• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Prepar3D V3.1 is out!

Seems to be even smoother than 3.0. Went the full route install! Some new features added.
 
Installed and moving in as I post this.

Mannnnnn...I do like the interactive cube map. This is a huge step IMHO.

Doing the usual re-install shuffle, but well worth it. Can't wait to explore the other improvements.

:encouragement:
 
gman5250 said:
Installed and moving in as I post this.

Mannnnnn...I do like the interactive cube map. This is a huge step IMHO.

Doing the usual re-install shuffle, but well worth it. Can't wait to explore the other improvements.

:encouragement:
Click to expand...
Just curious if you have had a chance to check out Instant Scenery 3 yet ? It just became compatible with 3.0 a few days ago .
Rich
 
Crusader said:
Just curious if you have had a chance to check out Instant Scenery 3 yet ? It just became compatible with 3.0 a few days ago .
Rich
Click to expand...

First thing I checked. No joy on my end, but I'm running 2.5 on a separate drive for IS placements. Kind of a PITA, but tolerable.
 
000rick000 said:
Gman is the cube map auto-applied to all aorcraft that can accept the globalenv map?
Click to expand...

It's pretty brilliant actually Rick, the cube map can be either traditional via the GlobalEnv map maps or enabled by a slider for the camera generated cube.
The active map uses cameras that read the surrounding, then project them in real time on your object.

My main curiosity was how alphas, spec etc. interact with the live map. From what I can see at first look, existing alphas/specular/bump and bump alpha will represent very closely to previous uses with GlobalEnv map.
This opens up a huge new canvas for developers....IMHO.


Bump Update:

ASN is throwing a sim connect error...needs to be updated by the dev.
OPUS live weather booted with no problems.

REX TD and Soft Clouds loaded right in without any issues.

TM Warthog stick and throttle booted right in and recognize my previous profiles.

Checked my scenery WIP projects I'm not seeing any need to make any mods. Always a relief.

Looks like the basic sim is going to be good enough for me to use as primary sim while the devs update the peripherals.
 
Interesting comment by Rob (beta tester).

If the dev set the flag originally in their product (Global Environment map reflection) then you'll see it ... what it would do prior to this new P3D feature is just reflect a generic static scene (think it was landscape mountains or something), now with Dynamic Reflections enabled it will reflect the surroundings as you move thru the world, whatever those surroundings maybe.

Dynamic Reflections can be enabled for ANY texture/surface, so yes a metal plane IF the developer enables Global Environment map reflection. Be aware that developers could still do their OWN custom dynamic reflections, but now it's just a lot easier.

Best way to see what does and does not have Global environment map reflections is to turn dynamic reflections on/off in P3D and see if you notice a difference in the aircraft/object. As has been pointed out, PMDG windows, Q400 windows will show dynamic reflections as they set the Global Environment map reflection even thought they knew it would just reflect a static image when they original created the aircraft ... but it looked like a reflection back then even if only static, so they used the flag. Now it will be a real dynamic reflection of the world one is flying in.

So expect more 3PDs to start using the Global Environment map reflection in future products (or some may even update existing products) now that they know it works dynamically.

Dynamic reflections is a "huge deal" IMHO and when 3PDs start using it more our FPS will be impacted (if we enabled dynamic reflections), hence my warnings. So save up for that next gen GPU and CPU if you want to claim you can max everything out and get 1000 FPS ;) Yes, it's progress and hardware will always need to catch up ... "as real as it gets" will always mean "open your wallet".

Cheers, Rob.
 
Thanks Gman, didn't realize that it was a slider! somehow I missed it yesterday!! How is that possible!?? haha It was the only thing I was really looking for! Can't wait to try it!

Shouldn't have a huge impact on FPS, if it was implemented correctly...plus P3D already handles stuff like this very well. TacPack features already utilize cameras with much higher resolution than I bet is going into the reflections. But we shall see, I might end up eating my words! As is often the case...my wife can attest!
 
what I'm hoping is the slider works something along the lines of :

| ------------------------|-----------------------|---------------------------|---------------------|

Building Upon the last:

None
Own Aircraft
Clouds/Ground
Trees/Buildings
ALL/Effects
 
000rick000 said:
what I'm hoping is the slider works something along the lines of :

| ------------------------|-----------------------|---------------------------|---------------------|

Building Upon the last:

None
Own Aircraft
Clouds/Ground
Trees/Buildings
ALL/Effects
Click to expand...

Yep, it does work along those lines. I read a post about it somewhere, but I can't find it now.:banghead:
I found a fairly heavy FPS hit with it turned up to max, although it was a very quick test due to lack of time. My GPU is a bit on the weak side compared to the latest models, so better cards should handle it better.
 
Here's the break down per Rob...

Dynamic Reflections Makes reflections more realistic by replacing the static global environment map with a real-time environment map based on the camera. The resolution of the environment map doubles each quality step starting at 128 and ends at 1024. The types of objects that reflect at different settings are outlined below.

Low: basic world features (ex: terrain, sky, water)
Medium: taxiway and runway features)
High: autogen buildings and air features (ex: stars, clouds)
Ultra: details (ex: particles, vegetation)

Cheers, Rob.
 
F-22 canopy reflections at different levels...

Sky, canopy turns blue or what ever the sky color is.

2e_zpsnzjwuhwe.jpg~original


Medium

3e_zpsar4wxx5j.jpg~original


Buildings, clouds, etc.

4e_zpsqkxaywpw.jpg~original


Buildings, vegetation, etc.

5e_zpsyywbdmtz.jpg~original
 
Id like to know how this interacts with the alpha channel? Must simply be what is displayed just like the globalenv is right now. Alpha will still control intensity.
 
000rick000 said:
Id like to know how this interacts with the alpha channel? Must simply be what is displayed just like the globalenv is right now. Alpha will still control intensity.
Click to expand...

Everything functions the same, but I was curious if alpha would need tweaks to compensate for the "live" reflections now that they change rather than referencing a static cube.

I looked hard at the F7F metal skins for any changes needed. I didn't see anything needing to be tweaked. I think your metal skins should be OK without any changes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top