Rogen

Then you're missing out on some sweet settings. Think of the default prepar3d.cfg as a minimum set of configurations, a lowest common denominator for even the most lowly of machines. Yes there are sliders, but if that's all you stick with then you're missing out on some of the more advanced capabilities. Want to line those tree placements up to .5 of a metre accuracy ? it's a config setting (default is 80 metres). Want to agressively fetch textures to avoid black ones ? it's a config setting (default is 1000 memory units and you can go to 1 million or even more). Want smoother cockpit shadows ? it's a config setting (defaults give pretty jaggy shadows). Want to max out autogen past the capability of the sliders ? it's a config setting (think double the max of the sliders). Want to place the main CPU thread on your strongest CPU core ? it's a config setting (an affinity mask). Up to you though I guess... Cheers

I've found cast shadows for Vegetation, Particles and Terrain to be big GPU overloaders, particuarly casting Vegetation shadows, all those funky tree branches push shadowing over the edge of what my GPU can handle. And combined with SSAA can max out the GPU and result is stutters galore. Also depends on screen mode and GPU model. Cheers

Only one or the other can be used, e.g. Envshade OR TomatoShade, not both, and the default shaders need to be restored prior to changing to a different shader app (both apps have the abiltiy to restore the defaults). And yes I have all three components installed (my 4.5 HF3 is a full install). Tried maxing out some settings in either shader app ? When I was trialing I would start with the default shaders, save a flight at a location for test, take a screen grab, then apply shader changes, clear the cache and use the hotkey in sim to compile the shader changes, take a screen grab and review the differences, rinse and repeat till I achieved the look desired. So yeah, I don't know what more I can say, other than from what you say the Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL files are being updated by the shader apps, and are being compiled at runtime and so would be working. You can get some pretty good looks with them with the right combo of settings. Note the haze is coming from Active Sky Next and is based on the weather conditions at the time.

Looks like I will be able to spend some $$ with Milviz...

Oooooh, sorry... latest versions of software require 128 GB Heh, in actuality though, 64 GB quite a lot, have you configured to aggressively fetch textures? E.g. in the prepar3d.cfg (settings in spolier). I have mine set pretty high and I've just forgotten what a black texture even is cause i never see one. Cheers

The sim can only compile the ones that exist in Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL And if they've been updated by the shader apps then those are the ones the compiled shaders are generated from. Is lighting set up as per the R&D ini file requirements ? What is it you're expecting to see ? Another thing you can trial is changing a single setting in TS to a really exessive value which should then make the change quite noticable. And a before and after screen pic of the same location (pause sim at test location, and save) can help in seeing the difference. Also the shader files themselves can be searched for references to Tomato to prove there are changes in the shader files. e.g. GPUTerrain.fx Cheers

A while back I trialed them all looking for the most sutable for myself. And settled on Action! as all the others were lacking in one way or another (you know that one item you really want but is not there). It had a trial version, an active forum, regular updates, was simple to use with a selection of recording methods and FPS choices and can visualise mouse clicks and separately record mic to a alternate sound file. To put the vids together I've recently discovered DaVinci Resolve which has available a free version (limited but more than adequate for my use). Check this vid, captured by Action! and pieced together by DaVinci Resolve Cheers

Yes and they need P3D to train up those customers for their fighters. Seen the newest Block 70/72 F16 ? there's a claimed 50% increase in the structual life expectancy. If only LM would divert a little more in funds to P3D... Cheers

Are you using somebodies TomatoShade prebuilt .ini file ?

Well... Shaders do work, infact I use TomatoShade, Reshade and a couple of hand written customisations. I also have EnvShade, however I only trialed then removed as I found it to be too simplistic and didn't offer the level of control I was after. As to how much of a difference you're expecting, that'll depend on the settings applied by the shaders themselves as they don't always affect just colour saturation. In fact one of the hand written customisations I use is all about a better rain / snow density ratio and size of droplets and flakes, others are just to fix errors. The actual shader files are written into Prepar3D v4\ShadersHLSL And P3D then uses those files to compile into the .cso files you see in AppData\Local\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Shaders, which is why there is an initital black screen while they are rebuilt after having been deleted. Plus every time you fly more .cso files are compiled. What version of TomatoShade are you running ? To my knowledge v31 was the last and was build to support 4.5 HF2, result is TS is a little broken in 4.5 HF3 but is still a very useful tool if you avoid the broken bits, which mainly relate to the Advanced Reflections bit. Version 31: P3D 4.5 Hotfix 2 Compatibility If you're still running TomatoShade, what .ini file are you running with ? Cheers

Yeah it works... but in P3D v4 & 5, as per wwdavis, without functional instrumentation as they 32bit based. Bummer really because I enjoyed the plane in FSX and had a really nice worn and torn repaint based on a real aircraft. Anyone up for making the plane x64 compatible ? Had to pull these images out of the the old FSX archives... 🙂 1680 x 1050, considered huge monitors back in the day

A few shots of Orbx's Brisbane AP YBBN in it's latest release incarnation of version V2 1.1.1 The Ai aircraft are the new Orbx AU/NZ PBR traffic package for P3D v5 The new runway at right. Some closer detail. My C195 is dwarfed by the Qantas Deamliner, and some nice weathering on the buildings and windows at this end of the AP. Thats All Folks ! Cheers

Heh, I see it now that I'm reading it after the fact...😀 We have a similar saying downunder - you're a wombat because you eat, roots and leaves. Heres a link to "Australiana" a word play comedy skit, need to know a bit about Australian locations and such but some is pretty obvious and funny. Let me just finish off by saying "the Ryzen 3800X has proven to be a great CPU upgrade needing only to be "dropped in" on my X370 Pro (BIOS updated) motherboard". And yeah MSFS is the shiny new toy atm but I'm happy, things are very smooth in P3D for me and I've lots of planes to fly and live and historical weather to explore, plus my GTNs and a whole lot more. I'll look further at MSFS if/when it meets my expectations, which involves more than just looking shiny, likely that's going to be a few years away given the current pace of 3rd parties and what MS/Asobo will allow. Cheers

More shots of enyoying the new Ryzen 3800X... this CPU is quite a great drop in improvement. The USA Pacific South West near Skagit Regional airport in the venerable Ant TigerMoth Pro, can be a real pain to start at times. I've just installed a new livery on the Embraer B120. And dropped my GTN 750 into it along with a few xml mods to make it easier to manage the condition levers and the fuel cuts (reduce pitch to bottom value, feather, then hit the fuel cut levers - R then L) Didn't perform maintenance like I should have, engine is a little unhappy... I thought I wasn't going to make it to the airport what with the rough running and all the smoke. Ahh these A2A planes require just an extra touch of love and regular flying. On the ground fixes, engine done, now looking at the rest. And finally one I haven't yet flown with my new CPU, but one I am looking forward to, the Beech 390 Premier IA. It has that touch of luxury, like a new Benz or Lexus. Tahiti sounds nice 🙂 That's all folks. Cheers

Do you mean the Radio Stack lighting ?

I don't have Sim Starter and don't know what it offers. The Lorby Addon organiser is for managing addons, if Sim Starter also provides such reliable same options feel free to use it. And yes I mean disable (or enable) as a process of elimination. Starting with the most likely suspects first and keep notes, it's easy to get out of wack when following processes of elimination. I started having a CTD myself a few weeks ago, fortunatelly easily solved by a clean of the shaders and indexes. Cheers

Yes, why not update to MSFS - for all those fabulous planes and fantastic flight models, with state of the art GTN 750/650, perfect autopilot, controllable weather modeling, and I just love that I can choose a date/time and fly historical weather or real world...oh wait... 🤔

Then there is the next level of calcs... // Control how long streaks face and how big they are. // TBM 03/02/2019 change the calculated value for a smaller looking rain/snow effect. float height = cb_fQuadSize * cb_fQuadSizeHeightScale / (2.4 - (cb_uPrecipType * 1.65)); float width = cb_fQuadSize * cb_fQuadSizeWidthScale / (1.0 - (cb_uPrecipType * 0.25)); //float height = cb_fQuadSize * cb_fQuadSizeHeightScale; //float width = cb_fQuadSize * cb_fQuadSizeWidthScale; Cheers

In the Enterprise software development area I work for upgrades are not "free". A company purchases the base products and pays ASM (application support and maintenace) which is typcially 25% of the original purchase price (and paid per year). The ASM entitles them to product updates when released, licensing transfers and phone and email support. The above is pretty much a standard type of affair and pays for ongoing development and support that maybe required. Cheers

Certainly not typical behaviour. There are three things I do as first steps in tracking down CTDs in P3D. Delete the shader cache (these will rebuild automatically) Delete the Scenery indexes (these will rebuild automatically) Rename the Prepar3D.cfg (for testing only, I never delete it as I have a ton of settings changes with) After that it's a process of elimintation to track down which is relatively easy to do if things are installed within Libraries. I usually start with the last added or tweaked addon, or do a bunch at a time to narrow down. Could also be something in the dll.xml or exe.xml, again don't delete, rename so you can come back to it if it is not the issue. I also use the P3D Addon Organiser from Lorby where I have 25 Auto Discovery Library locations for scenery and aircraft etc. (none are in the "Documents" path). It's a very useful tool as P3D's Addon Organiser is as buggy as. Cheers

Looks like 8bit colour banding to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_banding I use Reshade and the Banding filter to smooth things out. https://reshade.me/ A search for reshade in the P3D forum will return lots of posts. Cheers The banding filter in action - if you look close you'll see some slight banding but it's way less than would otherwise be visible

Hey thanks mate, have a virtual toasted sanga and coffee on me 🙂 It was good to not have to choose a config profile with settings reduced for the flight, I'm really liking this CPU. <rant> If only GFX cards were a little more affordable. And I don't mean those 8 GB ones, I reguarly top out my 1070Ti's 8 GB of memory. Maybe next year NVidia will deliver a card with a suitable level of memory - 16 GB would be good An affordable price would also be good, they're ~3 grand in Aust and you have to pay up front to get in the queue. </rant> Cheers

You know... there's many Milviz planes I'd like to put my $$ into, Here's a list, PC-6 DHC-3T Turbo Otter DHC-3 Otter P-38 Red Bull F-86F-30 Sabre Plus any of the helicopters Oh wait, there's only 4 planes listed as P3D v5 compatible on the Milviz website, of which none are the above. Cannot sell what you've not got for sale... I question how you're going to do when MSFS forced updates breaks the Milviz MSFS planes, just leave em like has occured for P3D ? Sorry, that's my reason for not spending money with Milviz.

