Realistic Clouds

[rowdyb00t]

@sniperton

 

  I’ll have a look at the lighting. 
 

@Tom25briklebritt

 

 Make sure that your cloud setting is on high. Also try this gpreset file. I believe your cloud samples are at 64, this will make the samples 128. 
https://www.mediafire.com/file/isu7649zz6o1ml9/Graphic_Presets_(2).zip/file

Edited March 13, 2020 by rowdyb00t

[Stolle]

I'm having a problem with the Graphics Presets file. I'm using JSGME to insert the mod into the game. I am also using PWCG to create campaigns. When a mission is created with the GP file active, the buildings and hangars around the runways disappear. The buildings in the cities and towns are flattened. When I disable the graphics preset file, and create another mission everything goes back to normal. I have tested this on the Moscow and Bodenplatte maps.Do you know what might cause this?

[rowdyb00t]

@Stolle

 

Hmmm. Have you edited any lines in the gpreset? If so, post your settings in it. I’m not sure why the file would be doing that. 

[Stolle]

I haven't edited any lines in the gpreset. I have done some further testing and I think the problem might be with PWCG. I am using a beta version that allows cold start for the missions. When I change back to starting on the runway the problem seems to go away. I also tested using the in game career, and all seems normal. Your mod is really great. Thanks for making it. 

[rowdyb00t]

@sniperton

 

 I’ve just come to realize that the reason I haven’t really noticed the green light your talking about because I have my saturation turned down in the gpresets to .80. Thanks for pointing that out. I’m going to put it back to 1 so that when I’m testing the lighting I can see essentially what everyone else sees. 

[Murleen]

3 hours ago, Stolle said:

I haven't edited any lines in the gpreset. I have done some further testing and I think the problem might be with PWCG. I am using a beta version that allows cold start for the missions. When I change back to starting on the runway the problem seems to go away. I also tested using the in game career, and all seems normal. Your mod is really great. Thanks for making it. 

 

In the current PWCG beta, if the mission target is far from the home airfield, buildings at the airfield won't be generated. There's a fix for this checked in which will be in the next release.

[Tom25briklebritt]

Thanks for your help so far..

 

I switched clouds form ULTRA to HIGH in game and copied the "gpresets.cfg" file you told me to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad\data\LuaScripts\gpresets.cfg". Do I have to check this file every game update or do I have to use an updated file when game is patched?

But there was no old file preset at this path..  Is this the correct path and why not file was present?

 

Now it looks better in game. But I think there is still a problem with my graphics. Sometimes clouds are  flickering. And when on ground some trees, not many got such a regular black dotted surface. Hm.. you know what I mean?

 

I got an RTX 2080 TI and a really powerfull CPU, so I can push all settings to ULTRA. Here are my graphic settings. I want to look the game stunning. Please look into it and help me to optimize my settings. What should I improve?

 

Overall > ULTRA
Shadows quality > ULTRA
Distant landscape > x4
Landscape filter > Blurred
Grass > Ultra
Clouds > High
Target fps > 120
Dynamic res > Full
AA > 4
Fullscreen
SSAO > ON
HRD > OFF
Sharpen > OFF
Use 4k textures > ON
Distant buildings > ON

 

Thanks again!

 

Edited March 14, 2020 by Tom25briklebritt

[sniperton]

1 hour ago, Tom25briklebritt said:

But there was no old file preset at this path..  Is this the correct path and why not file was present?

...

Sometimes clouds are  flickering. And when on ground some trees, not many got such a regular black dotted surface. Hm.. you know what I mean?

The stock gpresets file is packed in the data\scripts.gtp archive and you overide it with this new instance.

Before each update it's wise to remove all mod content, apply the patch, restart the PC, restart the game, exit the game, and re-enable mods again.

 

If you see flickering on far-away clouds, try to reduce "horizon draw distance" to 70 km.

