Seven Minutes Over the Solent

gecko

gecko

Charter Member
It's been awful quiet lately, and there hasn't even been a Battle of Britain post yet to mark the anniversary. So before it's too late, here's a quick video of some Battle of Britain action. You might notice some interesting things that are in the works if you pay attention.



On a personal note, this has been a pretty slow year for me getting stuff done in CFS3. Real life has been keeping me pretty busy, and I'm about to move again in a couple of weeks. Hopefully I will be able to pick back up once the dust settles towards the end of the year and get back to building more CFS3 content.
 
gecko said:
... You might notice some interesting things that are in the works if you pay attention...
Click to expand...

Is the airframe vibration when your engine seized new? Other than that, an enthralling video! Specifically the radio chatter - I don't think I have that installed at the mo but then again, I hardly have time to fly such engagements. It really livens up the whole scrap with the Ju-87s!
Good luck with moving!
 
So a great video!:applause: Several points/questions
What ac is that; your MkII?
Love the reelections in the perspex, is that standard to your ac?
Like the non standard (white surf) shoreline; what dds files are those, as I thought that I had also changed mine, but new Win10 install has made me unsure about them. Areyou using the WOTR scenery here?
Is this one of the BoB update missions, or one of yours?

Good luck on your move!
 
mongoose said:
So a great video! Several points/questions
What ac is that; your MkII?
Love the reelections in the perspex, is that standard to your ac?
Like the non standard (white surf) shoreline; what dds files are those, as I thought that I had also changed mine, but new Win10 install has made me unsure about them. Areyou using the WOTR scenery here?
Is this one of the BoB update missions, or one of yours?

Good luck on your move!
Click to expand...

-It's the Mk.V standing in for a Mk.I. :icon_redface: The cockpit details are closer and that module has features that haven't been ported back to the Mk.II yet. Aircraft performance difference between a Mk.I and Mk.V is negligible at that altitude, though the temperature limits are more forgiving on the Mk.V (though that doesn't matter when somebody puts a bullet through your radiator).
-Yep, that is the same perspex effect as is in the Mk.V release.
-That's a WIP hi res shoreline. Not quite happy with it yet but I've not worked on it in quite a while.
-Yes, WOTR scenery.
-Just a quick mashup I threw together to do the video.

Perhaps these will be more obvious:

17aGI4m.png


NSPUOth.png


4scvExO.png


EJqOOeD.png
 
Enjoyed the wonderful video. Wish the Spitfires were Mk I ,or at least Mk II's. Still very good action. Can i share this video with the FB group ? People would love to see it there. Wonderfully done ! Regards, Scott
 
All you need for a working mirror is fully reflective material in gmax materials/specular texture. Note the mirror only shows terrain and sky and clouds. No models, including aircraft, will be visible. This has been the case since an update to Ankor's shaders a couple years ago.

sixstrings5859 said:
Enjoyed the wonderful video. Wish the Spitfires were Mk I ,or at least Mk II's. Still very good action. Can i share this video with the FB group ? People would love to see it there. Wonderfully done ! Regards, Scott
Click to expand...

Sure Scott. It's out there on youtube, so no reason it couldn't appear on FB. Feel free to share anything I post.
 
gecko said:
-It's the Mk.V standing in for a Mk.I. :icon_redface: The cockpit details are closer and that module has features that haven't been ported back to the Mk.II yet. Aircraft performance difference between a Mk.I and Mk.V is negligible at that altitude, though the temperature limits are more forgiving on the Mk.V (though that doesn't matter when somebody puts a bullet through your radiator).
-Yep, that is the same perspex effect as is in the Mk.V release.
-That's a WIP hi res shoreline. Not quite happy with it yet but I've not worked on it in quite a while.
-Yes, WOTR scenery.
-Just a quick mashup I threw together to do the video.

Perhaps these will be more obvious:

17aGI4m.png


NSPUOth.png


4scvExO.png


EJqOOeD.png
Click to expand...

Might I ask what your settings are for draw distance/horizon? I'd love a more distant view of the terrain for when I play WoTR! Plus, have you made changes to the stock settings in the Ankor shaders file? They look better to my eyes.
 
"-Yep, that is the same perspex effect as is in the Mk.V release."


Is the perspex effect portable to other ac? In other words could a competent modeler (or even an idiot like me) model it into am3d file, or s the original gmax etc. required? I seem to remember you? and or Andy? working on the external perspex effects, but sort of lost track on that. I am interested to know how this would look on night fighters and bombers in the dark.

Just an aside. If one used Steve's AI app and changed the short name to "Spitfirexxxx F.C." then you could hear fighter control as well.
 
Yes, it's as Andy says. The scratches you see are part of a texture that is applied to the glass in the VC model, but the reflective effects can be achieved on any model by hex editing the materials.


lythronax said:
Might I ask what your settings are for draw distance/horizon? I'd love a more distant view of the terrain for when I play WoTR! Plus, have you made changes to the stock settings in the Ankor shaders file? They look better to my eyes.
Click to expand...

And there's what I was actually trying to show! Yes, the entire sky has been reworked. Ankor has helped me with some experiments on some of the equations in some of the .fx files included in Ankor's shaders. These adjust the fog and expand the horizon out to about a 75 mile radius around the player, so a total viewable area spanning 150 miles at any given time, putting it on par with any modern sim out there. Some tweaks to ring detail settings were needed to fully take advantage of this. The new equations are altitude dependent, which allows for more haze above you at low altitudes, and deep blue when you are up high and most of the atmosphere (by density) is below you. Notice the difference in sky color and horizon characteristics in the different shots take at different altitudes. This in turn allowed the painted-on horizon in the actual skybox textures to be removed, so the horizon fog is now fully dynamic.

All of this looked fine in clear weather, but with the tiny radius within which CFS3 will render clouds, it looked pretty bad when you added any clouds. So Ankor updated the dll to allow clouds to be rendered all the way out to the horizon, and with much greater randomization than before, which eliminated patterns. One benefit is that geographically defined weather, which is supported even in stock CFS3, can now been seen at great distances. You can see a storm line out in the distance, instead of the sky suddenly filling with clouds as you get close. You can see this in the video, with several different kinds of weather visible in different parts of the sky.

All of this is still very much WIP and there are a number of related things in the mix that need work as well. Since all these parts are so interconnected, they all need an update, otherwise improving one thing will make other things actually look worse unless they too get a makeover to match the other work. It's not like working on a single plane which can then just be dropped into any install. And like I said, it's been slow progress between that, my front burner project, and real life demands. Need more hours in the day! In the end, I think you'll find it worth it, with the whole flight environment feeling more lifelike and dynamic than before.
 
All I can say is "Wow!!" :encouragement::applause:

I am also admiring your lovely sea surface - it really looks like water with the larger waves and those smaller ripples. Any settings or textures different from stock ETO?
 
Oh yeah, forgot the water. That's another WIP project that's been rattling around my HD for a while. New textures and shaders .fx file settings. I even tried going up to 4k textures, which looked great, but I think it ate up too much of the 4GB ram limit and I suspect they started causing crashes on longer flights. 1k is still about twice the resolution of the largest ones currently available.
 
The water is amazing ! The sky effects are stunning ! All this work will add so much to the immersion effect of CFS3. A new breath of life in my book. Out of All the other air combat sims out there, this is the one i always come back to. Only hope i have a pc that will last forever to play it.Lol ! Regards,Scott
 
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