TLight

Hello guys, sorry haven't been around these parts in a while. I've no intentions of revisiting this, especially as they seem to have told Orbx the skies are deliberate. I get the feeling someone saw Top Gun (massively over the top photo filters) and thought it looked 'cool'. I did have a quick flight in the Diamond when it was released, just can't deal with those skies, I haven't touched it since. Still looking forward to their main sim, although, if I see a hint of purple it will be staying on the Steam shelf.

bthiago - :smile: Dovetail have a major expo coming up soon and they said they have a couple of updates due. I might be adding 1+1 and getting 3 but I'm keeping my fingers crossed they have a graphics update for the big show. :smile:

A tad vivid?

Alright, had another look at dawn / dusk I wrote a routine that would take the first image in any group (sky_predawn1_0, sky_predawn2_0.bmp etc) and copy and rename it 9 times each. While this isn't how it should be done (there are variations within each group I think for altitude?) it served its purpose. By modifying only the first image in each set and letting the program handle the renaming, it went quite a bit faster. You can get rid of the yellow sunrise / sunset graphics. I thought at one point that 'sunglow.bmp' might have been the reason for the purple overtones across the sky, sadly it isn't solely responsible. At present I'm thinking they could change all of this in short order and I'll be wasting my time. I think I'm probably going to leave it at this stage. If Dovetail don't improve the graphics then maybe return to it at a later date.

Heimi - The closer you get to the equator, the brighter the sim lighting gets. It's even worse if you modify the sky graphics. On the scenery front, I went to Bermuda the other day, not what I was expecting. I suppose Orbx didn't cover the globe equally. scotchegg - Thank you Sir. I had a quick experiment with dawn and dusk but dropped it due the sims night override. I'll give it another look tomorrow, see exactly what kind of effects can be achieved. The night as a whole is a bit damaged. HDR aliasing is all over the place, the sky and ground are generally ultra black, no shades allowed and if you zoom in on the street light the graphics all look posterised. I get the feeling this part wasn't complete on release. Just my opinion though. scotchegg - Easy :smile: In the main directory there's a 'suneffect.cfg'. Just change the 'SunSize=' to what ever you fancy. I changed it to 2072 to make it the same size as the moon. I suspect the other graphics in there could be scaled up too. :smile:

RavSS - There were some pictures shown on the Flight School Facebook page a while ago. They included basics of lift, explanation of ATC etc. They were professionally made and they seem to have vanished (unless they're in an instruction manual I haven't read). I did suspect they were going to be part of the lessons, maybe they ran out of time? Edit - Just read the manual, those graphics aren't in there. There is quite a lot of info about controlling the sim though, nicely done.

Posted a couple of Alp shots for you in the sky graphic mod thread. The mod seems to handle snow a little better than default, although it will still overexpose the sky if you look at the ground and expose correctly if you look at the sky (same way a camera would).

Couple from the Alps for MadDog...

Fighting a losing battle guys. It seems there are three areas that affect sky colour. 1) The sky colour graphics [textures - pre dawn, dawn, morning, noon etc] 2) The HLSL code 3) Core code? Sky colours from graphics are a relatively easy fix but they only affect daylight. They have little to no effect on the weird dawn dusk yellow, the purple tints or the pitch black night. They also don't affect nearby clouds which always appear a dark brown. The HLSL contributes a lot. It can change sky tones for brighter clouds etc without needing to change the sky graphics. Weirdly though, it also doesn't seem to affect the close up brown pop in clouds. The biggest problem seems to be in the core code. I'm guessing 'core code' as I haven't found anything else (as yet) that can do what it does (see the problem list in the first post). I suppose we'll have to wait and see whether Dovetail change the code to allow the sim's look to be altered purely by the sky graphics and the HLSL which I suspect is the way forward. For the main Flight Sim it will have to change or they'll be cutting out companies such as REX, but, I'm also hoping these changes may be incorporated for Flight School. We'll see. Brent. Edit - I'll leave you with four more pics, this time of Chile. Note the ground is lighter than the sky as the ground is covered in snow - valid. :smile:

To tutmeister and MadDog. Where are you guys flying from? I was experimenting a little more with the sky graphic images last night and noticed the closer you get to the equator the brighter it got. Intensely bright. Lighting that looks really nice in Britain and Chili looked shockingly bad in Bermuda. Flying from Miami seemed to break the sim and give yellow waterways, lime green sea and a bizarre grey sky. Appreciate this is my sky graphics at play but it does suggest the Flight School engine changes the lighting towards the equator.

bonchie - In X-Plane that would be increasing the number of trees, objects, roads and vehicles, Same thing for FSX.

Not that this adds much to the debate but I'm getting much smoother frame rates with much greater detail in Flight School than I can achieve in 32bit FSX or 64bit x-plane. FSX, running with ASN, Soft Clouds, REX 3+ textures and Orbx England. It's still runs smooth but if increase the geometry to anything like Flight School levels it will choke. X-Plane running X-Aviation clouds and custom photo scenery (runs faster than default) aslo runs smooth, but again, if I kick the geometry up to Flight School levels it's terrible. Right now, Flight School's winning.

Thanks for the comments guys, I'm going to look into the night / dawn / dusk textures this weekend, we'll see how that works out. MadDog - It's in their user license, it says you can make modifications, so long as they give the ok and you don't use their name (ie, approved by etc). Martin said it was the same as their train sim license, so fingers crossed they haven't changed it. :smile: Here some shots over London at various altitudes...

I don't mind the bloom, a lot of the blown out clouds are an HDR effect. With the sky colours above, looking at the clouds from different angles gives different effects, the same way it would with auto exposure on a camera. It makes the sky and scenery feel alive. I like it. rtodepart - You're welcome :smile:

Murmur - Froogle was flying with the realism sliders all the way to the left. I've just tried it with my default of everything to the right and it pulls up straight away. I've never flown a real cub, but there's nothing in the flight model that seems 'stand out wrong' to me, it flies fine. :smile: