffuse sunlight on terrain (Lighting tab), the shadows become relatively deeper. When you decrease Ambient sunligth on terrain (Lighting tab) the shadows (unlit areas) become deeper. Increasing diffuse light together with decreasing ambient light make the constrast between lit and shadowed areas stronger.

P3D 3.4.9 here, the bug still presents.

Try another sky textures. Navid's freeware sky set is stunning and has no such problems. Just a suggestion.

Hi! Technically both tools can work together. But there are some most used post-effects from Reshade included in PTA (Sepia, Curves, Levels, LiftGammaGain, Technicolor, Vibrance, LumaSharpen, DPX Cineon). If you solution needs the other effects from Reshade, you can use PTA with Reshade, if not - just tune post-effects in PTA and get rid of Reshade. Regards,

Not necessary, shaders in 3.4.9 and 3.4.14 are the same.

I've made some tests, the current version works fine with 3.4.14.

You can determine the exact .Net version by using regedit (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh925568(v=vs.110).aspx) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full. See parameter Release. In Win10 AU it equals 394802 (decimal) That means it is .NET 4.6.2 (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb822049(v=vs.110).aspx) Regards, UPD. Oops.. Don't see post above while typing. :smile:

Yep, in this case post-effect just apply or not. I don't know. I suppose these caclulatons in core sim code, not shaders.

It does not depend on time directly. In post-processing code for DayNightUse parameter I use internal shader variable cb_mDayNightInterpolant. It used often in sim shaders code to determine lighting. cb_mDayNightInterpolant not tied to time hours as I understand it. Only to sun altitude that may differs for the same time depending on latitude.

Before version 1.5 PTA had cameras assigned post-processing. So if you used custom shaders in presets, you should first uninstall them from sim by menu command "Actions" - Uninstall custom shaders from sim. And after only that use 1.5. Regards,

Could you please e-mail me your preset trifonov.geo@gmail.com

Hi Are you using PTA? If yes what PTA version and what tweaks and post-processes active in preset? Are you seeng this issue with default aircraft?

Yes, morning and evening. Regards,