resolved P3D V5.1 strange SimObjects appearance with EA on

Marcus P · October 29, 2020

Ground sunk and strange texture appearance in P3D V5.1

Is this issue a P3D V5.1 issue and has to be addressed to LM or a Orbx issue (Orbx Base, Orbx KSAN, Orbx Building HD, Orbx Trees HD) and therefor to address at Orbx?

See picture and view my specs

Reproducable:
Switch to outside view and pan around. At some view angles (Horizontal spoken) right sided the mesh seem to change. This will influence the top layer. At some "angle" at some location the mesch let the ground sunk or appear again.

System specs

Prepar3D_v5_Academic_5.1.8.26742

Edition Windows 10 Home
Version 2004
Installed on 20201025
OS Build 19042.572
Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.31.0

Latest Nvidia Drivers

Main Addons

Marcus P · October 29, 2020

Is this issue a P3D V5.1 issue and has to be addressed to LM or a Orbx issue (Orbx Base, Orbx KSAN, Orbx Building HD, Orbx Trees HD) and therefor to address at Orbx?

System specs

Prepar3D_v5_Academic_5.1.8.26742

Edition Windows 10 Home
Version 2004
Installed on 20201025
OS Build 19042.572
Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.31.0

Latest Nvidia Drivers

Main Addons

Marcus P · October 29, 2020

I saw the mods merged my different topics. One is related to the mesh, the other is related to the appearance of simobjects in distance.

The title of this topic does NOT cover both issues, which I think are different ones.

is this usefull?

Marcus

Nick Cooper · October 29, 2020

Hello,

here is an answer to your first question:

Did you have the elevation anomaly before you installed P3D v5.1?

cdv0007 · October 29, 2020

Maybe all of your products have to re-process texture materials for EA based on the P5D SDK. This will be a huge project, so I can't see a bright future in the P3D market of Orbx.

Nick Cooper · October 29, 2020

Thanks, that's very helpful.

I believe that is exactly what Larry has already written,

though he does not include your business advice.

cdv0007 · October 29, 2020

I have serious doubts about the credibility of the LM developers. They promised to solve this problem in the next update. Not only did it not solve it, but it was even more serious, thus shifting the responsibility to the addon developers. This means that a large amount of investment will bring risks, if addon developers do not update, P3D will have no future.

AdiR · October 29, 2020

1 hour ago, Nick Cooper said:

Thanks, that's very helpful.

I believe that is exactly what Larry has already written,

though he does not include your business advice.

Nick, is Orbx Central compatible with 5.1? I'm downloading P3D now and I'm curious if I should wait for Central update or just install my Orbx product and enjoy

Nick Cooper · October 29, 2020

Hello,

it's just an update to P3D v5, so there should be no change to Orbx Central.

Marcus P · October 29, 2020

3 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

Thanks, that's very helpful.

I believe that is exactly what Larry has already written,

though he does not include your business advice.

See below about QUOTE FROM THE LM DEV from LM Support forum about the strange Object appearance within P3D V5.X EA mode on.

Does this mean Orbx has to rework some things to make their products compatible again?

Marcus

QUOTE FROM THE LM DEV from LM Support forum about the strange Object appearance within P3D V5.X EA mode on.

Hello,

We are working to fix default content that also has this issue. For 5.1 we made several fixes and plan to incorporate more in the next update. In most cases this is due to the improper use of blend modes with alpha testing content and the z write alpha flag which is no longer supported. If you are using alpha testing, in most cases you don't also need to be blending.

Regards,
Rob McCarthy

Marcus P · October 29, 2020

4 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

Hello,

here is an answer to your first question:

Did you have the elevation anomaly before you installed P3D v5.1?

I can not tell you for sure. But I can tell you I did a full CLEAN P3D install on the 25. Oct. 2020 with P3D V5.0, from scratch on a fresh Windows 10 2004 install too. Just uninstalled P3D yesterday and installed V5.1. again. All 3 elements in one "install-run"

Marcus P · October 30, 2020

Any official statements from your side on this?

