I've been going through all kinds of lighting tests for the last hour. In short, this one enhancement is going to be VERY powerful. HOWEVER, that said, it is undoubtedly going to cause some major headaches for repainters and devs alike. First of all. The ONLY way for your repaints to look as they should (the way YOU, the repainter intended them, and advertized them) is to publish your HDR Slider numbers, and Dynamic Reflection Values. Otherwise it will be a royal mess. Especially for reflective bare metal paints. I've honed mine in to correspond to how my B-58's should look. And I'm happy with the results. Most everything else has followed suit. Without knowing this, it will be difficult if not impossible to allow each user the correct experience which we are trying to share. As such, the readme's of all repaints should as a best practice start to include your settings, or at least basic settings. When repainting it might be helpful to publish a best practice settings for HDR and DR (dynamic reflection) indexes for the repainter to set when testing out new paints. Otherwise the color saturation will be based on non standard lighting/saturation/bloom settings... Just a thought. But honestly, we've entered a whole new world of possibilities with 3.1 here. Although most are treating it like it's v2.6, it's NOT. Under the hood it's a generation gap ahead of where 2.5 was. Just in terms of memory handling, object handling and performance. I'm getting FPS numbers I've never seen in P3D previously. It is superior in everyway. that's with REX installed and DR set to ULTRA.
P3Dv3.1 - Repaints & Dynamic Cube Map
- Thread starter Mach3DS
- Start date
gman5250
Charter Member
RE: Your first post
You make some very good points Rick. Love the shots of the Hustler too.
Until now, we were able to control display variables with the "fixed" nature of the reflection maps. The one exception, of course, is that people can switch GlobalEnvmaps to suit their taste...which is fine.
The Dynamic Reflections open up a universe of design possibilities IMHO, but will require developers and end users to become even more sophisticated.
With this first release of DR tech, LM has created a new base line from which developers can push for higher levels of immersion and realism. I would anticipate that further improvements in the DR system will continue to improve light rendering, specular representation etc. I would love to see RGB sliders added to the lighting menu, in addition to the saturation slider now available. Of course, this would compound the rendering issue that you point out by adding more flexibility for the end user to modify your intended display properties.
Your suggestion that devs include optimum settings data is probably the most logical way to approach the issue. Beyond that it is in the hands of the end user to tweak things to their preference.
I'm going to be working with some new ideas in this area, perhaps we should dedicate a thread to the topic.
Post topic observation:
Like you, my performance numbers went up significantly.
One flight killer is flying from my WIP KRNO or KMMH HD scenery into Flightbeam KSFO HD with either ORBX NCA or MSE photo real enabled, MV Boeing 737 (tube of choice). These are extremely high demand environments that terminate at a very high demand location. Typically I will hit the wall as I approach SFO with VAS approaching the red line. In 3.0 I was usually refreshing my scenery as I entered the Bay Area, but my first flights in 3.1 were completely smooth. FPS was well within the optimum range, hovering around 27 on the ground at SFO with sliders maxed across the board. In the air I was averaging 50+.
Even at the level of performance I'm experiencing, I am shopping new cards for the sim computer and looking at the GTX980 TI or possibly doubling down with a second GTX780. Looks like we're going to need to look seriously at performance mods as the environment offers more and more possibilities.
Well worth the investments in my humble opinion.
You make some very good points Rick. Love the shots of the Hustler too.
Until now, we were able to control display variables with the "fixed" nature of the reflection maps. The one exception, of course, is that people can switch GlobalEnvmaps to suit their taste...which is fine.
The Dynamic Reflections open up a universe of design possibilities IMHO, but will require developers and end users to become even more sophisticated.
With this first release of DR tech, LM has created a new base line from which developers can push for higher levels of immersion and realism. I would anticipate that further improvements in the DR system will continue to improve light rendering, specular representation etc. I would love to see RGB sliders added to the lighting menu, in addition to the saturation slider now available. Of course, this would compound the rendering issue that you point out by adding more flexibility for the end user to modify your intended display properties.
Your suggestion that devs include optimum settings data is probably the most logical way to approach the issue. Beyond that it is in the hands of the end user to tweak things to their preference.
I'm going to be working with some new ideas in this area, perhaps we should dedicate a thread to the topic.
Post topic observation:
Like you, my performance numbers went up significantly.
One flight killer is flying from my WIP KRNO or KMMH HD scenery into Flightbeam KSFO HD with either ORBX NCA or MSE photo real enabled, MV Boeing 737 (tube of choice). These are extremely high demand environments that terminate at a very high demand location. Typically I will hit the wall as I approach SFO with VAS approaching the red line. In 3.0 I was usually refreshing my scenery as I entered the Bay Area, but my first flights in 3.1 were completely smooth. FPS was well within the optimum range, hovering around 27 on the ground at SFO with sliders maxed across the board. In the air I was averaging 50+.
Even at the level of performance I'm experiencing, I am shopping new cards for the sim computer and looking at the GTX980 TI or possibly doubling down with a second GTX780. Looks like we're going to need to look seriously at performance mods as the environment offers more and more possibilities.
Well worth the investments in my humble opinion.
Last edited:
DaveWG
Charter Member
That's nothing to do with the dynamic reflections, that's a combination of 2 P3d fx bugs that have been around for a while: 1) P3dv2+ renders particle fx at roughly half size compared to FSX (fx files need modding to suit), and 2) there's an odd fx scaling bug in P3dv3+ that reduces the size of lighting fx defined in the aircraft.cfg the closer you zoom in (doesn't effect entries in the smoke section, or fx built into the mdl).
Yes, I assume you mean the aircraft reflecting itself? Agreed. I hope it's in the future of DR.
Not sure if it really looks odd without it. No different than before DR existed. But imagine seeing the engine pod in the B58 reflection...that woukd look so authentic. My guess is that it is possible and prob close. Hopefully! Make sure to adk for it via the LM forums. The more people that ask the better!