Realistic Clouds

[Mysticpuma]

I'm wishing you luck with this Rowdy, the colour pallette in BoX is awful. 

I remember creating a couple of videos for Team Fusion when they changed the ground tiles in Clod to improve how they looked and add more natural and vibrant colours:

 

 

 

and also when they brought in a new lighting system :

 

 

 

 

I just don't know what it is about BoX but the sky always has a weird cast, the ground is very bland and the colours odd, like I said, I wish you luck but interested to follow your work. 

 

I still only randomly get your cloud systems though, even with the v14, cumulonimbus clouds v2, 3d clouds and GP presets, weather heavy, clouds set to high not Ultra, my clouds rarely have any depth still

Edited March 19, 2021 by Mysticpuma

[Beebop]

W O W!  What a difference.

[iicarus]

When I use 3D overcast, when below the cloud layer the sky appears as clear but with precipitation. As I climb I start to enter a cloud layer seeming appearing out of nowhere. Does anyone known what would cause this? Im skeptical about whether my mod is even working correctly at all. I have CloudV4 and Cumulonumbus2 installed and disabled 3D overcast for the meantime. 

 

Also, does CloudsV14.Greysky completely replace the clear sky skybox with one that is always grey/overcast no matter the altitude?

[rowdyb00t]

16 minutes ago, iicarus said:

When I use 3D overcast, when below the cloud layer the sky appears as clear but with precipitation. As I climb I start to enter a cloud layer seeming appearing out of nowhere. Does anyone known what would cause this? Im skeptical about whether my mod is even working correctly at all. I have CloudV4 and Cumulonumbus2 installed and disabled 3D overcast for the meantime. 

 

Also, does CloudsV14.Greysky completely replace the clear sky skybox with one that is always grey/overcast no matter the altitude?

   It should look like this

 

  As for the grey sky, it only changes a few sky dome for variety. It mostly still has blue skies. 

[rowdyb00t]

 

 

Cloud lighting work. Still tweaking it. Lapino summer, I've also been messing with the map textures, trees and contrast .

 

 

[HappyHaddock]

1 hour ago, rowdyb00t said:

 

Cloud lighting work. Still tweaking it. Lapino summer, I've also been messing with the map textures, trees and contrast .

 

 

I think you are starting to appreciate what I meant when I told you how much needs re-balancing as once you start tweaking one thing it leads to more and more as you can't change one thing in isolation without it impacting upon the look of everything else. 

 

Good luck with the ongoing work.

 

HH

 

[Picchio]

Just don't allow it to get out of hand... both of you

Edited March 21, 2021 by Picchio

[rowdyb00t]

On 3/21/2021 at 4:19 AM, HappyHaddock said:

 

I think you are starting to appreciate what I meant when I told you how much needs re-balancing as once you start tweaking one thing it leads to more and more as you can't change one thing in isolation without it impacting upon the look of everything else. 

 

Good luck with the ongoing work.

 

HH

 

  It seems very endless . I don’t plan on any major reworks of the landscape. I just changed the color and lightness / contrast on Lapino summer and autumn for my own pleasure. The rivers sort of bugged me a bit as well. I’ve been trying to balance out the lighting on the clouds with out changing shaders (haven’t really studied on this stuff). I’ve found that putting a negative value on  the ambient for the clouds and turning up the sunbright to a rather high level has some decent results. 
   How’s things going with your WIP?

[Mysticpuma]

On 3/21/2021 at 7:17 AM, rowdyb00t said:

 

 

Cloud lighting work. Still tweaking it. Lapino summer, I've also been messing with the map textures, trees and contrast .

 

 

 

The feature I notice in your image is how saturated the sky Blue is and how unsaturated the landscape is. This is one feature that (stock game) really stands out for me, the weird colour palette. The green and brown never look saturated, they always look 50% desaturated. 

 

I looked at some current images of the Kuban area and found these on Getty:

 

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/photos/kuban-russia-aerial

 

While I also appreciate it's a different game the colour pallette of CloD is very natural compared to BoX. 

 

 

 

 

[Beebop]

I agree that the color palette is wonky compared to other titles.

 

Although it affects the entire game, try lowering you Gamma to below .8.  You can do that manually in the startup.cfg under

[KEY = graphics]

gamma = 0.80000

(NOTE:  After changing use 'Save' NOT 'Save As'.  Save As makes it a .txt file by default and therefore unreadable by the game engine.

