zzzspace

Hi Pete, did a heap of tests and settled on stripping the ballast out of these equations, then got fantastic lighting, and very pretty dawns, with crisp bright middays. Give it a go. :) The version that made these screens: float D = pow(abs(clamp(dot(normalize(viewPos.xyz), lightVec.xyz), 0.0, 0.0)), 0.0); Out.cOut.xyz = tex2D(mySampler, tex0) + step(0.3, D) * 0.0 * HDR; Out.cOut.w=0; The version in your mod: float D = pow(abs(clamp(dot(normalize(viewPos.xyz), lightVec.xyz), 0.0, 1.0)), 70000.0); Out.cOut.xyz = tex2D(mySampler, tex0) + step(0.3, D) * 90.0 * HDR; Out.cOut.w=0;

Found something else Pete. 6:40AM this time Panning slowly between 89 and 91 degress off-boresight from the sun, there's a sudden change in land ambience, from washed-out look, to a not well lit look (consideruing it's in bright direct sunlight, and shadow edges should therefore be fairly stark). EDIT: Just did the same test with the standard files, to see if they do this too, and they do, except, when then standard files do it, the human iris-effects re-adjust for it, so that as the sun's disk becomes out of view, at ~91 degrees, the eye adjusts after a few seconds, then the 'dull' land brightens up again. But moving back towards the disk once more, as it gets washed out by the sudden glare, the iris-effect readjusts again, and the colours are progressively no longer all being washed out! So what is happening is the mod's settings are preventing the iris-effect from re-adjusting to the change from direct light to shade, on the 'eye'. Can that be rectified? Because that may be part of the solution. The other part is to make the sun appear more round again.

Pete, tried it at 7:15AM, and although the sun was blazing actually between the clouds, the land was not well-lit. At first I thought the Sun was behind a cloud, but when I panned around it wasn't. The sun itself looks bright, but the land is not equally morning-sun brightness, but the sun also looked out-of-round ... like a cross-bred square and circle. :D Something is distorting the shape, and the land brightness needs to be ramped up a fair bit still. From what you said above I gather that if you make it brighter, the rays just come back stronger, is that right?

Love those isolated light rain showers encountered sometimes when flying down a valley. I've been on a mission where I started at one end on the main central E-W valley within the mountains, in clear sunlight and a few fluffies, and by the time I got to the other end the clouds was low and blowing along the walls, then suddenly I was flying through intermittent showers. By the time I got to the target it was raining, with dark cloud banks. Frames took a hit was the only down-side. But the thing I noticed is a bit weakly represented in the clouds mix, is that stratus layering and lensing is usually much more prominent and overprinting from ~1,000 feet mark and up to ~6,000 feet or so, when close to a distinct spiral low pressure centre. And the thing is, if the stratus were behaving that way ... more likely to form in low pressure troughs, then you'd get an effective overcast forming over a larger area, around these main cloud banks, and along the closer isobars. What do you think?

Nah. One thing I noticed when first getting DCS A-10C was how much better the trees looked, and how many more types there were. If I remember correctly LOMAC had just one type of fairly spindly generic 'tree' (of different sizes) in the forested areas, and no tree shadowing. As I understand it the tree distribution placement in DCS was based on sat images of where the open cleared spaces actually are, and where tree-stands actually exist. There's a lot of agricultural land on the coastal plains and areas above the timber line, and more open farmland behind that. So where would these new forests go? At most I think you could increase the density of isolated stands of trees in cleared areas, and on farms and the less cleared areas north of the mountains. Plus instead of going from sharp-edge forested areas directly into grasses and flowers, what's maybe needed is to blend this change with random clumps and areas of lower bushes and shrubs, and also to sprinkle these around the periphery of cleared fields and roads, etc. Where there are 'rain-shadows' (like the downwind side of mountain ranges, near coastal zones) you just don't get forests growing behind the mountains, because all the excess moisture has fallen on the mountains. So you do get open grasslands and pasture instead.

Have you tried a hamster? Sorry :D

Hey diveplane, I don't know if you saw the images attached to my post up the page, I came back to this thread and they were not there after posting them earlier, take a look. You're probably right about the eye-candy bit, I'm reading too much into it being there.

It went pretty well though. :D

Another thought, the ED people who made the existing ray effect did it for a reason, to create an effect. And I don't dislike it. It looks quite nice. They modelled the eye's response to light also, so, is this what the person who made it imagined a person might see, if squinting past a very bright sun, whilst maneuvering? Seems a reasonable thing to have done, in that respect. So, back it off a bit, but I wouldn't want it gone. What a starring camera lens can show, and what a squinting human sees, are always different.