 

Dithering on trees while close to the ground is an old game issue, it comes and goes, I haven't seen it recently, but I guess this is what you mean:

 

[rowdyb00t]

@Tom25briklebritt

 

  I’ve the close to the same setup, 2080ti and a ryzen5. 3600x. I second sniperton on the 70km draw distance, the clouds seem to flicker a bit when past this. As for the tree dither, this has been here since I can remember, not sure about a fix. @LizLemon had a fix for this quite a while back but it does not work anymore. 
   I also turn off AA in game, it’s very taxing, and force nVidia AA and 4x supersampling. I seem to get a clearer image and A little more FPS. However I play in VR so this could be different in 2D. 
  The gpresets are not found in the stock game directory. They have to be un-GTP’d from the scripts.gtp file. You can however play around with the settings to achieve a more custom graphics setting. In the file you have 4 presets with adjustments. 

preset 0 = low

preset 1 = balanced 

preset 2 = high 

preset 3 = ultra

    You can also try 96, 256, 512 and so on with the cloud samples. Hope this helps 

Edited March 14, 2020 by rowdyb00t

[hayraddin]

Does the nvidia AA settings affect VR? I currently use 2 in-game and FXAA in nvidia panel.

[rowdyb00t]

5 minutes ago, hayraddin said:

Does the nvidia AA settings affect VR? I currently use 2 in-game and FXAA in nvidia panel.

Yes the in game AA is pretty taxing. However to each his own on the graphics settings. I think that forcing the nVidia settings makes it look better. Also I like the saturation toned down a bit 0.80 in the gpresets, it seems to cartoony with the colors set to 1. 

   I’ve played around with the settings quite a bit and found something I like. If you would like I could post my settings later. 

[hayraddin]

Yea would appreciate it. I also found that using gpresets even without tweaking anything seems to somehow lower my fps. I will give it another try

[rowdyb00t]

@hayraddin

  What are your specs by the way? Also, you have to be careful adjusting some things in the gpresets. I’ve had to reinstall a stock one once because I had it way out of whack lol. 

[hayraddin]

Ryzen 3900x, RTX 2070 super, rift S, 32Gb 3600 cl14 RAM , SSD Nvme

 

Edited March 14, 2020 by hayraddin

[rowdyb00t]

6 minutes ago, hayraddin said:

Ryzen 3900x, RTX 2070 super, rift S, 32Gb 3600 cl14 RAM , SSD Nvme

 

 Thanks, I’ll post the settings when I get home

[rowdyb00t]

@hayraddin

 

 

I have changed the cloud samples to 256 in the gpresets, seem to make the clouds look better. 

 

Edited March 15, 2020 by rowdyb00t

[Goffik]

@rowdyb00t, would you be able to explain what some of the gpresets.cfg options actually do? Most are self-explanatory but there's a few I'm not sure of.

 

forest_quality=1     (Set to 1 for all presets, yet yours is set to 5.)

 

post_sharpen=true     (Is this the same as the sharpen setting in the game menu?)

 

post_drops_enable=false     (No idea on this one.)

 

post_hdr=3     (HDR level? What actually changes?)

 

post_motion_samples=20     (No idea.)

 

//Screen depth, SSAO, SSR
    depth_res=1
    ssao_res=1
    ssao_samples=12
    ssr_samples=24     (Are any of these relevant if you have SSAO turned off?

 

Cheers!

[Calius1945]

@Goffik- you might want to check out the first post of this thread:

 

 

[wonders9]

On 8/28/2019 at 10:46 AM, rowdyb00t said:

 

 

                                                                                  

 

Or at least definitely better than the originals. That’s the old sky color by by the way.   

 

 

I totally agree. Indeed great work! If only the mod could be used without checking the Mod option.

To be honest, I have always found that the BoX cloud is the ugliest thing in this sim, and not realistic either. 

 

[Goffik]

1 hour ago, Calius1945 said:

@Goffik- you might want to check out the first post of this thread:

 

Thanks, but that thread is about startup.cfg and other options. It doesn't give any information on gpresets.cfg, which is what we're discussing here.

[rowdyb00t]

@Goffik

 

  I as well would love to know exactly what some of these lines actually are for. The forest quality I know has a range from 1 to 7, worst to best. As for the post effects and screen depth, I’ve learned if you get to tweaking them to much that it will tax your GPU to death. Maybe someone around here could explain the preset lines. 

[Guster]

4 hours ago, wonders9 said:

 

I totally agree. Indeed great work! If only the mod could be used without checking the Mod option.

To be honest, I have always found that the BoX cloud is the ugliest thing in this sim, and not realistic either. 

 

 

Agree.