Lots of products do need an update, now that EA is out of BETA. TE, Orbx Ariports LOWI (Objetcs and especially the famous Cloud Rock) etc. , Orbx HD Buildings, you name it.

I think we all like to see solutions for this as in this state the products do seem to be not fully compatible, at least visually spoken.

A feedback would be welcome.

Thanks for your hard work!

Marcus

Nick Cooper · October 30, 2020

Hello,

you have feedback in your linked topic.

BuddhistManX · November 3, 2020

If you are using Buildings HD and your water tower is annoying, the following fixes will fix it.

Use ModelConverterX.

Open autogen.BGL (p3dv5\Global Buildings HD\Orbx\Scripts\BuildingsHD\Core\Scenery\Global\Scenery)

agn_watertankmodern_1

agn_watertankmodern_2

agn_watertankmodern_3

agn_watertankmodern_4

Open Texture propaties by Material Editor

Alpha Test

Alpha Test Function / GreaterEqual to Never

Alpha Test Level / 0 to 1

Z-Test Alpha / True to False

BuddhistManX · November 4, 2020

For your reference.

Although it is not an Orbx product, when using DRZEWIECKI DESIGN's SeattleX, KBFI trees that use SODE to change the seasonal texture will float in the EA. I'm not sure which is the cause, object or SODE.

When I use CARTAYNA FILES of GSX Level2, SODE is turned off according to the manual instruction, so I don't notice that the whole tree object disappears in KSEA.

hjmx · November 11, 2020

I really hope that Orbx considers to work on updates on these issues.

Ed Correia · November 11, 2020

LM have a beta in testing the appears to have resolved this issue.

Manu1985 · November 11, 2020

2 hours ago, Ed Correia said:

LM have a beta in testing the appears to have resolved this issue.

Would be great! It was really the main visual issue that bring me out of P3Dv5.1, most of my payware scenery having part that doesn't blend with the atmosphere it was really bad, thanks for keeping us in touch!

Marcus P · November 19, 2020

P3D V5.1 HF1 did not solve the problem with Objects shimmering through clouds

This is Orbx HD Buildings.

Needs Orbx to update this as LM stated they did fix their side of the code (see release notes from LM P3D V5.1HF1 today?

Did a complete uninstall and install of all 3 P3D V5.1HF1 components.

No tweaks (not in cfg and no shaders, nothing tweaked).

System specs

Prepar3D_v5_Academic_5.1.8.26742

Edition Windows 10 Home
Version 20H2
Installed on 20201023
OS Build 19042.630
Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.31.0

Latest Nvidia Drivers

Main Addons

Nick Cooper · November 19, 2020

Hello,

you must completely reinstall P3D , that is all of the modules.

I have done that.

This, for example was how TEGB South London did look:

and this is how it looks after the hotfix.

Click on the image to see the original

This is West Yorkshire with Global Base, Buildings HD, HD Trees and Terraflora.

There must be thousands of trees and buildings, I see none sticking out through the haze.

Trees at EGPH, as reported by a customer:

The topic: https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/200930-scenery-objects-visible-through-clouds

How it looks now:

Marcus P · November 25, 2020

The issue with the haze seem solved. But unfortunately stays when there is no fog and only clouds. So a lot of objects still shining through clouds instead of fog. This seems to be a difference.

All updated. Complete uninstall and reinstall P3D latest HF and also updated Orbx

Nick Cooper · November 25, 2020

Hello,

underneath these waffles is Global Base, Buildings HD and Trees HD.

It's a pity that the waffles do not look like clouds.

Larry_R · November 25, 2020

Hi guys,

The waffle pattern Nick illustrates is a result of the cell size used by the enhanced atmospherics engine. I gather there there is a limit to the size that can be used for performance reasons but I'm sure the LM team is working on the problem. If you are interested, you could play with the VolumetricClouds.cfg to see if you could make the grid less obvious.