The image you've used simply isn't near enough to the horizon with enough of the sunlight passing through the thickest parts of the atmosphere, thus the light is not being attenuated enough: Notice how in the second example the limb of the sun is crisp, and much sharper at the bottom where it is dimest, than at the top, where it is brighter. This is what I'm referring to, and I can see how big the disk is when it gets like this. I've seen the disk of the sun clearly many times right on actual sunset. You can't look at it directly at any other time. On very clear days you still can't look at it, but on an average day you can. If a mod created something like that limb clarity, right on sunset, then the radiance should be about right around noon as well. As for 'rays' where are they? The flare diveplane is using is akin to a subtle camera lens 'flare' effect, plus 'rays' - which looks pretty good in his images, the only problem with it is that it's in the same location in each image. Sunset1.bmp Sunset2.bmp

If the nominal size of the disk remains about the same fraction of the 360 degrees circumference of the horizon line on most days, then Speed is giving the right basis for comparison, for this purpose. If observed average solar diameter is nominally ~0.5 degrees, when viewed from sea level, then I think most could live with one decimal place of precision. :) i.e. thus whether you're zoomed-in, or zoomed-out, the sun will remain the approximately correct size for that level of zoom, etc. It seems to be that the brightness through the atmosphere (transmitted brightness varies as the angle to the horizon varies) which drives the degree of radiant flaring seen. So the radiant spikes appear more intense at noon, but weaker at sundown, simply because the apparent luminosity is much lower. And the more intense the flaring, the larger the sun appears to become. So this flare effect needs a bit of winding back so that it is not bloating-out the apparent size. Maybe diveplane or someone else can find an agreeable compromise so that the disk limb is seen fairly easily and crisply through the ambient radiance at sundown, as per reality most days, but is hidden by the surrounding brightness at noon. 2c

I should have said: It should only get yellow progressively, then more orange at lower angles, then slightly reddish tinged at the very lowest angle, as it passes at lower and lower angles through the atmosphere, and blue wavelengths are not present in the transmitted light any more.

Just checked it out on a late morning mission and if you very slowly move the sun's disk on to the edge of the FOV of the monitor, the flare disappears momentarily, and you can see the disk you've made, directly. And is is much smaller than that remaining enormous standard flare still makes it appear. So you have the size of the disk 'right', but the standard uber-radiant flare needs to be toned down, as it is still making the sun look too-big, when it's higher and brighter in the sky. You have the colour right at that point though Mustang - white. It should only get yellow progressively and then reddish tinged, as it passes at lower and lower angles through the atmosphere, and blue wavelengths are not present in the transmitted light any more.

Also, that track clacking sound sounds like the tank is doing 5km/h, when the tank is doing 50km/h. Nit-picking a bit, sorry.

You've flown a KC-135 or E3?

In within-visual-range engagements, either with guns or missiles, the Ai keeps on following the aircraft down amd prosecuting the attack, even when the aircraft is already ripped apart, and pilot dead or punched-out. Looks nice and aggro of course, but the Ai uses up is missiles and ammo for nothing. Another related issue to it, is when watching a guns-only fight, if one of the Ai is too damaged to fight, or is bingo fuel, so slows-down straight and level, what occurs is the other Ai aircraft does not stop using their afterburners to slow and slot in behind for the kill shot, but instead continues to prosecute the guns fight, so buzzes all around the loser at high speeds in high-G turns, but most often due to this, is never able to line-up to get a killshot, ... at a slow straight and level loser. lol But I have seen the loser take down the winner with a crossing burst. :) On top of this, the winner has now burned a huge amount of fuel, and is also out of the fight. Those issues will need to be rectified.

Nah, that looks about spot on.

But how will you see your stick, throttle, coffee, hot spouse, pooch, real-world, etc. Not so sure this would be better. ... would give it a go though.

Works fine for me Peter. Only thing I'd prefer is if the radius of the mouse yellow-circle tranparency (don't know if that will be part of your final version) as shown in your video was about 75% of present size, so that it overlaps less with adjacent menu options. -- EDIT: Single monitor, I've tried it now at both 1366*768 and 1920*1080, both using your larger-clearer font mod and it worked well, I encountered no defective commands as far as I can tell, and the placement of menus was ok for my needs. Looking forward to the F10 interupt for this script though. I will use the final version of this mod, never used it before this, but like it a lot.

Was wondering that myself, with people taking out up to 4 targets in one pass.

Thank you, very nicely done!

Quite a fetching pair of shorts too ...

All aircraft that use the A-10C's engines, i.e. KC-135, E3 etc, suffer the same issue, namely when taking off they all cut their engines very briefly when half way down the runway, then as they rotate, they cut them briefly again. I remember seeing this same thing in LOMAC v 1.01 if I remember correctly, same cut to throttle at rotation, and was fixed by the v1.02 patch.

Ok, thanks.

I'm sure this has been discussed plenty, but wow ... I'm presuming this and other hardened shelters and bunkers are not supposed to require 16,000 lbs of precision-guided bunker-busters? What's the go with this?