FSWC's back in progress!

[alrot]

Ok I add ne number one as you said ,I think I see less reflective (Not sure) do you mean the reflect of the sun in the nose of the 747?




Now Eventhough everything seem fine I don't know about this ,I delete all the inside of the terrain folder,the one from shaders Take a closer look ,where are the rest of the files Compare Both Nick..

http://www.simviation.com/yabbuploads/menosfilas.JPG

are this night textures?

[NickN]

Yes, it cuts down on the FLASH the sun makes on the water until you get to lower altitude. Now you see the sun when it is overhead instead of a huge flash of white pixels.

As I saidm there are things I like about it and do not like about it. The 2nd one I posted on the last page of the thread which I edited just for you has the moon glow back in it but leaves the upgraded specular reflection as shown in your shot.


Waves depend on several factors including your video card. If you do not like what you see, simply go back to the one you like and that works for you.




As for the files in the terrain shader folder, dont worry Alex. In SP2 they are written to that folder as you fly and as they are called up so the folder will fill up the longer you fly and in different shader environment calls.

[alrot]

Yes, it cuts down on the FLASH the sun makes on the water until you get to lower altitude. Now you see the sun when it is overhead instead of a huge flash of white pixels.

. The 2nd one I posted on the last page of the thread which I edited just for you has the moon glow back in it but leaves the upgraded specular reflection as shown in your shot.




As for the files in the terrain shader folder, dont worry Alex. In SP2 they are written to that folder as you fly and as they are called up so the folder will fill up the longer you fly and in different shader environment calls.

You Correct Nick ,

[NickN]

Remember, as you go lower in altitude, the sun and moon reflection should still span across the water as it does in real life. That fix corrected the fact that the sun and moon was producing the low altitude reflection at higher altitudes. As I said, its not perfect and as you increase the water slider, it does make a difference, especially with terrain reflecting off the water. Less flicker and better flow is seen.

[alrot]

Remember, as you go lower in altitude, the sun and moon reflection should still span across the water as it does in real life. That fix corrected the fact that the sun and moon was producing the low altitude reflection at higher altitudes. As I said, its not perfect and as you increase the water slider, it does make a difference, especially with terrain reflecting off the water. Less flicker and better flow is seen.

Like this

[NickN]

Leave them Alex, they are under 500k total


Just dont post anymore    ;)

[Ashton Lawson]

Let me try to understand, my edit did work?  As in, you actually had water, rather than a flat sky-shaded surface?

I'm really confused at the moment, but if what I sort of understand is true, then this low-angle/high-angle reflection thing could still be possible for SP2?

I think you'll have to give me a brief explanation of what's happened, and then a long explanation (brief one for general idea, then long to give me all the details).

I'll also need to know what values are changeable, in the sense that a program, like FSWC, could edit these values to change the general look of the water.

And finally, I don't suppose there are registry values which state whether or not FSX is SP2 or not?

Thanks, and sorry about my computer hating me and blowing up on me guys...

[NickN]

[quote]Let me try to understand, my edit did work?

[Ashton Lawson]

That's just incredible.

[NickN]

[quote]That's just incredible.

[Ashton Lawson]

[quote][quote]That's just incredible.

[J.]

just tried Nick's code and the water looked much better good work reflections where good and the sun reflections where not pixelated at low altitude

great work, keep it up lads

kermit

[Ashton Lawson]

Nick, since I don't have SP2 yet (I know it's available, but internet is a b!@tch) how modable is the water.  Are there actual values which can be finely tweaked, like with the original file, or are some of the things going to have to be on/off style controls?

[pwheeler]

Hi guys,

thought I'd register here as I think we're on the right course for a massive improvement in look of the water.

Firstly, I modified a version for SP2 that was done by Jase over on AVSIM. He got Ingvaars original shader mod working in SP2. I don't know if he did anything differently to you Nick to get it working in SP2.

All I did was add muliplication factors against the texture colour and the specular lighting, and also remove the entry that created that annoying moon glow. The first two are scalable so hopefully Str1ker you can add them into FSWC. Although I removed the moon glow line, it is probably scalable too by adding a multiplication factor to it rather than delete it.