Cheers

paulk · November 25, 2020

Hi

I did the full reinstall like Nick talks about and have no issues with objects poking through, I am very impressed with this latest version of P3d V5

grandfred29 · December 31, 2020

Hi, today i flown my first flight since 5.1 update with EA off, i flown above TE Nederland, unfortunaly i can see black objects threw the clouds.

Thanks

Marcus P · January 7, 2021

Hello together!

I am using the latest P3D V5.1 build incl. the hotfix. I don´t have any tweaks or shader enhancements like Envshade or PTA installed (never had).

Unfortunately I have to come back to the issues where SimObjects are blending through fog/clouds from further distances, especially very heavy seen with TrueEarth products. A picture is attached below. EA was on, default weather clear sky and no visibility reductions set. Just the most "naked" weather you can have ;-)

I did a full and clean P3D V5 installation and also reinstalled ALL of your Orbx products to make sure this is done properly. So I can exclude issues on my end.

There are two possible reasons identified for now:

LM has further issues and a solution is not found yet
3th Party does have alpha blending generally activated for NON transparent materials and this will cause issues

Or can it be a layering order issue on my end?

I am still suffering from this issue and there seem to be a chance that this has to do something with the alpha blending enabled on non transparent objects.

I got feedback from Mister Beau Hollis from LM about this, which I quoted below.

Is there a possibility that alpha blending is enabled "generally" on your (TE) objects like houses, buildings, bridges, etc., even if they not need this enabled? Because if that is the case, this issue will still remain. Mister Hollis explained it in his post at LM Support forum which I quoted below

It would be kind from you if you would clarify this internally and give us some feedback on this. Should this be the case, then it seems unproperly usage of materials which are mainly thought for transparent objects like glass.

Your Truearth products, for instance, should be compatible with V5. But seeing almost every building at San Francisco and whole Netherlands through clouds and fog isn´t a nice view.

The whole city is blending through, incl. golden gate bridge etc. I did already posted this earlier at Orbx. And Orbx was assuming that the HF from LM would fix this. This seems not completely be the case.

Here is a quote from Mister Beau Hollis from today at LM Support forum:

-------------------------------

One thing to note with enhanced atmospherics is that it's intended to draw last and layer the fog and clouds onto the scene. Transparent objects though, have to render after the atmospherics because you might be, for example, looking at the clouds, though a glass window. Transparent objects also have limitations with regards to our ability to instance/batch them because they need to draw back to front for correct layering. For best performance and to reduce visual artifacts, objects that aren't transparent shouldn't use materials with alpha blending enabled. It's pretty common though to enable alpha blending in case you need it. In the content drop alongside the latest hot fix, we included fixes to many of our default models to flag them properly so that they can draw before the clouds/fog.

-------------------------------------

https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6312&t=141012&p=234360#p234357

SEE THE NEXT POST: ISSUE IS ON LM SIDE! I did not delete this post to share the info with you. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Thanks a lot for your hard work and hopefully we can sort this out together.

Regards

Marcus

Marcus P · January 7, 2021

OK. Roll back on this one. Mister Beau Hollis did some searching and found the issue to be at their end too.

Here is the next quote from him:

-----------------------------------------------------

Ok. It looks like this issue actually impacts non-transparent models. The Z-bias does indeed look like it's causing this. The atmospheric haze/scatter difference is fairly minor, but if you have a ground fog layer, the z-bias can be enough to pull the buildings above the fog. We will look into both issues and see what we can do. In the meantime, I think that if you adjust your visibility layer top to be higher and increase visibility a bit to compensate, you can achieve a similar level of ground visibility while keeping this issue from cropping up.

Thanks again for the detailed post, and for pointing out the link to the other post regarding z-bias. You were spot-on with your analysis.

-------------------------------------------------------

I thought to share it here in case of other users would claim issue too. Link to his post below.

https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6312&t=141012&p=234360#p234361

Marcus

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resolved P3D V5.1 strange SimObjects appearance with EA on

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