KORDATC Posted June 21, 2017 Share Posted June 21, 2017 Is it just me, or is it nearly impossible to see far away cities in P3Dv4? I have PTA with Thopat's preset, however, even with default FTX global I couldn't see far away cities. I have tried increasing "urban areas lighting at night" field in PTA, but this just makes the roads and highways unbelievably bright - It does nothing for the underlaying textures of urban areas at night. In v3, I could see the glow from cities out to the horizon and am really curious if any of you know how to achieve this in v4? It seems to be related to the FTX global urban night textures. Regards, Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Banks Posted June 21, 2017 Share Posted June 21, 2017 You've got me intrigued! I haven't tried Thopat's preset yet (still busy re-tweaking my own!) ... but I'd like to see what I get on my system. Could you post some SLEW LAT/LONG co-ordinates plus time of day/season? Does this happen in GLOBAL areas as well as "full fat" regions? Adam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KORDATC Posted June 21, 2017 Author Share Posted June 21, 2017 Standby a few minutes. I'll be back with some screens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Banks Posted June 21, 2017 Share Posted June 21, 2017 I'm just about to diappear - but I did a trial flight just now (Auckland, FTX NZNI). Do you mean the reddish glow you get from the terrain just outside where the street lights kick in? I must admit it's a bit dark on my system as well - so the border/jump between lit areas and non-lit areas is quite pronounced. Of course, at a certain distance, the lights "kick in", but I'm guessing yuo mean the areas just beyond (that are still city)<?>. Adam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KORDATC Posted June 21, 2017 Author Share Posted June 21, 2017 So it seems like it happens to me in both Global areas and the FTX regions. Here are a few shots to demonstrate low/high and Global vs. Region. ^^here you can see I'm over Minneapolis (FTX Global) at a lower altitude. This looks pretty good to me. This pic is using Thopat's preset. However, I did increase the "urban areas lighting at night" field in PTA slightly up to 4.0. ^^Next, I slewed the acft up to the cruise levels without changing any settings, and this is what it looks like with Clear skies and unlimited vis. As you can see, the roads don't seem to be the issue as they show up really far out. However, the underlying urban textures luminosity is almost non-existant. ^^ on these two you in FTX NorCal (KSFO) you can see it's the same sort of issue as FTX Global. ^^ in this last one, I upped the "urban areas lighting at night" feature in PTA even higher. I upped it to 10.0. As you can see, this makes the street's a lot brighter at altitude. But down low, they are WAY too bright and yet it still does nothing for the underlaying urban textures for far away cities. I wish I could boot up v3 so I could take some comparison shots, but I unfortunately uninstalled it completely. Regards, Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KORDATC Posted June 21, 2017 Author Share Posted June 21, 2017 4 minutes ago, Adam Banks said: I'm just about to diappear - but I did a trial flight just now (Auckland, FTX NZNI). Do you mean the reddish glow you get from the terrain just outside where the street lights kick in? I must admit it's a bit dark on my system as well - so the border/jump between lit areas and non-lit areas is quite pronounced. Of course, at a certain distance, the lights "kick in", but I'm guessing yuo mean the areas just beyond (that are still city)<?>. Adam. Yeah that's what I'm referring too. In v3, even with FTX Global and regions, cities and towns would illuminate or "glow" out to the horizon when up in the flight levels. The 3d lights weren't on obviously, but there was a certain luminance to the cities out in the distance that seems to have been lost when I made the switch to v4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KORDATC Posted June 21, 2017 Author Share Posted June 21, 2017 Alright, so I was doing some testing and I actually got it to look "right". ^^This is what I'm referring too. YOu can see the distant glow of far away cities. In order to achieve this, I restored the default P3Dv4 shaders and then only tweaked the "urban area lighting at night" feature in PTA. I set it to max, which is 15.0. This is taken over ZSPD with Global. So now I know that it is not a Global issue. However, the default shaders don't look very good in the daytime. Does anybody whose good at PTA know what option could cause this and know how to tweak THOPAT's profile to get distant cities to show up? Regards, Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Banks Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 Rob - I can't read any of the SLEW info, so can't set up identical shots. I'll take a look around Minneapolis in general to see what I get though. Have you tried my 25_01 preset? http://www.nzfsim.org/index.php?dsp=PTA&id=85&preset=25_01#current I did a fair bit of work on night lighting a few presets ago. Maybe my approach is different enough from Thopat's to give you a clue as to what's happening. Adam. EDIT: Here's a couple I took with my PTA preset 25_01: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KVSandleben Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 The guys at Thopat go for a very dark night. Maybe they are overdoing things, but I would say depending on atmospheric conditions their darker nights seem more realistic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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