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This Could Be Very Interesting - AnKor's Shaders

Yeah, I usually get a ctd within the first couple seconds, sometimes a bit longer and sometimes I can actually fly without problems. This does not happen in WOFF, it runs smoothly there, I'm trying to figure out what the difference is.
 
I've figured out how to hex edit the m3d file for the planes with a reflectance layer so they're compatible with the self-shadowing and glint ded8.dll.
 
Did you remove the reflection or find a way to make it compatible? I have the issue with planes that don't have a reflective texture as well. It seems to eat my gpu alive in the first few seconds for some reason. WOFF doesn't.
 
I run everything on all fives except for MAW when I want to fly the Polesti Mission and have to cut it back to threes to get all the way into Romania.

Yea when I built the Polesti missions I discovered the need to set the sliders at 3 to prevent a CRT in MAW also..
 
In order to correct the M3D files that get disturbed (planes with relectance layers typically have sections that turn white, become transparent, etc.) by the new d3d8.dll please start with reading this Tutorial again. http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?40606-Projected-knowledge-base/page3

Always start by making a back-up copy of your original M3D files.

Each material is represented by a stream of 36 bytes of code (each one ranging from 0 to ff, that is 255 decimal); (I set my Hex editor to 36 columns wide so the patterns repeat making it easier to see where to edit.)
this is the meaning of the magic numbers for the first stream


00 00 00 00 type of drawing (solid, line, etc...), usually set to zeros (The 3rd set will be FF for problem aircraft and needs to be changed to 00 Be careful to only do this for rows that actually have a reflective texture file in it as this also can be FF associated with something else.)

ff ff ff ff diffuse color (RGB components plus intensity)
lower intensity for transparency effects

00 00 00 ff ambient color (RGB components plus intensity), not used

ff ff ff ff specular factor (RGB components plus intensity) (For Win 7 I have these all at 30 30 30 FF to avoid over bright reflections)

00 00 00 43 glossiness, usually goes from 00 00 00 40 to 00 00 00 44 (For Win 7 I have this at 42)

00 00 number (see above) of diffuse texture, ff ff if none

01 00 number of specular texture, ff ff if none

ff ff number of reflective texture, none in this plane (If these have a dds file number here it needs to be changed to FFFF)

ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff unknown and possibly not used
 
Some of the cockpits were showing transparent patches through the instrument panel. I've discovered that these are related to a glass layer in some models that is placed between the eye point and the instruments. It's a little tricky to identify the line where this glass layer resides, but if the glossiness entries are something like FF FF FF 3F and there is no texture file called out for that line they probably need to be changed to 00 00 00 3F.

Cockpit_Glass.jpg
 
So far I've found this with the dpc F86, Mig 15, AD4/AH1, and some versions of the F4U, and P51D.
 
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I'm going through all my installs and fixing the m3d files for compatibility with both Win 7 Specular Enabled, and AnKor's self-shader dll. It only takes me a few moments to fix each one, but with something over a thousand to do it's quite a project. If anyone feels uncomfortable doing the hex edits, but wants the benefit of the beautiful new renderings, I can help with instructions. Otherwise, just let me know if there is something in particular you want and I can probably send it to you. So far I've completed Rising Sun, PTO Solomon Islands (with many extra aircraft added in over the years), DPC Korea, All Jets, Firepower, Battle Of Britain, and OFF. I still have MAW and ETO to go through but the end is in sight.
 
This version fixed my stability issues in CFS3, the crashes seem to be gone now.:jump: I believe Ankor plans to redo the CFS3 reflections in the future, but it's a lower priority for the time being, for now they are simply disabled. I'm holding off on doing a lot of hex editing on the models until we see how it is in final form.
 
According to the thread over at Simhq it looks like he is adding reflection and bump mapping to the water!!! With the self-shadowing and now possibly improved water all I can say is wow!! I can't believe this is happening to CFS3.....

:encouragement:
 
The man is a genius!


full-32542-75732-cfs3_water_specular.jpg
 
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