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Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.
AnKor's Shaders
- Thread starter MajorMagee
- Start date
BorekS
Members +
MajorMagee
SOH-CM-2022
I just had my first opportunity to use another feature that AnKor had mentioned in his original notes to us that was still untried at the time.
I was working on adding the same shading and reflective glass effects that I've completed for the outside view models, to the some of the interior cockpits. I had only done a couple and was getting a nice enhancement to the 3D look (example below), when I decided to see what it looked like at night. Everything looked fine until I turned on the UV lights to see the gauges. Talk about ugly!
At first I didn't understand what had gone wrong, but then I remembered the prohibition for having more than one helper texture assigned to a name. In order to get the shading on the cockpit surfaces I had created a new +sr file. Not a problem, until I also tried to access the +clight file too. (Normal maps are an exception to the one helper texture only rule.)
Fortunately, AnKor had provided a way out for me. I created an alpha layer in the +clight file that had the same +sr information in it, and then renamed it +clight+sa. Deleting the two other files, and Voila, problem resolved!
The only disappointment still remaining is that almost all of the original gauges we have were done as flat decals without lens glass, so there's no opportunity to provide them with dynamic shading and reflectance effects.
I was working on adding the same shading and reflective glass effects that I've completed for the outside view models, to the some of the interior cockpits. I had only done a couple and was getting a nice enhancement to the 3D look (example below), when I decided to see what it looked like at night. Everything looked fine until I turned on the UV lights to see the gauges. Talk about ugly!
At first I didn't understand what had gone wrong, but then I remembered the prohibition for having more than one helper texture assigned to a name. In order to get the shading on the cockpit surfaces I had created a new +sr file. Not a problem, until I also tried to access the +clight file too. (Normal maps are an exception to the one helper texture only rule.)
Fortunately, AnKor had provided a way out for me. I created an alpha layer in the +clight file that had the same +sr information in it, and then renamed it +clight+sa. Deleting the two other files, and Voila, problem resolved!
The only disappointment still remaining is that almost all of the original gauges we have were done as flat decals without lens glass, so there's no opportunity to provide them with dynamic shading and reflectance effects.
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Well.....
Nearly all the planes that I have made have glass covering the gauge face in 3d. They all are textured using a "glass" texture and material. Just saying......
Nearly all the planes that I have made have glass covering the gauge face in 3d. They all are textured using a "glass" texture and material. Just saying......
MajorMagee
SOH-CM-2022
Yes, thanks for taking the time to do that. It makes a real difference!
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MajorMagee
SOH-CM-2022
You can add this line to the effects section of the DR_MS406_AX675.XDP file to have the appropriate dynamic gunsight.
<Effect Type="Track" EffectName="FR_OPL_4_gunsight" PosX="0.000" PosZ="-1.066" PosY="1.22" Pitch="90" MinVel="-999999" MaxVel="999999"/>
<Effect Type="Track" EffectName="FR_OPL_4_gunsight" PosX="0.000" PosZ="-1.066" PosY="1.22" Pitch="90" MinVel="-999999" MaxVel="999999"/>
alcanallen
Members +
Moving CFS3 Ankors Installation
Morning,iv`e just moved my CFS3 Rev 5 Ankors installation from Program Files(X86) to my C drive where my FSX and FS2004 sims are installed and my stuttering is 90% better,i think the 8 gig RAM increase is noticeable,please comment as i`m looking at a new CPU namely a Intel Core i5 7600K which i reckon will be the answer to all performance ills!
alcanallen.
Morning,iv`e just moved my CFS3 Rev 5 Ankors installation from Program Files(X86) to my C drive where my FSX and FS2004 sims are installed and my stuttering is 90% better,i think the 8 gig RAM increase is noticeable,please comment as i`m looking at a new CPU namely a Intel Core i5 7600K which i reckon will be the answer to all performance ills!
alcanallen.
MajorMagee
SOH-CM-2022
CFS3 was really not designed to take advantage of a lot of ram (only ever uses about 1Gb), but your new surplus may provide room for other things to be going on now that had been causing the CPU to stutter for lack of memory.
I'm running an i7 7700K overclocked to 4.6 Ghz and I can still make CFS3 stutter if I push the scenery and texture budget parameters too high, so it's really a matter of tuning everything to match the limits of your system. I recently discovered that stubborn stuttering could be relieved by lowering the PatchPixelDim parameter in compositetexturebudgets.xml, but that can have image quality side effects so it needs to be done with that in mind.
It's also a matter of the circumstances. Flying very fast at low altitude over a large city or an airfield can cause issues that even just a few thousand feet of altitude will cure.
I'm running an i7 7700K overclocked to 4.6 Ghz and I can still make CFS3 stutter if I push the scenery and texture budget parameters too high, so it's really a matter of tuning everything to match the limits of your system. I recently discovered that stubborn stuttering could be relieved by lowering the PatchPixelDim parameter in compositetexturebudgets.xml, but that can have image quality side effects so it needs to be done with that in mind.
It's also a matter of the circumstances. Flying very fast at low altitude over a large city or an airfield can cause issues that even just a few thousand feet of altitude will cure.
alcanallen
Members +
PatchPixelDim="512"
Thanks Andy found the xml, does that end # have an effect too? iv`e lowered "512" by 50 and will test later.<Budgets PatchPixelDim="512" MinPatchDimUseThumb="16384">
Please let us know of any other tweaks for lower range rigs,
OS Windows 7 home premium 64 bit
Mother board Gigabyte B85M-HD3
Procesor i5-4670@3.4 GZh
Ram 8 Gig
G Card AMD Radeon HD 6900
John.
Thanks Andy found the xml, does that end # have an effect too? iv`e lowered "512" by 50 and will test later.<Budgets PatchPixelDim="512" MinPatchDimUseThumb="16384">
Please let us know of any other tweaks for lower range rigs,
OS Windows 7 home premium 64 bit
Mother board Gigabyte B85M-HD3
Procesor i5-4670@3.4 GZh
Ram 8 Gig
G Card AMD Radeon HD 6900
John.
sixstrings5859
Charter Member
I run DX11 .Is Ankor's shaders compatible with it and what sweetfx do i need for it to work ? This mod seems awfully tedious to install and a lot of tweaking to get it to work right. This is really intimidating to install and get to work. Don't know if it is above my pay scale to do. After reading many post i think i'll just wait till WOTR is released to enjoy. Have WOFF-UE and enjoy it greatly and i'm sure WOTR will be just as stunning . More of a player and not much into modding individual files. Will try it out on a stock install first and experiment with it if need be. Any help will be appreciated . Got ETO and all the other expansions working correctly so i'm not a total dummy but all the modding seems daunting ! Regards,Scott
sixstrings5859
Charter Member
I revise my earlier statement. Installed without sweetfx and it works fine for me. Problem solved !
BorekS
Members +
yeah, one CFS3 gfx mega mod variable is good enough, I would say, Scott 
yet, SweetFx, ENB or such graphical enhancements are basically just cosmethic improvements (screen blur, bloom, color tone etc.). as far only Ankor Shaders adds dynamic object shadows and many many other great things.
unfortunatelly, after a few years, Ive installed latest public Ankors Shader package into my CFS3 which "butchered" all my other CFS3 game installations (just full folder clones) too, because all they use same configoverride set at windows user App Data. so I lost all the bloody set previous game tweaks at once. I didnt realised it. I didnt bothered to solve it yet. using WinXp btw.
yet, SweetFx, ENB or such graphical enhancements are basically just cosmethic improvements (screen blur, bloom, color tone etc.). as far only Ankor Shaders adds dynamic object shadows and many many other great things.unfortunatelly, after a few years, Ive installed latest public Ankors Shader package into my CFS3 which "butchered" all my other CFS3 game installations (just full folder clones) too, because all they use same configoverride set at windows user App Data. so I lost all the bloody set previous game tweaks at once. I didnt realised it. I didnt bothered to solve it yet. using WinXp btw.
BorekS
Members +
yes, could be bit strange to use WinXP these days, but as a racesim and flightsim stuff creator of old(er) games there still is no reason to refresh all the development tools on something else. yet, I dont play games anymore and the modding hobby spends a lot of my free time however, having a multiboot to Win7, just because of the hated Steam and his few racesims which requests that OS, but its a secondary boot which I dont use too much often
needs to note the "modding PC" is not the only computer at my home or at work of course...
however, having a multiboot to Win7, just because of the hated Steam and his few racesims which requests that OS, but its a secondary boot which I dont use too much often needs to note the "modding PC" is not the only computer at my home or at work of course...
hunter
Charter Member
I have W10 64 bit and a old nvidia gfx 660 . I have trying to install in my cfs3 folder the Ankors shaders 170118 , but whitout lucky , run only in 800x600 16 bit , and in this mode , i see only the runway , not have terrain . sorry for my poor english and someone can help me ?
hunter
Charter Member
Sorry , forgot to mentioned the real problem . If i change the resolution , CTD.
Hard to tell what could it be. Maybe a driver issue?
GTX 660 should be perfectly ok, back when I started working on these shaders I had GTX 285 1GB made in 2009.
Make sure you've installed the latest version of DirectX 9, available here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109
What seems weird is that you are using 16-bit mode. It is not supported by DX9 shaders and (if I remember it correctly) should not even appear in CFS3Config, only 32 bit modes should be visible.
Can you find d3d8.log in your CFS3 folder and post its contents here? It is just a text file which will open in Notepad (and Windows will likely show it simply as "d3d8" with an icon like a text file)
GTX 660 should be perfectly ok, back when I started working on these shaders I had GTX 285 1GB made in 2009.
Make sure you've installed the latest version of DirectX 9, available here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109
What seems weird is that you are using 16-bit mode. It is not supported by DX9 shaders and (if I remember it correctly) should not even appear in CFS3Config, only 32 bit modes should be visible.
Can you find d3d8.log in your CFS3 folder and post its contents here? It is just a text file which will open in Notepad (and Windows will likely show it simply as "d3d8" with an icon like a text file)