Also, if you change the Gamma using the GUI it will go no lower than 0.80000)

 

Start with 0.75000.  I've gone as low as 0.60000 but with my current monitor am satisfied with the game low default.

 

[rowdyb00t]

1 hour ago, Mysticpuma said:

The feature I notice in your image is how saturated the sky Blue is and how unsaturated the landscape is. This is one feature that (stock game) really stands out for me, the weird colour palette. The green and brown never look saturated, they always look 50% desaturated. 

 

I looked at some current images of the Kuban area and found these on Getty:

 

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/photos/kuban-russia-aerial

 

While I also appreciate it's a different game the colour pallette of CloD is very natural compared to BoX. 

 I’ve actually desaturated the skydome colors since that pic. I was mainly focusing on the cloud lighting. Now since I did that, I had to re-do all the cloud lighting again 

  Oh well. So I should have all the summer files done for now. I’ll post some pics when I get home. Then it’s off to the winter. 
   I do like the landscape colors of CloD, however I don’t like the sky. It seems to grey in my opinion. We’ll have to see what TF brings with the new weather. 

[rowdyb00t]

 

Pics are from 5:30 to 11:30

 

 

Edited March 24, 2021 by rowdyb00t

[Mysticpuma]

Rowdy, much prefer the sky colour. Out of interest is it possible to add about 30-40% more saturation to the ground tiles just as a test while you are experimenting? 

Edited March 23, 2021 by Mysticpuma

[rowdyb00t]

13 hours ago, Mysticpuma said:

Rowdy, much prefer the sky colour. Out of interest is it possible to add about 30-40% more saturation to the ground tiles just as a test while you are experimenting? 

  Yes I can. Probably not the best map for that. I think that kuban would be a better choice with all the green. Also I worked on Lapino autumns contrast, saturation and river. I post it later with some cloud pics. 

[Stonehouse]

Is the saturation being talked about the gpresets.cfg saturation or something else? I've no knowledge of what the technical process is that links sky colour and ground tile saturation but I was thinking that if you are setting the sky colour off Kuban that other maps will be different but as far as I know the sky and clouds textures are across all maps? You wouldn't want to get too closely linked to a particular map if that was true? You would have to aim for a middle ground? 

[rowdyb00t]

13 minutes ago, No457_Stonehouse said:

Is the saturation being talked about the gpresets.cfg saturation or something else? I've no knowledge of what the technical process is that links sky colour and ground tile saturation but I was thinking that if you are setting the sky colour off Kuban that other maps will be different but as far as I know the sky and clouds textures are across all maps? You wouldn't want to get too closely linked to a particular map if that was true? You would have to aim for a middle ground? 

   No I actually edited the landscape tile textures,  .tini file and some other .dds files in the Lapino map folder. 

[LizLemon]

5 hours ago, No457_Stonehouse said:

Is the saturation being talked about the gpresets.cfg saturation or something else? I've no knowledge of what the technical process is that links sky colour and ground tile saturation but I was thinking that if you are setting the sky colour off Kuban that other maps will be different but as far as I know the sky and clouds textures are across all maps? You wouldn't want to get too closely linked to a particular map if that was true? You would have to aim for a middle ground? 

 

In texture.tini there is a setting called RTcontrast. Values higher than 1 increase tile contrast while values lower decrease it - stalingrad is set to 0.7 in stock. The skydome texture is blended in with the landscape and this decreases landscape contrast. I'm pretty sure every single map can have its own set of weather presets.

[rowdyb00t]

[Danziger]

Rowdy, how do you get those brown rivers? Is that available as a separate mod somewhere? That looks so much more realistic than blue rivers.

[Stonehouse]

5 hours ago, LizLemon said:

 

In texture.tini there is a setting called RTcontrast. Values higher than 1 increase tile contrast while values lower decrease it - stalingrad is set to 0.7 in stock.

Thanks for the explanation, not that I'm likely to try something like Rowdy but especially as I had no idea it's good to get more detail

[rowdyb00t]

3 hours ago, Danziger said:

Rowdy, how do you get those brown rivers? Is that available as a separate mod somewhere? That looks so much more realistic than blue rivers.

   There is a mod here somewhere, I think it’s called BN60 new rivers. Any way I just modified the riverdeep.dds all the Landscape map files so that not all the rivers are the same. Some are muddy or more brown/green.  If you have gimp or photoshop you can make your own color. Or I could post mine. 

