Since I am forced to do nearly a complete re-write of my next lightfix upgrade (for FSX) I am putting some time in correcting the sun as well. The new sun will work very well with ot without bloom, however bloom will enhance it correctly. It adds a larger corona, hot-spot and correct size lens flair with the right aura for sunrise and sunset.


I am working to get rid of the hard pixel lines (as seen in the last image) and soften the overall effect so it blends. It responds correctly to haze layers and will diffuse as it should with or without bloom enabled.


There have been other fixes posted for this however they over-saturate especially with light bloom enabled. This update will not do that and allow the best of both worlds to come out.

With the upcoming DX10 patch and Vista, bloom and water can be used with a significantly reduced hit on performance and with the DX9 changes for XP, bloom is possible all the time if you have the right hardware.




I still have work to do on it but here is a progress images set:





EDIT: I remove the image tags to lighten the thread per forum rules





Bloom on


http://www.simviation.com/yabbuploads/newsun1.jpg










http://www.simviation.com/yabbuploads/newsun3.jpg










http://www.simviation.com/yabbuploads/newsun2.jpg








Bloom Off





http://www.simviation.com/yabbuploads/newsun4.jpg












http://www.simviation.com/yabbuploads/newsun5.jpg










Still working on the blend elements without bloom enabled:

http://www.simviation.com/yabbuploads/newsun6.jpg






Because Aces removed alpha-fade from FSX it has made the job of getting the lights correct with the least amount of visual annoyance very difficult. I have had to give and take in some areas I was not very pleased with.



I should have the new package posted in a few weeks. I am still working with it and verifying the upcoming patch will not present any new issues that would force an update.



Also note that the sky and clouds are not default. They are from Flight Environment X. The set I use is as follows:


Clouds: Building Cumulus - or- Realistically Dense

Sky: Manny Special - or - Natural Haze

Water: Depths of Realism -or - Dark

Water Animation: Medium Pacific


Some of those themes must be downloaded from within FEX. I can not say enough good things about the program. Although there are very few water replacements I like because they tend to be too green or too blue, but, the ones I posted above are very realistic.



NOTE: The latest REGISTERED version of FSUIPC4 has undergone a good change, however, unlike FS9 the ability to set gradual layers should NOT be used due to problems with simconnect which cause major stutters. If you use FSUIPC4, get the latest version and although you can use the General Visibility Limits, make sure Graduated Visibility is NOT enabled. More information is posted at Pete Dawsons forum under the October update thread. Please read it before using the new version FSUIPC4, which he has also posted in that thread, not on the main site.

Pete has added warnings to the FSUIPC GUI so you can see which settings are causing stutters. With the right settings FSUIPC4 works fine with the ASX weather engine however I am finding the default real world weather engine seems to be doing an equaly good job if the Random Extend METAR maxima feature of FSUIPC4 is ENABLED.

I also set the processor affinity for ASX to my 4th core (core 3) instead of all of them to take the load off of core0 which is needed by the sim. The same can be done with a dual core by setting processor affinity in the Task manager for the ASX weather engine process to core1 and uncheck core0.

As I said, FSUIPC4 seems to be doing a good job now with the default weather control so I have not been using ASX as I did in the past.

Thanks. I still have a way to go but the results so far seem to be working well. The above was the first test run and there is room for improvement.


I also find that using the 32bit cloud textures in FEX does not increase the visual quality enough to justify the hit. It is much better to set FEX to use ALL 1024x1024 textures and the Compression to DXT5 for clouds and 32bit for Water Animations. It is important 32bit be used for animations or annoying grid pattern lines can show in the reflections.


Dont get me wrong, you can also set to 512x512 and 32bit on the clouds but since DXT5 naturally softens them, as clouds should be, the 1024x1024 resolution brings out the details the 512 32bit versions do, without the performance hit and a much better overall look..  IMHO

Of course everyone's hardware is different in what it can and can not do. It is best to experiment with the 256-512-1024 settings with 32bit and DXT to see what works best.

All fixed




Without Bloom



http://www.simviation.com/yabbuploads/newsun14.jpg

Thats 100X better than default and no bloom.








With Bloom

http://www.simviation.com/yabbuploads/newsun13.jpg











I should have the entire package ready in a few weeks

awesome looks good
need a beta test

jonny

microlight wrote on Oct 17^th, 2007 at 3:55am:




I do not have FS9 installed anymore so I can not test it. The luminosity and alpha is based on the FSX lighting engine, however, they are the same files and suneffect.cfg so it is possible it may work in FS9.

In order to expand the corona, add the god-ray effect and have it be correctly dynamic with cloud cover I had to add another file to the system and edit it into the suneffect.cfg. Also, unlike FS9 all the sun textures are mip-mapped, have a defined alpha channel and are much larger in file size.

FSX renders lighting differently so although the textures may play in FS9, how well it works overall is unknown.

alrot wrote on Oct 17^th, 2007 at 1:19pm:




I am just reworking the sun graphics and fine tuning the suneffect.cfg


I find it a bit of surprise, although not unexpected, the sun was not reworked for FSX. There was really no reason to provide bloom for that specific element and not at least give the non-bloom hardware people something to look at too.

But then again MSFS is designed as a base and we are suppose to add-on to it or buy add-ons which is part of the game in the franchise. The sun is an environmental element and since most of those elements are upgraded by developers I am sure it had a low priority for re-design.

Aye!

I would review if I had...

The one in the second link looks absolutely brilliant, nice going Nick.....

Reider