harryw Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Hello, 'alpha to coverage' is a new scenery feature in the 3.2 update. Since it's scenery I assume it is just a texture change to take advantage of a new 3.2 way of vegetation rendering. So question: I have the Orbx high res tree texture replacement installed, so am not very compelled to overwrite them. Is there going to be a new version of the Hi Res trees to take advantage of alpha to coverage at some time? (Or am I misinterpreting something?) Thanks,h Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Goff Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 I believe this is an improvement in rendering, rather than a feature to be implemented. There are no notes on changes in autogen rendering that require any update on our end as far as I have found. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gent Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 27 minutes ago, Alex Goff said: I believe this is an improvement in rendering, rather than a feature to be implemented. There are no notes on changes in autogen rendering that require any update on our end as far as I have found. Hello Alex Not sure I understand. The change is listed under the scenery client update. I have every Orbx product that has been released so far for P3D V3. My question is after you have read the changes under the scenery client update for V3.2, is there any reason to update to V3.2? Would there be any improvements? If so, what would be the recommended procedure to update that would reduce the number of Orbx products to be reinstalled? Since Prepar3d is apparently going to be updated every 3 to 4 months, it would be very very helpful if someone at Orbx would analyze each update and issue an advice post with recommendations, pros and cons, and best update procedures as it relates to the content and scenery parts of the P3D upgrades. Thank you Terry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Goff Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 I misunderstood the original question a bit, what I get for skipping breakfast and trying to work! Installing the "scenery" update will overwrite HD Trees, FTX Global, and some of our core assets. The updated content is probably not enough for most users to merit installing and having to reinstall addons, at least in this update. We generally recommend doing the "client" update to take advantage of engine bugfixes and new features. The "content" and "scenery" are less essential and for most users can be held off until they next do a full reinstall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gent Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Hello Alex Thank you! Terry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgoggi Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 3 hours ago, Alex Goff said: Installing the "scenery" update will overwrite HD Trees, FTX Global, and some of our core assets. Alex, I have FTX Global. Can you confirm that, if I want to install the "Scenery" update, I will just need to reinstall FTX Global afterwards? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryw Posted March 10, 2016 Author Share Posted March 10, 2016 Sorry, I'll try to express myself more clearly: 1) there is a way of rendering vegetation by means of a technique called alpha to coverage. Unless it's already implemented in 3.1 it would require a client update to 3.2, which I have done. 2) there is a change log entry for Scenery 'Improved vegetation alpha to coverage'. To me, that means that not only the client update is required to take advantage of this, but also an update of the Scenery, which, I assume, contains the (modified) tree textures. 3) I have overwritten the tree textures by installing the HD Trees (which I like very much), so I'd be loathe to do a Scenery update which would get me back to the low definition trees, albeit maybe with better AA. 4) Question: Is Orbx planning to adapt the HD Tree textures the same way LM has adapted the default tree textures in a future update in order to take advantage of the 'alpha to coverage' technique? Note: this is how I understood it - doesn't mean that's really the way it works. I may be misunderstanding things, hence the question! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Goff Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 I don't believe an adaption is needed, alpha to coverage rendering depends on a well detailed alpha channel to properly apply anti-aliasing, the HD Trees alpha channels (and even our older trees) are much more fine-grained than the default ones included in FSX and P3Dv2-3.1. I'll poke around to confirm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FireRx Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Agree with Alex 100% The last few updated I've done since version 3.0 is just the client only. So my orbx scenery stays the same. the HD Trees look excellent with the shadowing in 3.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryw Posted March 10, 2016 Author Share Posted March 10, 2016 Alright, thanks! So that probably means then that LM just upped the quality of their textures, but I doubt anywhere to the level the HD trees. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 It means they fixed a lot of the origina alpha channels in vegetation that were dodgy. If you have FTX Trees HD you won't see any difference because our trees are superior to default. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgoggi Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 1 hour ago, John Venema said: It means they fixed a lot of the origina alpha channels in vegetation that were dodgy. If you have FTX Trees HD you won't see any difference because our trees are superior to default. John, sorry if that has already been asked, but do the HD trees influence the fps in P3D? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeilG Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 I'm sorry, I'm not very technical and don't really understand. Can you tell me precisely what .Alpha coverage' actually does? Thanks Neil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rick66 Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 19 minutes ago, jgoggi said: 19 minutes ago, jgoggi said: John, sorry if that has already been asked, but do the HD trees influence the fps in P3D? Thanks. They certainly do, they actually improve your frame rate somewhat.... and of course they look way better than those default trees, especially with vegetation shadows enabled. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgoggi Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 40 minutes ago, rick66 said: They certainly do, they actually improve your frame rate somewhat.... and of course they look way better than those default trees, especially with vegetation shadows enabled. Oh, so they have a positive influence! ;-) Thank you, going to install them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 FTX Trees HD has only a minor positive FPS influence for P3D, but a lot more benefit for FSX and FSX:SE since the original trees in FSX are not optimized. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdata Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Thanks to all of you answering Harry's question. This thread was more informative than a certain P3Dv32 thread being open on the other forum and listing close to 500 posts already. But there is still one open question nobody answered with a clear yes or no so far. I dare to ask: Do we need to reinstall Vector if we would update the scenery component to 3.2 as well? I assume yes, but what do I know ... Thanks a lot and Best Regards Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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