 

I can't help comparing to RoF, but maybe I understand why the devs moved away from that paradigm. I could be wrong, but it seems the RoF clouds are smaller, and since we move a lot faster i BoX, the devs went for bigger clouds. The variation in types of layers and formations is perhaps a bit more realistic, but the 'cotton look' and the aliasing issues with planes in front of clouds really bother me.

[sniperton]

1 hour ago, Guster said:

I could be wrong, but it seems the RoF clouds are smaller, and since we move a lot faster i BoX, the devs went for bigger clouds. The variation in types of layers and formations is perhaps a bit more realistic, but the 'cotton look' and the aliasing issues with planes in front of clouds really bother me.

I'd add the FPS impact too. If you have a better GPU, you probably won't notice the difference, but rendering clouds in BoX may take up half of your GPU power.

[rowdyb00t]

Got some more screens of the grey sky I've been working on. I' still tweaking it a bit but I'm almost done 

[SCG_motoadve]

22 minutes ago, rowdyb00t said:

Got some more screens of the grey sky I've been working on. I' still tweaking it a bit but I'm almost done 

Looks good , been waiting for a greay sky for ages, that combined with the better overcast will give great atmosphere.

[Beebop]

Really, REALLY nice rowdyb00t!

[wonders9]

On 3/16/2020 at 1:32 AM, Guster said:

Agree.

I can't help comparing to RoF, but maybe I understand why the devs moved away from that paradigm. I could be wrong, but it seems the RoF clouds are smaller, and since we move a lot faster i BoX, the devs went for bigger clouds. The variation in types of layers and formations is perhaps a bit more realistic, but the 'cotton look' and the aliasing issues with planes in front of clouds really bother me.

 

It was my fault that I failed to mention that I was mainly talking about the colours of clouds.

The clouds in the old RoF are, I think, admittedly less realistic than those in BoX (for being more simplistic), but nevertheless much more harmonious looking together with the sky and the ground in terms of colours.

 

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

(a separat post)

 

What I find ugly and unrealistic as well about the BoX coulds is that their colours are badly represented, the most promiment problem being that the bottoms of thick clouds are all too bluish (which has been corrected in rowdyb00t's mod). The bottoms of clouds that are not too high, actually receive light reflected from the ground, and so the colours of those parts contain a certain amount of the colour of the ground -- brown for instance. I would agree that the very bluish cloud bottoms do exist in reality for very huge thick clouds, but generally the bluishness of clouds is far overdone in BoX.

 

The image below is taken from a screenshots thread; here the over-bluish (in other cases perhaps even a little purplish) cloud bottoms are obvious. To correct it, a certain amout of the ground colour (mainly brown if it is not a winter map and if the ground is not  covered by too much forest, but mainly green if there are larges areas of green forest on the ground) should be added to the cloud bottom colour. (But of course the colour of sunlight can also be a factor to consider when determining the colours of clouds, if it is not the white light at noon.)

 

 

 

Edited March 22, 2020 by wonders9

[rowdyb00t]

Messed around this evening with it. I'm going out of town for work this week. Hopefully have it ready for ya's next weekend.

 

[Goffik]

On 3/15/2020 at 2:30 PM, rowdyb00t said:

I as well would love to know exactly what some of these lines actually are for. The forest quality I know has a range from 1 to 7, worst to best. As for the post effects and screen depth, I’ve learned if you get to tweaking them to much that it will tax your GPU to death. Maybe someone around here could explain the preset lines. 

 

Ah ok. I'm actually trying to tweak the game to bin detail I barely notice in order to gain some performance. Like you I play in VR so subtle details aren't very noticeable, but unlike you I don't have great specs so BoX struggles sometimes, especially on the BoP map.

[Beebop]

I discovered a "problem" using Better Clouds v.9.1.

If you set the weather to Overcast, no matter what level, and set Precipitation to 'Snow', you don't get any.  (Level has no effect even un-modded)

The clouds are fantastic but the snow just aint happenin'.

I removed the mod (via JSGME) and the snow returned but the clouds weren't nearly as nice.  So it's nice clouds or falling snow but not both at this time.

 

Is that something that can be fixed?  Even if not it's still an awesome mod.

[HappyHaddock]

5 minutes ago, Beebop said:

I discovered a "problem" using Better Clouds v.9.1.

If you set the weather to Overcast, no matter what level, and set Precipitation to 'Snow', you don't get any.  (Level has no effect even un-modded)

The clouds are fantastic but the snow just aint happenin'.