Edited March 24, 2021 by rowdyb00t

[TimSell75]

Wow, every update of yours, makes the game look so much better. Really love the work you put into it!

[Stonehouse]

1 hour ago, rowdyb00t said:

   There is a mod here somewhere, I think it’s call BN60 new rivers. Any way I just modified the riverdeep.dds all the Landscape map files so that not all the rivers are the same. Some are muddy or more brown/green.  If you have gimp or photoshop you can make your own color. Or I could post mine. 

 

Yes please if you don't mind

[Danziger]

3 hours ago, rowdyb00t said:

Or I could post mine. 

That would be great!

[tbauchot]

Has anyone ever encountered this phenomenon of shadows lighter than ambient lighting under rainy skies ?

This is quite strange ... Do you have an explanation or a solution to this problem ?

 

Rowdyb00t mod rendering :

Stock game rendering :

This is only a detail and it does not detract from the overall quality of the work, which is very satisfactory, but however I think that this small flaw deserves to be highlighted ... ?

[rowdyb00t]

3 hours ago, tbauchot said:

Has anyone ever encountered this phenomenon of shadows lighter than ambient lighting under rainy skies ?

This is quite strange ... Do you have an explanation or a solution to this problem ?

 

Rowdyb00t mod rendering :

Stock game rendering :

This is only a detail and it does not detract from the overall quality of the work, which is very satisfactory, but however I think that this small flaw deserves to be highlighted ... ?

  This is a new one for me. I’ve never seen this before. I’ll need a little more information from ya. 
Is this the only mod enabled?

What version?

3D overcast?

[rowdyb00t]

 

Rivers.zip

 

Two different colors. Spring, summer and autumn maps. Some have muddy water and some have greener water 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TimSell75]

Great ?

Edited March 25, 2021 by TimSell75

[tbauchot]

15 hours ago, rowdyb00t said:

Some have muddy water

So could you create a "Manish Boy" mod to listen to on the airplane radio ? ?

[tbauchot]

19 hours ago, rowdyb00t said:

 This is a new one for me. I’ve never seen this before. I’ll need a little more information from ya. 
Is this the only mod enabled?

What version?

3D overcast?

I'am on the  V14.

I just did some quick tests. I did not notice this bug in version 14 on some rainy or simply overcast skies (without having tested everything, however.) On the other hand, by activating "3D overcast" I encountered this bug under a rainy sky. Under overcast skies without rain, apparently this bug is not present ...

Additional information to this bug:

  Time = 17:30:0;
  Date = 10.7.1944;
  HMap = "graphics\LANDSCAPE_Rheinland_su\height.hini";
  Textures = "graphics\LANDSCAPE_Rheinland_su\textures.tini";
  Forests = "graphics\LANDSCAPE_Rheinland_su\trees\woods.wds";
  Layers = "";
  GuiMap = "rheinland-summer";
  SeasonPrefix = "su";
  MissionType = 703;
  AqmId = 0;
  CloudLevel = 1600;
  CloudHeight = 400;
  PrecLevel = 10;
  PrecType = 1;
  CloudConfig = "summer\04_Overcast_07\sky.ini";
  SeaState = 0;
  Turbulence = 1;
  TempPressLevel = 0;
  Temperature = 25;
  Pressure = 760;
  Haze = 0.2;

?

[rowdyb00t]

1 hour ago, tbauchot said:

I'am on the  V14.

I just did some quick tests. I did not notice this bug in version 14 on some rainy or simply overcast skies (without having tested everything, however.) On the other hand, by activating "3D overcast" I encountered this bug under a rainy sky. Under overcast skies without rain, apparently this bug is not present ...

Additional information to this bug:

  Time = 17:30:0;
  Date = 10.7.1944;
  HMap = "graphics\LANDSCAPE_Rheinland_su\height.hini";
  Textures = "graphics\LANDSCAPE_Rheinland_su\textures.tini";
  Forests = "graphics\LANDSCAPE_Rheinland_su\trees\woods.wds";
  Layers = "";
  GuiMap = "rheinland-summer";
  SeasonPrefix = "su";
  MissionType = 703;
  AqmId = 0;
  CloudLevel = 1600;
  CloudHeight = 400;
  PrecLevel = 10;
  PrecType = 1;
  CloudConfig = "summer\04_Overcast_07\sky.ini";
  SeaState = 0;
  Turbulence = 1;
  TempPressLevel = 0;
  Temperature = 25;
  Pressure = 760;
  Haze = 0.2;

?

