renault Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 I just started flying, daydreaming and thinking how lucky I am to have access to this wonderful scenery. All my cares of the last few days have disappeared and I was just happy. I really recommend just going for a flight without any real purpose occasionally , and just enjoying Orbx - Plain and Simple To all the boys & girls at Orbx -- Thank you Cheers Renault Started out early in the morning just south of Carlisle And the day unfolds ....... Ended up in the Lake District .... And a bit of daydreaming later , I'm in Yorkshire ..... And now about midway between Lancaster and Rippon & my low fuel warnings are on ... Thanks very much for viewing …. See you all later.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdavart Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Good grief, with scenery and screen shots like that, I would be happy too! Well done, man! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BradB Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Remarkable shots . Cheers John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Sawyer Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Holy smoke Renault! All nice but that third one, gorgeous! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Lars Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 I'm so glad the daylight sky is slightly oversaturated, that compares for the staggering, otherwordly perfection in the first two shots. Honestly, brilliant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VH-KDK Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Top class set R. Anyone who can make the north of England look so good deserves a medal! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lauriebe Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Wow!!! Another excellent set from the master. Fantastic views renault and I concur your statements re Orbx. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adambar Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Wow!!! Gorgeous shots Renault! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rodger Pettichord Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Thanks for sharing the meandering moments of beauty. Now I'm happy too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MurrayD Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Incredible Renault. Thanks for sharing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iain Emms Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Great set of shots. cheers Iain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bernd1151 Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 These are just plain beautiful, Renault Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulb Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Beautiful shots Renault! Well done! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olderndirt Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 You just fly around and tow your scenery behind you . Seriously, I'm looking forward to what you do with Scotland. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magic1 Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 beautiful shots! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arkanoid Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Dramatic pics!!! Are you using X-Plane? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Abdey Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Real screen shot art on display here Pete... Those first two are simply magnificent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renault Posted January 16, 2019 Author Share Posted January 16, 2019 20 hours ago, tdavart said: Good grief, with scenery and screen shots like that, I would be happy too! Well done, man! Thank you very much. I am very pleased you enjoyed it. I appreciate you commenting Cheers R 19 hours ago, BradB said: Remarkable shots . Cheers John Thank you John. But really it's the wonderful Orbx stuff and TonyW and their development team that's the real star Cheers & I appreciate it R 18 hours ago, Jack Sawyer said: Holy smoke Renault! All nice but that third one, gorgeous! Hi Jack Thanks so much. But I can't wait to see what you are going to do with GBTE in P3d. I am really looking forward to it! Cheers R 18 hours ago, Captain Lars said: I'm so glad the daylight sky is slightly oversaturated, that compares for the staggering, otherwordly perfection in the first two shots. Honestly, brilliant. Thanks very much for your comments. I am very pleased that you enjoyed them Actually your comment concerning a slight oversaturation in the sky was really helpful. XPlanes lighting engine is based upon physically based rendering. What this means is that how a surface interacts and reflects light is accurately modelled. Normally PBR is exclusively related to solid surfaces , so you would expect to see interactions with surfaces that have high reflectivity and shininess. However, Sky Colours in XPlane are a combination of the actual colour in the sky colour bit map and a lot of parameters related to real atmospheric lighting physics. Raleigh Scattering is a physical lighting phenomena that refers to the scattering of light due to air molecules . It has a strong dependency on the actual wavelength of the light and as a result Raleigh Scattering enhances the short wavelengths of light (red is the longest wavelength, blue is the shortest) which is why the sky is blue. In XPlane, Raleigh scattering is controllable by a specific data reference which I had been adjusting. You have a keen eye for saturation changes. The following screenshots show the Raleigh scattering impact for a value of 19 which is what the above sequence was based on and the value of 17 which is what I