I removed the mod (via JSGME) and the snow returned but the clouds weren't nearly as nice.  So it's nice clouds or falling snow but not both at this time.

 

Is that something that can be fixed?  Even if not it's still an awesome mod.

 

Rowdy has literally just private messaged me to ask me this very question, where we hade previously spoken about the way the game implements precipitation.

 

I suspect that it may be an either/or situation because of the different cloud types used by the game engine when applying precipitation... if anybody discovers otherwise I'd be pleased to know as it was a compromise I decided  I'd just have to accept in my own work many months ago

 

HH

Edited March 18, 2020 by HappyHaddock

[rowdyb00t]

@Beebop

 

   Is it raining where your at too?   

So only the overcast that I have re-vamped completely doesn’t have precipitation. 04_overcast_02 , 04 , 05 , and 09 still have precip in summer. In the winter it’s 02 , 05 , and 06. As for the ones I have listed, they still work but precip is random in QMB. I’m assuming you tried to select the precip in the mission editor?

    Now one thing I have noticed,@HappyHaddock , if you copy the lines for precip and ad them to the modded sky.ini file for overcast, you can hear the rain. I thought that was interesting. I’ve since deleted those lines from the modded files. 

[Beebop]

I was just testing in the Quick Missions. 

If on a Spring/Summer/Autumn map I do get precip with overcast.

On winter maps, no snow or rain.  So it's a winter thing it seems

[rowdyb00t]

20 minutes ago, Beebop said:

I was just testing in the Quick Missions. 

If on a Spring/Summer/Autumn map I do get precip with overcast.

On winter maps, no snow or rain.  So it's a winter thing it seems

Ok I’ll check the files in a bit

[rowdyb00t]

@Beebop

 

I checked the files in the mission editor and they  are working correctly. Remember that the QMB Is random with picking the overcast and whether or not there is precip 

[Beebop]

Just checked in game.  Opened a test mission on Lapino Summer, set clouds to "Overcast 09", Precip "Rain", "Level" 10.

It was raining dogs and cats and parrots.  So Clouds v.9.1 does only seem to affect winter maps, at least on my install.

HTH.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Beebop

[LizLemon]

Precipitation is only loaded if you are using the plane clouds like the stock overcasts. You've changed some of them to the volume style clouds which can't have precipitation. 

[rowdyb00t]

1 hour ago, LizLemon said:

Precipitation is only loaded if you are using the plane clouds like the stock overcasts. You've changed some of them to the volume style clouds which can't have precipitation. 

 Correct. I’ve been trying to find a way to make precip work with volumetric clouds. Not much luck, however I did manage to get them in to a plane cloud file. The problem is that the precip is tied together with the plane clouds. So for instance, when I erase a normal map and all corresponding textures for the plane, the plane disappears leaving only the precip. Now the problems are as follows:

  1. When I add volumetric clouds, the height of the precip doesn’t match. It’s lower. 
  2. The volumetric clouds only extend to the FogRange. When I adjust it to past 13000, everything disappears. It would need to be at 100000 or so. 

    So my conclusion is that I’m not able to make this work. What do you think LizLemon? Is it even possible with what we have access to?

[wonders9]

( In addition to what was said in a previous post of mine. ) 

 

Besides their bottoms being over-bluish, the BoX clouds look bad for a second reason, less severe: their bottoms are generally too dark.

This makes the clouds look more opaque than is natural. And we must not forget that the cloud bottoms receive light reflected from the ground, which to a certain degree illuminates them.

 

But it is pleasant to see that this over-dark cloud bottom ugliness has also been corrected in this mod.  

   

  

Edited March 19, 2020 by wonders9

[LizLemon]

5 hours ago, rowdyb00t said:

 Correct. I’ve been trying to find a way to make precip work with volumetric clouds. Not much luck, however I did manage to get them in to a plane cloud file. The problem is that the precip is tied together with the plane clouds. So for instance, when I erase a normal map and all corresponding textures for the plane, the plane disappears leaving only the precip. Now the problems are as follows:

  1. When I add volumetric clouds, the height of the precip doesn’t match. It’s lower. 
  2. The volumetric clouds only extend to the FogRange. When I adjust it to past 13000, everything disappears. It would need to be at 100000 or so. 

    So my conclusion is that I’m not able to make this work. What do you think LizLemon? Is it even possible with what we have access to?

 

No