  I’ll have a look into it thanks!

[rowdyb00t]

@tbauchot

 

I may have found the issue. I need to check in the game but the shadows in the sky.ini files are too dark. This means the planes shadow is lighter. I ran out of time tonight but will try to fix it tomorrow. It will be released also with the next version of everything. Thanks again 

 

 

I think my trees are too bright in the second pic. They look good mid day though. 

Edited March 26, 2021 by rowdyb00t

[RossMarBow]

Can anyone help me with these issues weird tie dye ring effect applied to clouds/sky and no AA applied to rivers on Kuban map and a weird tree issue - Technical Issues and Bug Reports - IL-2 Sturmovik Forum

I play multiplayer only so can't use mods.

Edited March 26, 2021 by brahguevara

[Beebop]

6 hours ago, brahguevara said:

I play multiplayer only so can't use mods.

Actually you can use mods.  Just turn 'Mods enabled' on in the GUI.

I looked at your post in the Bug report thread and as Liz Lemon said you seem to have some graphics issues.

First, are your drivers up to date?

Could you post your graphics settings?

Besides the graphics issue(s) are there any other problems running the game?

Perhaps a re-download is in order but tell us some more about your settings before doing that.

[tbauchot]

13 hours ago, rowdyb00t said:

I think my trees are too bright in the second pic. They look good mid day though. 

Admittedly, they may lack a little density with regard to the time and the light, but this is not really shocking.

Anyway , the general rendering is very nice on your images.

I really like your skies !

However, if you will allow me a remark: I do not like the flare effects of the sun at all ... They are present through an optical system, of course, but not in reality.

For my personal use I have removed these effects, and it feels more natural to me.

Some examples here :

 

?

[rowdyb00t]

19 minutes ago, tbauchot said:

Admittedly, they may lack a little density with regard to the time and the light, but this is not really shocking.

Anyway , the general rendering is very nice on your images.

I really like your skies !

However, if you will allow me a remark: I do not like the flare effects of the sun at all ... They are present through an optical system, of course, but not in reality.

For my personal use I have removed these effects, and it feels more natural to me.

Some examples here :

 

?

   Good point on the lens flare. I’ve actually made mine less intense but now I think I’ll just remove it. I will however leave it in the mod. 

[jokerBR]

9 hours ago, Beebop said:

Actually you can use mods.  Just turn 'Mods enabled' on in the GUI.

I looked at your post in the Bug report thread and as Liz Lemon said you seem to have some graphics issues.

First, are your drivers up to date?

Could you post your graphics settings?

Besides the graphics issue(s) are there any other problems running the game?

Perhaps a re-download is in order but tell us some more about your settings before doing that.

I think he mentioned that he "can't use mods" because the majority of mp servers doesn't allow them. If you activate mods, you'll be unable to log into 99% of servers.

[RossMarBow]

12 hours ago, Beebop said:

Actually you can use mods.  Just turn 'Mods enabled' on in the GUI.

I looked at your post in the Bug report thread and as Liz Lemon said you seem to have some graphics issues.

First, are your drivers up to date?

Could you post your graphics settings?

Besides the graphics issue(s) are there any other problems running the game?

Perhaps a re-download is in order but tell us some more about your settings before doing that.

Last night I tried deleting my startup.cfg and tried quite a few different combinations of settings
Drivers one update old 
Performance is good

What is stopping the devs incorporating the cloud mod and the banding mod into the base game, cause that seems to be my only solution.

I've updated my thread with the posts from 2017, and the banding mod.

Edited March 27, 2021 by brahguevara

[jokerBR]

On 3/26/2021 at 1:44 AM, rowdyb00t said:

@tbauchot

 

I may have found the issue. I need to check in the game but the shadows in the sky.ini files are too dark. This means the planes shadow is lighter. I ran out of time tonight but will try to fix it tomorrow. It will be released also with the next version of everything. Thanks again 

Hi Rowdy, I guess it is some kind of record for this thread to be without comments for so long, but I would like to say that now I'm waiting for your next version, because it looks a good step forward. Obs: Hope your experiments are going well, no pressure at all. 

[tbauchot]

Of course we're all impatient, but let's let Rowdy work ! His task is difficult, but there is no doubt that he will win ! ?