Ankor's Shaders February 2025 Released!

[mongoose]

Haven't installed in there yet. Might take a while to get around to it as trying them out in my TOW II install, but not done bombing missions there yet.

 

[MajorMagee]

In the past I've had to mess with the ZBias section of ConfigOverrides.xml

<ZBiasBitsResolution val="16"/>
<ZBiasTerrainDecal val="1"/>
<ZBiasWaterPolyNear val="1"/>
<ZBiasWaterPolyFar val="0"/>
<ZBiasWaterLineNear val="1"/>
<ZBiasWaterLineFar val="0"/>
<ZBiasFlatEffects val="25"/>
<ZBiasShadow val="16"/>
<ZBiasTerrainAlphaNear val="0"/>
<ZBiasTerrainAlphaFar val="0"/>
<ZBiasObject val="0"/>
<ZBiasObjectFar val="0"/>
<ZBiasEffects val="1"/>
<ZBiasClouds val="1"/>

The new shader recommendations are quite different than this, so that might be the source.

 

[mongoose]

WRT Threedp?

 

[MajorMagee]

Yes the ground flickering. It may or may not make a difference with the new shaders. There's a lot going on that I don't understand with them yet.

p.s. I'm getting red snow as well as rain if I turn Lighting on for the Prelit_Rain in the shader.xml.

 

[MajorMagee]

Ok, that is a new issue then that I have never seen. Has anyone else encountered this issue?

Mine looked the same, but was only encountered around specific models. And I believe I have found the edit I made. It was actually a hex edit to GC_Harbour.m3d. 99% sure this is what solved the issue in my case. Compare the edit to the original below. I know you hex edit models as extensively as I do, could you have applied something similar that might cause this everywhere for you?View attachment 162165

I can see that there were two lines with transparent colors, one red, and the other green that you made a neutral grey and opaque. Neither one was associated with a texture file. I wonder what function they originally served in the Building Model. Some sort of simulated lights? Head scratcher as to why a building would have anything to do with the lighting of the rain animation.

 

[gecko]

Thanks Major..any possible workarounds? Cheers.

This was another way of saying what I already told you. If you want cloud formations close to the ground, and also localized precipitation visibility reductions which are critical to the look of rainy and snowy weather, this is the unfortunate side effect. We're just making the best of what is possible in CFS3.

"This looks like it's unlikely to have anything to do with the shaders, especially if you've seen it before. I recommend checking the relevant aircraft xdps."

Well I will check that. Previous occurrences happened after some file changes were made, but disappeared if I restarted the PC, as I mentioned. This time just changing the ini did the trick. I may have to go though line by line and see what's different.
I suppose, apart from the African time distance, you do have a little more time for all the great work you have done?

So to change the subject; would the new shaders help the appearance of all the nice B C TIs that you made some years back??

I don't think anything in the texturemagic.ini will create that issue. It is possible that it was a coincidence that it stopped when you changed out the file. Having a duplicate xdp somewhere could cause that and would appear and disappear on different sessions of CFS3 at random.

Soooooooo close!

I installed the new shaders on all my installs and everything seemed to be going well until I got to the last one, TOW, and an old nemesis appeared, i.e. flashing geometric patterns on the ground (see pic). I feel like I remember this from the initial release of TOW but I can't remember the solution.

If it helps, for comparison, I did a night fire raid on Berlin in ETO and the incendiaries seemed to be flashing more than before, but the effect was not nearly as bad as in TOW.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

View attachment 162190

Are these self-lit terrain textures? I don't think the self-lit texture feature was envisioned to be used this way, though it is a cool effect. There may be some issues with this since it was never planned to work this way. It may also be possible that playing with the z-order settings as Andy suggests will help. The top two are the only ones specifically needed by the shaders. They are all known working values for me, but they are not-necessarily the only ones that will work.

I can see that there were two lines with transparent colors, one red, and the other green that you made a neutral grey and opaque. Neither one was associated with a texture file. I wonder what function they originally served in the Building Model. Some sort of simulated lights? Head scratcher as to why a building would have anything to do with the lighting of the rain animation.

I believe there were some lights/beacons on little towers near the harbor entrance that were red and green. I have no idea why it would cause the precipitation textures to turn red, but it did.

 

[MajorMagee]

I went through all 155 building m3d files in this install and didn't find any red/green patterns like the one you fixed.

 

[gecko]

Could it be in another model? An aircraft maybe? Since it's everywhere, maybe it's in the aircraft you were flying?

 

[MajorMagee]

Yes, the aircraft has semi-transparent red and green marker light covers!

 

[Threedp]

Some further input:

Using the config zBias settings above did not work. The game actually ran but the issue was still there (thanks anyway Major Magee!).

Before I started, I backed up my entire install (although I forgot that the config file was elsewhere, so I didn't have a backup of that). Nevertheless, I copied my old TOW install back into place and using the recommended settings for the new shaders (even though it has older shaders), it works fine with regard to the issue. Therefore, the issue does not seem to lie with the config settings.