cvearl Posted September 13, 2011 Share Posted September 13, 2011 I have been playing with Shade and ENB trying to achieve that holy grail of all sim scenery esthetics... Realistic natural looking ligfhting. OK. Turth be told, I currently only have enough skill and knowledge to steal the templates of the more artistic and talented out there and "seeing what it looks like" when I try different combinations. Marks Final from Shade with JV's or Heiko's ENB file for example. For this I have been using the following shots from my real world travels in the Rockies as a guidline to compare against. Thought some others may like them too. If I could get it to looks like this in the sim (and I see we are getting close). Wow. Cool beans! Lake Louise Alberta. Hiking to the Tea House and caught this shot. On the way to camping in Kananaskis. Kananaskis Lakes area. Just South of Canmore Alberta. Fairmont Hot Springs South of Radium. Columbia Valley. BC. Waterton National Park. Bordering Montanna. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skkuda Posted September 14, 2011 Share Posted September 14, 2011 THANKS!!! for the awesome pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvearl Posted September 14, 2011 Author Share Posted September 14, 2011 I was hoping once someone nailed the ENB ini file and shade combo to try and match them with shots in the sim. Just have to find some time. C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heiko Glatthorn Posted September 14, 2011 Share Posted September 14, 2011 Very nice pics, i hope i can visit those places one day... I think with the light blue rain preset and my ENB with very low darkening you will have a good chance. Just try to match the sky color - i am sure REX has one witch fits. The sky color still has a big impact regarding terrain appearance (the 'bigger picture'), so there is enough room to play. edit: You might increase the max bloom limit maybe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvearl Posted September 14, 2011 Author Share Posted September 14, 2011 Very nice pics, i hope i can visit those places one day... I think with the light blue rain preset and my ENB with very low darkening you will have a good chance. Just try to match the sky color - i am sure REX has one witch fits. The sky color still has a big impact regarding terrain appearance (the 'bigger picture'), so there is enough room to play. edit: You might increase the max bloom limit maybe. Ah ha! You wandered into my trap says the spider to the fly. Kidding. Thought you would pop in here with some tips. Will give em a go. As soon as I am done obessing over cameras in my newly purchased EZCA. Why did I buy this thing. Ignorance WAS bliss. Your right though. Up round here there is a bluish tint in the distant terrain. It is very common and I want to capture that. ENB will handle the clouds and Shade will add some depth and detail is what I am hoping. The sky tip was something I did not consider. Thanks for that one! Charles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amentiba Posted September 14, 2011 Share Posted September 14, 2011 thanks for sharing, nice photos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Lovell Posted September 14, 2011 Share Posted September 14, 2011 Breath taking pictures... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
micgrech Posted September 15, 2011 Share Posted September 15, 2011 Hi guys. I am using ENB series but not shade as yet. I am a bit hesitant because I am not sure what I need to do to get shade to work with ENB plus I use an external frame rate limiter. Can someone post some basic instructions on this or point me in the right direction where I can find this? Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvearl Posted September 15, 2011 Author Share Posted September 15, 2011 ENB and SHADE run independant of eachother. Shade has an EXE that loads Shade and launches FSX for you. But if you have another proggy that autolaunches FSX for you, SHADE has an alternate EXE that just loads Shade and you can load that other proggy last to autolaunch FSX. ENB and SHADE can then compliment eachother depeding on settings. Apparently they share some of the darkening stuff. So the dev of SHADE included an ENB ini file that he dialed back that was a good starting point with Shade in mind. C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 15, 2011 Share Posted September 15, 2011 It's odd, isn't it... No matter how good addons have become, you immediately see these are real pictures... Darned... I think I will experiment a little with the Light blue rain preset and install ENB again... and some new REX sky colors too (which indeed have an IMMENSE impact on how FSX looks!!!) BTW The problem with photographs like these is of course they aren't real either: the sky is clearly overexposed: in real life your eyes would adjust to that light sky... Then again, we are so used to looking at pictures and movies that way too often we think they show reality... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 15, 2011 Share Posted September 15, 2011 I give up. I spend 1 hour and 15 minutes on trying to recreate the posted photographs, but nothing comes close. Problem with shade is that the clouds get darker... I fooled around with tons of REX skies and ENB (making the colors more vibrant too), but I can't get that blue tint in the distance... Sometimes I did get close but then something else was totally off. And it also depends a LOT on the time of day you fly...! Some settings that seem nice are awfull on another time of day... I will wait for someone else to come up with the perfect Shade-ENB-REX-combination... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvearl Posted September 15, 2011 Author Share Posted September 15, 2011 J van E... Is there a parameter in the ini for ENB where I can have better ambient light within the cockpit so the panel does not suffer from blackout-itis so bad when facing the sunrise or sunset with one of the darker Shade presets? Even when facing into the sun in real life, the cockpit is lit up from light bouncing around in the cockit. Same with when you are driving in your car. With ENB, Can I window FSX, Half screen it. Bring up the ini and make changes? F12 and see the change happen in real time? C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 15, 2011 Share Posted September 15, 2011 Nah, afaik it's all or nothing with the shadows... unfortunately. Hence I don't use the darker presets. The clouds getting grey and dark is almost a bigger problem to me: you just can't get real sunny skies with a lot of contrast due to that. I now use ENB and Shade and still I can't get a convincing sunny day. I've been longing for a real sunny day in FS(X) since I started flying virtually. About ENB: I don't think you can make changes on the fly. But it's easy enough to try it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvearl Posted September 15, 2011 Author Share Posted September 15, 2011 Nah, afaik it's all or nothing with the shadows... unfortunately. Hence I don't use the darker presets. The clouds getting grey and dark is almost a bigger problem to me: you just can't get real sunny skies with a lot of contrast due to that. I now use ENB and Shade and still I can't get a convincing sunny day. I've been longing for a real sunny day in FS(X) since I started flying virtually. About ENB: I don't think you can make changes on the fly. But it's easy enough to try it. There is no try. Only do or do not. Ya. Ill give it a go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvearl Posted September 15, 2011 Author Share Posted September 15, 2011 Managed to find roughly the spot for Fairmonts shot. Getting close. Tried it with a lighter sky tone. Did not much care for it. Visibility 40 miles and Overcast. ALT 29.75, Temp 74C Dewpoint 54C. 30 Miles looks nice too. Also the built in Building Storms in FSX was nice too! Johns ENB ini file + Shade Light Blue Rain. This is not a composed shot. No AA maxed out. Just dirty old plop down the chopper where I though I was hiking in one of those shots. Here is the original again... Concerned what other locations and time of day would bring I tried Bowerman, Sunset with current weather. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 16, 2011 Share Posted September 16, 2011 Hm... we need to get that blueish haze into FSX somehow... FSX is much too clear and colors are much too er... full (or whatever the word is). I mean, no one will have problems telling which picture is real and which one is fake. It's obvious (again) that FSX and even Orbx only look a bit convincing from great heights or large disctances. (The mountains in the disctance look nice, but everything at this side of that nearby hill...). I've got some time on my hands now, so I will continue my search for that holy grail of blueish light. EDIT Hm... this is as close as I can get. It's really impossible to get those blue colors in the distance. Well, it IS possible, buit then the whole picture becomes blue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvearl Posted September 16, 2011 Author Share Posted September 16, 2011 Well that's getting up there for sure! That bluishness will be subject to weather and so on as well though. C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Abdey Posted September 16, 2011 Share Posted September 16, 2011 so I will continue my search for that holy grail of blueish light. I may be able to help a little ... I've made a custom sky texture that creates a very blue haze layer... see screen shot. I've uploaded the files if you wish to try it... it's noon only, so you have to fly around that time to see the affect... unzip and copy the nine 'sky_noon X' textures into your main FSX directories 'texture' folder, overwriting the existing ones. If you run REX or FEX re-installing a sky theme will overwrite these.... if you running FSX default skys, then you will need to back-up the textures first. EDIT: to add this was taken a 20m viability, so pushing it back will make the middle-ground less blue. http://www.mediafire...inedeypttma7wur Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted September 16, 2011 Share Posted September 16, 2011 That screenshot look really nice. Very close to the blue haze on the top photos. I'm going to try these myself, thanks for posting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alan2 Posted September 16, 2011 Share Posted September 16, 2011 Good post Charles , thanks for the photos . The tweaking continues ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alan2 Posted September 16, 2011 Share Posted September 16, 2011 Using REX system, but because of purple colour problems I am using HDE sky textures. Marks blue midday mod (thanks) at 30mile res. and Charles's inspiration. Light blue rain Shade and darkening at 4 . Looking ver promising for the first tweak. May resume REX textures... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsvette123 Posted September 16, 2011 Share Posted September 16, 2011 Looking great sir are you making a custom shade preset ? also please share your rex settings, thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvearl Posted September 17, 2011 Author Share Posted September 17, 2011 REX has a Blue Haze sky texture as well I see. Might have to give it a go. C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 Thanks for the files, Mark! I am very curious what can be done with it (also in combination with lighter Shade- and ENB-setting). I will test them today! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timest Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 Different approach here using the custom ENB palette and the REX blue haze texture: http://realenvironme...hp?topic=7467.0 Edit: Mark, that looks very nice as well man!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Abdey Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 Different approach here using the custom ENB palette and the REX blue haze texture: http://realenvironme...hp?topic=7467.0 Edit: Mark, that looks very nice as well man!! The palette approach works well too, but it does tend to make everything blue in the process... your shots look stunning with it though Tim. As cvaerl said said REX does offer a blue haze sky... mine is just a lot bluer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 Different approach here using the custom ENB palette and the REX blue haze texture: http://realenvironme...hp?topic=7467.0 I already gave that one a try yesterday but as Mark said EVERYTHING becomes way too blue with that palette. I also tried editing the palette but the effect is too much all over the place. I will give Mark's textures a try this afternoon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 Ooooookay, I did some testing and a LOT of Photoshopping and right now this is the result. I made an animated gif comparing my picture from yesterday with my new one. Since I found timest's ENB files too blue but also Mark's new textures (and I also think most posted screenshots looks way too dark overall), I edited the textures in Photoshop until I had something that looked a bit (yeah, a bit) more like the photographs from the opening post. The old pic in the gif was taken with time at 17.00 hrs, the new one is taken at noon. - In order to get at least a BIT of Shade, I used the preset Day1_default_darker. - Because of the added blue there is a lot less bloom near the horizon, so I added a bit of bloom using ENB (using my own personal settings as default btw). As you can see the mountains in the distance are a LOT more blueish than on the picture I made yesterday, while at the same time everything that's near is looking quite normal and not blueish at all. I quite like it. I still have to test it with various planes and looking towards the sun and away from the sun and also at higher alts (you usually don't fly this low), so stay tuned for some random screenshots with these settings. I am still not completely satisfied with the blue sky itself: I tried to copy the colors from the photographs from the opening post, but specially ENB does odd things to colors. But... I think I am getting closer to those photographs than ever before. EDIT Here is the shot I tried to copy the colors and mood from, which is a different shot than the one of which I used the location! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 Two shots at different altitudes and one flying towards the sun (dark vc) and away from it (lighter vc). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 And finally (for now) of course a comparison with FSX WITHOUT and WITH Shade, ENB and the edited sky textures (you may guess which one is which.. ). The shot is taken at noon and at a normal flying altitude for GA. Looks quite different, doesn't it? Look what an impact Shade has even at noon! I also like the bloom and the blue in the distance. I think I will stick with these settings and edited files for a while! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coban Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 And finally (for now) of course a comparison with FSX WITHOUT and WITH Shade, ENB and the edited sky textures (you may guess which one is which.. ). The shot is taken at noon and at a normal flying altitude for GA. Looks quite different, doesn't it? Look what an impact Shade has even at noon! I also like the bloom and the blue in the distance. I think I will stick with these settings and edited files for a while! J van E, can you please explain how you get this settings ? I have got shade, enb and rex. Which settings I should choose to get blue haze ? do you use ASE as well ? Thanks</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alan2 Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 HI rsvette, guys.. Yes, my shots are a bit on the blue side. The Sky textures are not REX but HDE . for what its worth the cloud is Cumulus 21 but thats always changing REX ftx calm ocean,inlands calm wave animation ( all looks ok and better on fps , something that I have to do ..compromise) . Played around with the plankton,saturation, brightness and contrast. There is so many factors effecting the look that it is a Pandoras box once you start messing with it . The best idea, for me , is to find something that kinda suits everything and leave it that. Then after a while you just feel like a change and off you go again tweaking . Heres the same Marks noon stuff with one of the lightest days going ..."Bright 2" . Doesnt look like Mark's mod is showing but it should be and maybe is ...too many variables. I look at that pic and think ..thats so light I could up the darkness and get stronger terrain shadows which look better, up to a point. Then the water goes off. And so it goes on...... so here is two screens of bright 2 and a third screen of HDE which I'll keep using ...for now ! .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 J van E, can you please explain how you get this settings ? I have got shade, enb and rex. Which settings I should choose to get blue haze ? do you use ASE as well ? Thanks</p> I used Mark's trick (editing the sky_noon textures), so the blue effect can only be seen around noon. In order to get everything like in my screenshots, you will need to... 1. copy the bmp's from this zip... http://www.fsfiles.o.../1316320662.zip ...into the FSX Texture folder (make sure to backup the original files: if you use REX you can run REX again to restore the REX textures). They give you that blue haze at noon. 2. start Shade_GUI, load the 'Day1_default_darker' preset and copy it to all days. 3. use the enbseries.ini from this zip: http://www.fsfiles.o.../1316292399.zip 4. I loaded the weather preset Building storms (which amongst others sets visibility to 20 miles). I just noticed that loading that preset again gives me more clouds than on the screenshot, but that might be because I slewed into that position from far away). Obviously the weather has a big impact on how things look. I haven't tried it with ASE yet. (ASE is nice, but usually it doesn't offer me the weather I like to fly in at that moment...) 5. The shot was taken at 12.50 hrs sim time. That should be it, I guess. BTW You should beware that what you see on my screenshots may look different than it does on my pc due to different monitor and driver settings...! I don't use the default settings from my Samsung monitor and I also changed the color settings in the nVidia CP... (making things a bit darker). So you might also have a look at those settings. Of course this all makes it impossible to let you see what I actually see on my screen. EDIT I just tried Marks final preset again because the Day1_default_darker presets makes the cloudshadows a bit too red... Result are quite different when you use other weather, which makes it hard to settle for a specific combination... Use more or less clouds and things look different again. And in the sim the lighter blue colors are a bit er... toilet-blue like. A bit too girlish, so to speak. Phew, complicated stuff to get right... The thing I really do like is how things in the distance get that blue haze and how things nearby stay normal. But those clouds and that light blue in the sky... sigh... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coban Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 I used Mark's trick (editing the sky_noon textures), so the blue effect can only be seen around noon. In order to get everything like in my screenshots, you will need to... 1. copy the bmp's from this zip... http://www.fsfiles.o.../1316320662.zip ...into the FSX Texture folder (make sure to backup the original files: if you use REX you can run REX again to restore the REX textures). They give you that blue haze at noon. 2. start Shade_GUI, load the 'Day1_default_darker' preset and copy it to all days. 3. use the enbseries.ini from this zip: http://www.fsfiles.o.../1316292399.zip 4. I loaded the weather preset Building storms (which amongst others sets visibility to 20 miles). I just noticed that loading that preset again gives me more clouds than on the screenshot, but that might be because I slewed into that position from far away). Obviously the weather has a big impact on how things look. I haven't tried it with ASE yet. (ASE is nice, but usually it doesn't offer me the weather I like to fly in at that moment...) 