renault Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 A comment by Ken Hall on my recent post "Another Renault Fix - Improving Shadow Quality" made me realize that I had neglected to discuss an aspect of a commonly used approach in XVision to setting image colour rendering that could have a impact on how shadows are created in XPlane. I would like to acknowledge Ken's contribution and I am grateful. Thank you. It is relatively common in my experience with XVision for users to use the Levels shader to help to establish a pleasing aesthetic for screen images. The effect is often quite pleasing. It is noted in the XVision documentation that using levels can lead to "clipping". A more complete documentation and update is included in Cheers Renault An illustrative example of the same screenshot , one with no levels shader applied and one with a levels shader black point value of 10 is shown. Detailed analysis of the two is in the update documentation in the Tips & Techniques section. Although both images are quite pleasing, the second image has approximately 14.3% less unique colour information than the first due to black point clipping. There is no right/wrong approach to this in my opinion as it is dependent upon the individual image aesthetic that is desired. However, I wanted to update my work with this note as it can affect how shadow detail may be degraded due to black point clipping. Image 1 - No levels shader used Image 2 - XVision levels shader levels_black_point = 10 used Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olderndirt Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 Noticeable increase in shadow detail, especially on the Beechcraft. The ramp area shows darker stains which, to me, is more realistic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VH-KDK Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 Thanks R and Ken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Sawyer Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 This is all really nice and clever of you Pete but what happens when there's an XP update like I had yesterday? I went to XP 11.35r1. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renault Posted August 5, 2019 Author Share Posted August 5, 2019 23 hours ago, Jack Sawyer said: This is all really nice and clever of you Pete but what happens when there's an XP update like I had yesterday? I went to XP 11.35r1. The original FWL lua scripts as presented are simply accessing the XPlane data references that control shadow quality with parameter values that I found give a pleasant shadow rendering. Up until such time as they are blocked by Laminar Research they would be accessible. XPlane release version 11.35r1 has been publicly available since July 24th. It is only responsible programming etiquette to ensure that when a code is released for the first time it properly functions with the latest software release. As you can see from my signature I am running version 11.35r1 and this was the version used when these scripts were placed in the Tips & Techniques forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Sawyer Posted August 5, 2019 Share Posted August 5, 2019 18 minutes ago, renault said: The original FWL lua scripts as presented are simply accessing the XPlane data references that control shadow quality with parameter values that I found give a pleasant shadow rendering. Up until such time as they are blocked by Laminar Research they would be accessible. XPlane release version 11.35r1 has been publicly available since July 24th. It is only responsible programming etiquette to ensure that when a code is released for the first time it properly functions with the latest software release. As you can see from my signature I am running version 11.35r1 and this was the version used when these scripts were placed in the Tips & Techniques forum. Thanks Pete, but what is FWL? I was told to never go with an XP beta so I don’t. I just went to 11.35r1. I haven’t tried your scripts yet. I was only curious, Pete. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renault Posted August 5, 2019 Author Share Posted August 5, 2019 2 minutes ago, Jack Sawyer said: Thanks Pete, but what is FWL? I was told to never go with an XP beta so I don’t. I just went to 11.35r1. I haven’t tried your scripts yet. I was only curious, Pete. FWL - Fly with Lua (An essential part of any XPLane set up imho) https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/38445-flywithlua-ng-next-generation-edition-for-x-plane-11-win-lin-mac/ No one said anything about beta ( and you are quite right about a beta copy as it is essentially a release for debugging purposes for Laminar to sort out issues before a release version. It and is for users who are comfortable that it may crash completely on them. They will send bug reports to Laminar to help to sort out programming problems before the software is released publicly) 11.35r1 is 11.35 release version 1 and is Laminar's terminology for what they believe is a stable software release for general usage. If it is updated it, would become 11.35r2 etc. and you would receive a notice when you start Xplane that an update is available Beta releases will always use the terminology 11.XXb1 as an example , where the b stands for beta copy. You will never receive updates on beta copies as a general user as you have to specifically specify that you wish to receive beta copies by clicking a check box in XPlane settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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