There seems to be seven components to the water - base texture colour; sun diffuse lighting; moon diffuse lighting; sun specular lighting; moon specular lighting; reflections (sky (low), clouds (mid), terrain (high), autogen (max)); bump mapping.

I think these are all controlled within the shaders so theoretically they are all modifiable.

I have a few more things that I have been trying to work on. Any help would be appreciated:

1. Someone on AVSIM asked if I could remove the moon glow from DX10. This file is quite different to the DX9 file and apparently just removing the line I removed in DX9 didn't work. I havn't tried to mulitply the line instead as I don't have a DX10 GPU to test it on. Can someone with DX10 try changing this line in the water40.fx (not fxh) and add the bit in red to see if it works?:

Color = float4(lerp(Color.xyz + (g_vSunDirectional * specularFactor.x) + (0.3 * (specularFactor.y + 0.1 * saturate(dot(g_vSunVectorWorld_Moon,vSurfaceNorm)))).xxx, baseColor.xyz, fAlpha.xxxx),fAlpha);

There's alot of guess work involved as I really don't have a clue what I'm doing  ;)

2. The modification I made to the specular lighting reduces their intensity. This is not quite what I wanted to achieve. What I really wanted was to reduce the size of the specular reflections. With my mod the specular glints are not pure white, I essentially just reduced their opacity. I want them to be pure white just not such a wide area. Any ideas?

3. I've been trying to work out how to reduce the intensity of the reflections. It seems to be the envColor.rgb variable that draws the reflections. However it also seems to draw the sun diffuse lighting too and multipliying by ,say 0.3, tends to make the water too dark, although it does reduce the reflections. I'm sure that there is a line somewhere else in the shader which can be muliplied to reduce reflections without reducing the diffuse lighting.

4. What I would really like to accomplish is control over what is reflected at the different water 2x levels. i.e. have the terrain rather than the clouds reflected at water 2x mid. This should help with performance and I'd rather see the terrain reflected than the clouds. Not sure if this is controlled by the shaders. Any ideas?

5. Alot of people have noted the star reflections are way out of proportion. I imagine they are reflected in the same way as the sun, moon and sky. Any one have any ideas how we can remove them? My guess is we can't without removing the sun, moon and sky reflections too, unless they are reflected using an env map rather than what is actually in the sky.

I know the FEX guys are looking into some of these issues with regards to implimenting them in FEX, so maybe they'll come up with something.

Anyway, sorry for the long post.

Happy new year!!!

Paul

[Ashton Lawson]

[quote]Hi guys,

thought I'd register here as I think we're on the right course for a massive improvement in look of the water.

Firstly, I modified a version for SP2 that was done by Jase over on AVSIM. He got Ingvaars original shader mod working in SP2. I don't know if he did anything differently to you Nick to get it working in SP2.

All I did was add muliplication factors against the texture colour and the specular lighting, and also remove the entry that created that annoying moon glow. The first two are scalable so hopefully Str1ker you can add them into FSWC. Although I removed the moon glow line, it is probably scalable too by adding a multiplication factor to it rather than delete it.

There seems to be seven components to the water - base texture colour; sun diffuse lighting; moon diffuse lighting; sun specular lighting; moon specular lighting; reflections (sky (low), clouds (mid), terrain (high), autogen (max)); bump mapping.

I think these are all controlled within the shaders so theoretically they are all modifiable.

I have a few more things that I have been trying to work on. Any help would be appreciated:

1. Someone on AVSIM asked if I could remove the moon glow from DX10. This file is quite different to the DX9 file and apparently just removing the line I removed in DX9 didn't work. I havn't tried to mulitply the line instead as I don't have a DX10 GPU to test it on. Can someone with DX10 try changing this line in the water40.fx (not fxh) and add the bit in red to see if it works?:

Color = float4(lerp(Color.xyz + (g_vSunDirectional * specularFactor.x) + (0.3 * (specularFactor.y + 0.1 * saturate(dot(g_vSunVectorWorld_Moon,vSurfaceNorm)))).xxx, baseColor.xyz, fAlpha.xxxx),fAlpha);

There's alot of guess work involved as I really don't have a clue what I'm doing