had settled on from experimentation but forgot to change. Actually I have a experimental .lua script which adjusts the sky blue color based on altitude, which is what one sees in real life because at higher altitudes the air density decreases which affects the Raleigh scattering parameters. It works very well, but is really only appropriate for flying jets at high altitudes. Below about 10-15,000 ft. it doesn't make much of an impact. Since I am a "casual armchair pilot " and fly low & slow, usually below 10,000ft. , I decided to just pick a single value that seemed realistic. The following screenshots show the impact of this change. As with most things in colour rendering small adjustment are usually preferable. It's interesting that as in the real world the sky colour changes with the viewing angle (the first comparison) and that the change on the horizon is more pronounced that more directly overhead. The last screenshot shows where I started this morning with the changed Raleigh scattering parameter. Thanks so much for your interest and comment - it was really helpful to me. Cheers R Screenshot 1 - Direct overhead comparison Screenshot 2 - Scenery & oblique angle comparison Screenshot 3 - Normal screenshot with changed Raleigh scattering 17 hours ago, VH-KDK said: Top class set R. Anyone who can make the north of England look so good deserves a medal! Thanks Martyn. I appreciate it. As I said to John , it's the Orbx team that did the stellar job Cheers R 17 hours ago, lauriebe said: Wow!!! Another excellent set from the master. Fantastic views renault and I concur your statements re Orbx. Thank you Laurie. I am very pleased that you enjoyed them! Cheers Sir! R 16 hours ago, adambar said: Wow!!! Gorgeous shots Renault! Hi Adam! Thanks! Cheers R 15 hours ago, Rodger Pettichord said: Thanks for sharing the meandering moments of beauty. Now I'm happy too. Thanks Rodger! Glad I was of help Now there are us two and thousands of Orbx customers who are happy. Ole Orbx deserves a big medal!!! Cheers R 14 hours ago, MurrayD said: Incredible Renault. Thanks for sharing. Thank you and thanks for commenting. I am really pleased that you liked them Cheers! R 14 hours ago, Iain Emms said: Great set of shots. cheers Iain Thank you Iain. I appreciate it very much! Cheers Sir! R 14 hours ago, bernd1151 said: These are just plain beautiful, Renault Why thank you so much! I am glad that you enjoyed them as much as I did creating them Cheers R 14 hours ago, paulb said: Beautiful shots Renault! Well done! Thanks Paul! And congratulations on your milestone with Orbx. Very richly deserved and you are joining a very prestigious group, but one in which you so much belong! Cheers R 4 hours ago, olderndirt said: You just fly around and tow your scenery behind you . Seriously, I'm looking forward to what you do with Scotland. It's why I fly low & slow. I don't want to spook the locals who would get very upset with me. But not so much as they would if they ever found out that the earth's rotation was just me and my little Cessna I'm looking forward to Scotland as well. John's "teaser" shots are fabulous, especially the mountains! Cheers OND & thanks R 3 hours ago, magic1 said: beautiful shots! Thanks! R 1 hour ago, Arkanoid said: Dramatic pics!!! Are you using X-Plane? Yes I am. Xplane 11.26r2 Cheers & thanks! R 38 minutes ago, Mark Abdey said: Real screen shot art on display here Pete... Those first two are simply magnificent Thanks Mark. Glad you liked them. I liked them all, but #3 has just a bit of an edge -- maybe I'm a sucker for granite outcrops Cheers! P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Lars Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 1 hour ago, renault said: Actually your comment concerning a slight oversaturation in the sky was really helpful. XPlanes lighting engine is based upon physically based rendering. What this means is that how a surface interacts and reflects light is accurately modelled. Normally PBR is exclusively related to solid surfaces , so you would expect to see interactions with surfaces that have high reflectivity and shininess. However, Sky Colours in XPlane are a combination of the actual colour in the sky colour bit map and a lot of parameters related to real atmospheric lighting physics. Raleigh Scattering is a physical lighting phenomena that refers to the scattering of light due to air molecules . It has a strong dependency on the actual wavelength of the light and as a result Raleigh Scattering enhances the short wavelengths of light (red is the longest wavelength, blue is the shortest) which is why the sky is blue. In XPlane, Raleigh scattering is controllable by a specific data reference which I had been adjusting. You have a keen eye for saturation changes. The following screenshots show the Raleigh scattering impact for a value of 19 which is what the above sequence was based on and the value of 17 which is what I had settled on from experimentation but forgot to change. Actually I have a experimental .lua script which adjusts the sky blue color based on altitude, which is what one sees in real life because at higher altitudes the air density decreases which affects the Raleigh scattering parameters. It works very well, but is really only appropriate for flying jets at high altitudes. Below about 10-15,000 ft. it doesn't make much of an impact. Since I am a "casual armchair pilot " and fly low & slow, usually below 10,000ft. , I decided to just pick a single value that seemed realistic. The following screenshots show the impact of this change. As with most things in colour rendering small adjustment are usually preferable. It's interesting that as in the real world the sky colour changes with the viewing angle (the first comparison) and that the change on