On Saturday I replaced my venerable two and a bit year old 2700X Ryzen processor with a (now) considerably less expensive 3800X and the result has been quite the surprise. Why did I choose the 3800X ? Well the nice price reduction given the 5800 series is out, plus my motherboard is an x370 Pro and the 3000 series tops the board out to the limits of its CPU support, with the CPU upgrade being a bios update and a subsequent drop in replacement. All easy peasy to do. Although the previous 2700X was no slouch, the difference of the 3800X makes the sim feel quite remarkably different, more headroom power to spare I hazard to guess. I do have SMT (threading) disabled in the BIOS and have clocked the CPU to 4.5 Ghz with precision boost set to boost another 200 MHz. All has been nicely stable so far at least. This series of pics comes from a proving flight from the fictional Cushman Meadows airport to Bowerman in the A2A C182, where the weather is set to the 22nd September 2019, a nice misty day with low visibility that just pushes the CPU / GPU combo to the max yet I was able to maintain a locked vsync and totally smooth all the way (which the 2700X could not do for this flight plan). Anti-alisasing was set to 4x Sparse Grid Super Sampling via the NVidia Inspector with MSAA set in the sim. About to prep for the flight. Parked and listening to the converstations of the picknickers before taxi to takeoff. The weather really wasn't the best for flying, but hey in the sim you can do what you want. Bowerman AP is coming up and just going to pass over prior to landing. And landed. Passenger gets a pic taken. Cheers

This is my Carenado Embraer B120 v1.3 in P3d v4.5 And like all aircraft I purchase I turn on P3D's content logging just to see what the dev crew left behind so to speak. Have worked through the majority of the gauges correcting mostly syntax errors (possibly cut and paste issues? e.g. code cut from other Carenado a/c ?) And also reworked the fuel cut off because in it's original form the functionality was, Set prop pitch condition levers to zero. Hold the Ctrl + F2 key combo to feather the props and hold until levers move to the stop postion. Then hit the red fuel cut levers. All good except the condition levers must be right back towards the stop position to activate the red levers, which then covers said red levers making them next to impossible to click without a custom view low enough to see and click. With the changes I've made the functionality is, Set prop pitch condition levers to zero. Use the Ctrl + F2 key combo to feather the props and hold just a touch to get the levers past the negative zero postion. There is now easy access to the fuel cut red levers and they are active. Hit the red fuel cut levers to automatically move the condition levers to almost the stop position. Use the Ctrl + F2 key combo to move the condition levers the last notch to stop the engines. Close enough to just the way I want it 🙂 ModelConverterX is needed to edit the in use interior model's code (there are a number of interior models depending on PBR, GTN etc.) My approach is to first copy the model (so there's a backup), then import the model copy into ModelConverterX, copy out the xml into notepad++ to make changes because notepad++ is a far better text editor, then paste all the notepad++ code into the ModelConverterX xml editor overwriting all the existing code. Export the model as the required sim type overwriting the original in use interior model (not the backup). Code Snips Seaching for "GENERAL ENG PROPELLER LEVER POSITION" will return all the code sections related to the prop control where you're looking for the Engine 1|2 shut. The two snips replace the same code sections in the actual code. <TooltipText>Engine 1 shutoff (%((L:LEVER_PROP_PITCH1_B120_SHUTOFF,bool) 0 ==)%{if}Off%{else}On%{end})</TooltipText> <CallbackCode> (A:GENERAL ENG PROPELLER LEVER POSITION:1,percent) (&gt;L:PROP_LEV_POS_TEMP1,number) (L:LEVER_PROP_PITCH1_B120_SHUTOFF,number) 0 == (A:GENERAL ENG PROPELLER LEVER POSITION:1,percent) -0 &lt;= and if{ <TooltipText>Engine 2 shutoff (%((L:LEVER_PROP_PITCH2_B120_SHUTOFF,bool) 0 ==)%{if}Off%{else}On%{end})</TooltipText> <CallbackCode> (A:GENERAL ENG PROPELLER LEVER POSITION:2,percent) (&gt;L:PROP_LEV_POS_TEMP2,number) (L:LEVER_PROP_PITCH2_B120_SHUTOFF,number) 0 == (A:GENERAL ENG PROPELLER LEVER POSITION:2,percent) -0 &lt;= and if{ I'm sure better xml coders could do better (and I'm happy to take direction), but hey it works for me 🙂 Cheers