5. The shot was taken at 12.50 hrs sim time. That should be it, I guess. BTW You should beware that what you see on my screenshots may look different than it does on my pc due to different monitor and driver settings...! I don't use the default settings from my Samsung monitor and I also changed the color settings in the nVidia CP... (making things a bit darker). So you might also have a look at those settings. Of course this all makes it impossible to let you see what I actually see on my screen. EDIT I just tried Marks final preset again because the Day1_default_darker presets makes the cloudshadows a bit too red... Result are quite different when you use other weather, which makes it hard to settle for a specific combination... Use more or less clouds and things look different again. And in the sim the lighter blue colors are a bit er... toilet-blue like. A bit too girlish, so to speak. Phew, complicated stuff to get right... The thing I really do like is how things in the distance get that blue haze and how things nearby stay normal. But those clouds and that light blue in the sky... sigh... J van E, I can't thank you enough !!!!!! this looks stunning...I am a driver, and while I drive on motorway, I was always complaining why I can't get blue haze on FSX, because where I drive, there was mostly blue haze on horizon. Now, I have same blue haze !!!! Thanks a lot mate... Also thanks to Mark.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 J van E, I can't thank you enough !!!!!! this looks stunning...I am a driver, and while I drive on motorway, I was always complaining why I can't get blue haze on FSX, because where I drive, there was mostly blue haze on horizon. Now, I have same blue haze !!!! Thanks a lot mate... Also thanks to Mark.. You're welcome. In the meantime I edited the textures again (LOL) to make them a little bit less 'toilet-blue'. You can see the difference (if you look closely) in the animated giff. The difference is small but to me it's noticable in the air, which looks a bit more real. Obviously the haze on the mountains is a tiny bit less blue now... Anyway, it's nice to have choices. Again, these textures will only show the blue haze around noon! BTW Due to the less saturated colors I am back to Day1_default_darker. (Why do I change my mind about FSX-related things every 15 minutes or so... ) Whatever weather you use, for the best effect you should set a visibility of 20 miles! (I wanted to add this to my previous post, but I can't edit that one anymore... Wish the 'edit window' was a few hours longer...) The new blue sky files: http://www.fsfiles.o.../1316358020.zip Comparison with the previous version: That's it for now. I think. I hope, I guess... I am going to do a complete flight now with the latest settings and files. EDIT And in case someone thinks the new files don't give that blue haze anymore, here's a comparison with FSX without and with the files and edits. As you can see it's STILL a lot more blueish than before! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvearl Posted September 17, 2011 Author Share Posted September 17, 2011 Wow this sure is coming together! Starting to look like home. C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 For some more examples: />http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/37040-blue-haze-in-the-distance-like-i-always-wanted/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coban Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 Perfect. But I have a problem, which is, I get blue haze around 12 oclock. at 15.00 blue haze will go. Is there a way to keep blue haze till dusk ? Also, right now, (finally) I started reading ASE manual. there is options you can use ASE as FSX weather machine. So not real time weather but whatever weather you want, you can put to fsx from ASE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsvette123 Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 Great explanation, thanks so much for the hard work and files Pal. "you can use ASE as FSX weather machine" wow I did not know that have to look in to that, thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted September 17, 2011 Share Posted September 17, 2011 Perfect. But I have a problem, which is, I get blue haze around 12 oclock. at 15.00 blue haze will go. Is there a way to keep blue haze till dusk ? LOL I just came here to post I am working on the next logical step: making this effect possible during morning, noon and day. I started working on this because I wanted to see deeper shadows with Shade and that's only possible at other times than noon! So stay tuned for updated files. EDIT Here is a zip with the new sky textures for morning, noon and afternoon. They are almost identical apart from a few pixels. http://www.fsfiles.org/imagehost/uploads/1316336287.zip Mind you, I know nothing about this stuff and I am just experimenting... Back up your original files first or if you have REX, use that to install other sky textures if you don't like these. As I said earlier I use a specific ENB ini (see post above) and a specific Shade preset (see post above). Of course you are free to use and do whatever you want or whatever works for you! Here is an animated gif (small screenshots because 6 full screenshots became too big in one gif) taken at various times of day (FSX set to July). Beware: depending on what dawn and sunset textures you have installed, the transition (around 06.00 and 20.00 o'clock in my case) from my textures to those textures might give odd results. The possibility to fly with the blue haze at those earlier or later hours works very nice with Shade! Those are the times that Shade really shows what it can do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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