the horizon is more pronounced that more directly overhead. The last screenshot shows where I started this morning with the changed Raleigh scattering parameter. Thanks so much for your interest and comment - it was really helpful to me. Cheers R Renault, I'm really glad that I could help you! Actually, I was experimenting a lot with saturation settings in the last week or two. I had the impression that Prepar3d v4.4 slightly changed the way that colours are shown. I took the opportunity and installed a new sky texture. I didn't realize this until later on, but this new sky texture gave the world a sepia touch. Snow appeared very yellow. As a remedy I reduced terrain saturation. So the summer was faulty. I added ambient lighting... Once I installed a different texture, I had to roll back my efforts to correct for this sepia touch and adjust parameters. I have gone over a lot of parameters, including sky and clouds lately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renault Posted January 16, 2019 Author Share Posted January 16, 2019 2 minutes ago, Captain Lars said: Renault, I'm really glad that I could help you! Actually, I was experimenting a lot with saturation settings in the last week or two. I had the impression that Prepar3d v4.4 slightly changed the way that colours are shown. I took the opportunity and installed a new sky texture. I didn't realize this until later on, but this new sky texture gave the world a sepia touch. Snow appeared very yellow. As a remedy I reduced terrain saturation. So the summer was faulty. I added ambient lighting... Once I installed a different texture, I had to roll back my efforts to correct for this sepia touch and adjust parameters. I have gone over a lot of parameters, including sky and clouds lately. Don't you sometimes get the feeling that this is like pushing a bit of string. Change one thing and oops , something else goes awry! One of the challenges in XPlane's lighting engine is that what looks good at one time of day, is pretty atrocious at other times. As with P3d it takes a lot of time to get it right , but when it comes together I forgot the frustration and effort to get there. It's all good fun and keeps us off the streets and out of the pubs. (Although I have been know to visit a few when things have really gone pear shaped!!!) Cheers R Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted January 17, 2019 Share Posted January 17, 2019 Lovely shots, and many thanks for the compliments to our team! What cloud set are you using and what sky bitmap? That first shot is one of the nicest orange sky/cloud combos I have seen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flsm (Frank) Posted January 17, 2019 Share Posted January 17, 2019 Bright, clear and colourful - very nice. Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M110A2 Posted January 17, 2019 Share Posted January 17, 2019 On 1/15/2019 at 8:55 PM, renault said: I just started flying, daydreaming and thinking how lucky I am to have access to this wonderful scenery. All my cares of the last few days have disappeared and I was just happy. I really recommend just going for a flight without any real purpose occasionally , and just enjoying Orbx - Plain and Simple To all the boys & girls at Orbx -- Thank you Cheers Renault Started out early in the morning just south of Carlisle And the day unfolds ....... Ended up in the Lake District .... And a bit of daydreaming later , I'm in Yorkshire ..... And now about midway between Lancaster and Rippon & my low fuel warnings are on ... Thanks very much for viewing …. See you all later.... I'm really enjoying that top shot, REALLY GREAT images. Happy Contrails!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zinj Posted January 17, 2019 Share Posted January 17, 2019 What a sky on the first one ! Cheers zinj Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wain71 Posted January 17, 2019 Share Posted January 17, 2019 fantastic shots, all great but especially the first... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renault Posted January 18, 2019 Author Share Posted January 18, 2019 13 hours ago, John Venema said: Lovely shots, and many thanks for the compliments to our team! What cloud set are you using and what sky bitmap? That first shot is one of the nicest orange sky/cloud combos I have seen. Hi John Thanks very much. I am very pleased that you enjoyed it. The sky set bit map is from a previous version of FSEnhancer 0.4.9 ( https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/41411-fse/&page=5&tab=comments ), although the most current version 0.5 of FSEnhancer also works almost as well. (It has a bit of additional colour adjustment near the horizon which I don't particularly like, but such things tend to be personal aesthetics ) Clouds are from UWXP Improved Cloud Sets by Marc Westhofen 1.0.0 and are Cloud Set 0. ( https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/44889-ultra-weather-xp-improved-cloud-sets-by-marc-westhofen/ ) However the actual data sets are only part of the story and from my experimenting the following comments may also be of interest. There is not, in my experience a single "silver bullet" adjustment that gives a perfect colour rendering and image quality. I have had most success with a series of layered adjustments , which although singularly are modest adjustments, but taken together give a pleasing and realistic colour reproduction. I'd be happy to pass them along to you if you like. Please let me know. My preface to the following comments is based upon my own particular hardware configuration. I have quite a modest system by today's standards - 3.8 ghz processor and a 2GB GTX960 video card. I enjoy the challenge of finding ways to make existing hardware work more efficiently so, all of my