TLight
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Everything posted by TLight
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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).
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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:
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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:
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Had Flight School for a few days now and thought it was time to have a play with the sky colors that came with the sim (sky_noon_0 ~9.bmp) Fist off the bat, if anyone from Dovetail has a problem with this, I'll stop posting modifications. It's your software and I will respect your decision. The sky colors shown here aren't actually from Dovetail, I built them from scratch. The pictures are showing version 10 (it's a lengthy process). Everyone's views on these are likely to vary, some might think they're ok, some will want kill them with hammers. The main thing I wanted to achieve was to make the sky and clouds brighter than the distant ground. A bonus is the lighter sky adds more light into the ground which should please some people, you can also make out more tones in the trees. It's only when you start digging into this you appreciate how much work the guys at Dovetail have put in, it's clearly been a HUGE effort. Just changing the smallest details in the sky colors can have a massive effect on the look of the sim, both in the sky, the clouds, the scattering effect and even the ground. Trying to balance all this out for a consistent look has to be a nightmare (I've only done it for one time of day and it's only successful on a sky with very little cloud cover - see below). Hat's off to Dovetail There are a few problems that I can't solve, the fixes may be in Dovetails hands... 1) The purple look that can show in the sky, it's not created by the sky colors, something else is at play. 2) The white clouds will pop into dark brown clouds if you get too close. It seems to be the closest cloud batch, maybe within a few hundred meters. 3) Depending on the weather setting, the clouds can blend to brown off into the distance and destroy the effect. This also isn't affected by the sky graphics. 4) The high cirrus clouds are not affected by the sky graphics and often appear a darker grey. 5) Fog looks OK until you fly over it, then it goes bonkers. Without further ado... (*.cfg has been changed, LOD upped to 5.5, widescreen set to 1, that's it for visuals). EDIT - Pictures are flying over the English Lake District. EDIT 2 - I don't think I can release my graphics without the OK from Dovetail, I'll gladly do it, we just need their permission.
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Could the anti-aliasing issues be down to HDR? X-Plane for instance has an aliasing setting especially for HDR mode, normal aliasing just wont work. Effectively, normal aliasing works for standard 8 bit per channel output. Simply put, aliasing a bright pixel at 255 | [(255 / 2) = 128] will give a smooth surrounding pixel. If you try the same thing with an HDR pixel, say 1024 in brightness [(1024 / 2) = 512. Twice as bright as the output can display, so the user doesn't see any change, both pixels will be clamped to the maximum 255. Still jaggy. You can even see this in high end rendering applications (used for movie effects etc). If HDR is in use, a special HDR aliasing needs to be adopted.
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The UNINSTALLER - That would be nice to see in the full sim. I have a feedback joystick caked in dust ready for such an experience.
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HiFlyer - Or even make a shortcut to the .exe and run administrator from that. Unfortunately in my case, my laptops nvidia isn't recognised by Flight School so I have to use the shortcut to force it on (Ghost in the machine from the old FSX code - it doesn't see it either)
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There is a joystick button configuration in the settings, I used it myself last night. Can't remember what it's called exactly. In the controllers set up screen, there is a key configuration option, pressing on it will show a list of normal keyboard keys and their default assignments. To the left of the key settings scroll box is a reassign button, press the reassign button then press the key on your joystick rather than the keyboard and you're done. Rinse and repeat. :smile:
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Christopher Low - I'm curious if they'll alter it for Flight School, never mind the full sim. The bulk of the negative comments relate to the graphics, if they can blend the clouds into the distant sky and haze, along with lowering the white hot scattering effect it will go a very long to making people happy. There are other graphic issues (disconnected shadows - cockpit too bright for late evening etc) but they are minor by comparison.
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bonchie - Right you are. I'll give it a shot when I next fire it up.
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bonchie - That's not what I've observed. I did a fair amount of flying with it last night and very nearly crashed the b***er three times turning into final. Once it stalled it was swinging quite quickly down and to the left. Every time I was amazed I kept it in the air. Didn't notice a stall warning sound, don't know if cubs have them or not. Additional Info - The flight dynamics sliders were all fully to the right, maybe a lot of people haven't spotted them and are flying on ultra easy.
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DTG Martin - Two issues winging their way to your support crew. Thanks. :smile:
