Attention all skinners!

Since AnKor made his Beta available (post #121 on page 5) earlier this month I decided to go ahead and package up what I already have completed for others to start using.

The Dynamic Reticle package will be available here once it's published:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?catid=13&linkid=19730

If you have any trouble with the instructions (it only requires some text editing) just ask for help, and I'll try to walk you through it.

As I found during the development of this collection, you can implement this conversion a little at a time once you have the first couple of steps in place, so don't be put off by thinking that you have to do hundreds of planes all at once to use it.
 
MajorMagee said:
Since AnKor made his Beta available (post #121 on page 5) earlier this month I decided to go ahead and package up what I already have completed for others to start using.

The Dynamic Reticle package will be available here once it's published:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?catid=13&linkid=19730

If you have any trouble with the instructions (it only requires some text editing) just ask for help, and I'll try to walk you through it.

As I found during the development of this collection, you can implement this conversion a little at a time once you have the first couple of steps in place, so don't be put off by thinking that you have to do hundreds of planes all at once to use it.
Click to expand...

Thanks Major, these are Most welcomed.
:applause: :applause: :applause:
 
I just mapped the DPC Mig-15 to use:

<Effect Type="Track" EffectName="RU_USSR_LA5_gunsight" PosX="-0.025" PosZ="0.95" PosY="0.930" Pitch="90" MinVel="-999999"


MaxVel="999999"/>
 
Very nice Major! I'm curious, what was your process for setting the reticle sizes. Finding historical sizes has been difficult, and then even harder to translate to CFS3 usage.
 
Quick pop baqck to say hello and see what's going on!

I've just installed the latest beta shaders pack and modded exe into MAW, and am extremely impressed! Very, very good. My FPS are at 50, which is the upper limit I set, with full 5s on all sliders.

Only one niggle that I can see - spinner rotation on the Bf109e is a bit odd. You can see this on any of the aircraft with two colour spinners. Otherwise the new viewpoint is brilliant, and the new shaders a whole new experience!
 
Typically I selected several common aircraft that represented the different size targets (e.g. Bf109, Ju88, Fw200). I would fly a QC mission and come up from behind until I was 400 m away to check the reticle size. I'd then change the magnification multiplier, and do it again until I had a good match. A few historical documents suggest that the distance should have been 300m, but I found that with the CFS3 models it often led to the bomber wingspans being well outside the width of the gunsight reflector glass. My philosophy generally ended up being to give an indication that you had gotten close enough to be within the maximum effective range when the wingspan just covered the full circle. The ratio between the types really doesn't change, so if you wanted to move them in closer to the gun convergence distance (250-300m) you would just proportionally increase the multipliers I used.
 
I picked up a copy of "Dogfight: The Greatest Air Duels Of World War II" a couple of months ago, and it was fairly helpful with this issue.

from page 255

You must fire your weapons only at the ranged for which they were designed. Normally, you should not fire at ranged greater than 400m, as beyond this distance the trajectory quickly falls away. This also applies to larger weapons such as the Mk 108. It is a common fallacy to believe that it must be possible to fire larger-caliber weapons at greater ranges, and that the aiming of these need not be as precise as for small-caliber weapons. The opposite is true! You have little ammunition! Use it sparingly. With the Mk 108 you only have 60 rounds, so reduce range, aim carefully, fire accurately.

Commence firing at a maximum range of 400m. Experience has shown that combat ranges are being greatly underestimated. The distance given in combat reports are almost never correct. When, for example, a combat range of 50-100m is reported, it actually varies between 200m and 400m, as established by analysis of combat films. Frequently, range estimation errors are even greater. In attacks against bombers, many fighters open fire at 2,500-3,000m. This is a senseless waste of ammunition!

A four-engined bomber has a wingspan of about 30M. If it appears a large as the deflection circle it is at a 300m range. (I set mine up for 400m so you might want to change the multipliers) For a four-engined bomber, the estimated value corresponding to a span of 30m is multiplied by 3. Therefore, a four-engined bomber with 30 m span fits in the circle one time - 1 x 3 = 300 m; fits in the circle two times - 2 x 3 = 600 m, fits in the circle three times - 3 x 3 = 900 m.

July 1944 Gunnery Instruction Document
Click to expand...

It really is hard to hold off from firing too soon, even with the sights calibrated for 400m. As I mentioned earlier, many of the enemy aircraft have the annoying habit of breaking away as soon as you get inside 450M.
 
gosd said:
Ankor
I find the shadows of buildings and trees to be a bit exagerated.

The shadows are too long. And it does not change depending of time of day.
.
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Forget the first photo, the one with the Swordfish illustrates what I am talking about,.
 
OK, guys, what am I doing wrong?

Tried to add the dynamic reticle to the Italian Wings MC200 (IW_MC200_356-13) by copying the Line from the G50 into its .dpd and changing it accordingly. The line nos read like this:

<Effect Type="Track" EffectName="IT_CAI_Tipo_C_gunsight" PosX="0" PosZ="-1.2" PosY="0.94" Pitch="90" MinVel="-999999" MaxVel="999999"/>

The position of the dynamic gunsight seems quiet correct, but the old static is still there. Here's a screenshot of what I get:



Any Ideas?
 

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gosd, it looks like everything is in order in your shots. Long shadows at sundown and short ones at midday. The long shadows may seem too long at first glance, but it is realistic. You often don't really notice how long the shadows get at dusk in real life unless you're specifically looking for it or you see it from the air.
 
AnKor,

Congratulations to you for resolving the haze blending issue at the horizon included in the recent update for WOFF!

:applause:
 
gosd, that's more or less the expected result with low sun.
To look more realistic such long shadows should be much blurrier, but adding this feature will eat too many FPS.
Though it might be possible to tweak some settings in Scenery.fx so trees and their shadows won't look way too thin. I will keep this issue in mind.

MajorMagee,
Thanks! I'm glad people like what I did, that horizon blending fix resulted in a cascade of changes for light calculation formulas :)
Sun glare doesn't look as good with stock cfs3 but it should be solvable with some tweaking of suneffect.xml. The trick is that the first <SunGlare ... /> entry is also used for "blinding sun" effect so it needs to be set to large size and better be a blurred circle image without rays (see corona1.dds in WOFF).

Now I'll try to get back to sorting out cfs3 specific stuff, though it is very difficult to find enough free time :(

gecko, I wanted to mention before, but kept forgetting: to get better FPS you might try changing the method aircraft and cockpit shadows are drawn.
Edit Models.fx and near the beginning of file there is a line:
//#define AltShadows
delete those two slashes to enable "alternative" shadows.
This is an experimental mode which I've started implementing long ago but never polished to call it ready.
It will likely work faster on old GPUs and might even look better than standard shadows (that was the main goal), but at the same time might show some artifacts like visible "seams" in wings or some odd patterns on large surfaces.

You can also disable bump mapping calculations (if you don't need them of course) by adding the same two slashes before the line:
#define BumpEnabled
It should get you a few more FPS.
 
Great latest beta version

Just got around to applying d3d8 20150506beta. I just had to post! Ankor, the results are amazing! This is in a stock testbed install (well not 100% stock). Things observed:
- effects seem smoother and just look fabulous
- ground shadows on a winter's dawn start up are eerie
- the aircraft surface is even better (is that bump mapping?)
- the STOCK ground textures look amazing - the stock winter textures for ground and trees always looked a bit bodgy but these drivers make the whites brilliant with a hard edged sheen which makes you frigid just by looking at them
- check out the sea water texture - again makes me reluctant to ditch, gone are the smooth lugubrious surfaces of the previous version of the d3d8 mods.
I just wish I could post high quality screenshots but they always seem to get resized
[edit] Oh, and check out the runway - the surface texturing just increases realism by a factor of 10 :applause:
 

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Many Thanks Master Ankor, the beta version seems to be working very well for me also..
Much rejoicng.
Very grateful..
:applause: :applause: :applause:
I will continue to test this and set it all up for my various installs
Again Thank You..
More rejoicing!!
 
Here's the xpd file entry to provide dynamic reticle effects for the new MAW Fairey Fulmar.

<Effect Type="Track" EffectName="UK_RAF_Spitfire_gunsight" PosX="0.000" PosZ="0.60" PosY="0.675" Pitch="90" MinVel="-999999" MaxVel="999999"/>
 
My turn to provide some feedback too, also on the d3d8.20150506.beta version.

Pros: LOOKS GREAT. The new lightings, shadows, runway reflections, simply awesome. Not to mention the FOV fix which makes it feel like a completely different game, all of those working together bring the end result surprisingly close to modern attempts such as War Thunder when it comes to looks - while still retaining the excellent physics modelling present in CFS3 and not so much in many others.

Cons: What happens after sunset. The sun sets normally but afterwards the sky in its direction develops a bright glow that intensifies until it's pure white with abrupt cut-off lines to normal night sky. If anyone else can check this out in a mission that includes sunset (night bombing missions should be good) I'd be glad to know if it's just me.
 
I had initially installed WOFF_D3D9_Extended.20140325.Beta and that blew my socks off. My FPS had doubled to boot! Last night I installed d3d8.20150506.beta and noticed a very distinct improvement in terms of overall detail. It did cause some terrain and aircraft shadow flickering. There was also some anti-alaising issues and the FPS dropped slightly. I thought the view change was really odd at first, but after a while you kinda get used to it (reminiscent of FS actually).

This mod really transforms CFS3 from the proverbial ugly duckling into a graceful swan. Many thanks for all of the hard work to make this happen! :ernaehrung004:
 
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