comments have an overriding perspective , namely to obtain the best visual quality I can with the absolute minimal frame rate impact. It has been quite good fun in working towards this goal. I can run Orbx TE consistently at your suggested settings with frame rates between 30-50 with a visual quality that I am happy with. I use Reshade 4.0.2 with two shaders for colour control, and a combination of shaders for image sharpening (comment 6 below). The combination of shaders has no frame rate impact. Since XVision also is based upon the Reshade shader package, I would imagine that many of my findings would also be applicable to that package as well. 1) I use the .lua script from FSEnhancer 0.5 "True Haze" for sky rendering with the atmo_scale_raleigh data ref changed to a value of 17, along with a number of individual adjustments related to extended scenery draw distance (dsf data refs) and cloud rendering adjustments 2) It is especially noticeable at sunrise and sunset that significant colour banding is present in the the FSEnhancer bitmaps. I dealt with this issue by firstly using a colour dithering shader, followed on an as needed basis with a debanding shader. This combination works extremely well in giving a very smooth colour transition, although the debanding shader can also blur out a lot of cirrus cloud detail if it is set too high. It does require a bit of adjustment at times as the loss of cloud detail tends to vary slightly by time of day and viewing angle. 3) I use the curves.fx shader with the default settings for contrast . The parameters published by FILOU in his technical note on XVision are this same set of parameters. 4) Cloud shading was done using the FSEnhancer 0.5 True Haze script again as a starting point, although I have slightly modified most of the parameters to my own liking. 5) I use the 3JFPS Wizard to improve and stabilize frame rates, but also to set cloud density and cloud puff size. It is interactive and is quite quick and easy to get a cloud setting which gives good frame rates and a pleasing cloud rendering. 6) With a low amount of video ram, I run Texture Quality at mid range. I have found that as a final step that a combination of sharpening shaders (Surface Sharpen and Unsharpen Mask) will give an image quality very comparable to that obtained with the Texture quality set on high, but with a very significant reduction in Vram requirements. This has been the most significant area of my investigations (I probably have looked at over 20 different sharpening algorithms as well as coding a bunch on my own), but also is the one area that I have enjoyed the most in terms of seeing significant improvement. In my experience there is no single sharpening algorithm which would give the image quality I desired and more importantly did not have a very undesirable frame rate impact caused by setting the individual parameter adjustments to high values. I then looked at using a combination of sharpening algorithms and found this approach to work quite well both in terms of visual improvement and minimal frame rate impact. The final combination I choose has worked well as each shader sharpens different parts of the image and the algorithms will not sharpen image areas that are already corrected. By using low individual shader settings I was able to minimize the fps impact - surface_sharpen takes a single shader pass and unsharpen_mask takes 2 shader passes. The image sharpening approach is very contrast dependent (essentially sharpening on luma differences). Therefore load order of shaders is actually quite important. This can be varied in XVision as well. My experience is to adjust color saturation , then contrast, followed by dither/debanding and finally sharpening (surface_sharpen, followed by Unsharpen mask). I have played around with different shader order, but this approach has provided the most consistency of results. Overall, this combination of shaders impacts my overall frame rate by 1-2 frames/second which to me was quite acceptable I would like to compliment you and your team at this point for the excellent quality of the data sets that have been provided in the True Earth packages. My approach is quite data quality dependent -- poor quality data can not be corrected satisfactorily, but good data quality makes all the difference in using these techniques. Thank you . In my particular case I felt that simply saying here are the bitmaps and cloud sets I used wouldn't really describe my approach and experience correctly. I didn't intend to write a treatise, but as you can see I have taken a slightly different approach than some and thought that my findings may be of interest to both yourself and fellow members regardless of their particular hardware/software configurations. Cheers and thanks very much again for your comments and interest. You have a tremendous product line and an extremely talented team producing software that brings me great enjoyment every time I use it. I am very grateful. Renault 13 hours ago, flsm (Frank) said: Bright, clear and colourful - very nice. Cheers. Thanks Frank. Glad you enjoyed it See you R 13 hours ago, M110A2 said: I'm really enjoying that top shot, REALLY GREAT images. Happy Contrails!!! Thanks very much. I am very pleased to hear that you enjoyed viewing them And " HC " to you as well sir! Cheers Renault 9 hours ago, zinj said: What a sky on the first one ! Cheers zinj Thanks zinj Cheers R 7 hours ago, wain71 said: fantastic shots, all great but especially the first... Thanks very much. I enjoy sunrise and sunsets in real life as well. To me it has always been a very special part of the day. Appreciate you commenting! Cheers Renault Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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