Firstly what a great little tool, nice to get the DX10 effect work almost perfectly.
I use REX4 textures for water etc. and wonder how to improve these as at present they are not looking pretty, I have the DX10 enabled for the Sun, water and wave effects in REX 4. What would the ideal values be in the fixer tool?
Many thanks,
Andy
Hello Andy! I'm always a day late and a dollar short and I hope I don't muck things up. Compared to all these FSX GURU Einstein-like geniuses like Paul J, SteveFSX, Roger and many others, I would be Forest Gump. The following is what I've learned so far about my REX4 water and DX10, and I hope it helps...but first;
Mr Johnson I've been following yours and Steve's Guruism for quite some time now, and all though you don't know me, as I was getting up the nerve to post a DX10 success story
when the SHTF! I wanted to say;
Thank you,
Thank you, Thank you!!!
Sorry Andy!
With REX 4 - Texture Direct you have
wave animation-global water-wave patterns.Stevefsx suggests that you pick your global water
without wave patterns as the wind driven white caps
look off. So pick the colors you like, the coral etc. Install of course. I couldn't find a Wave Animation in REX4 I liked to compliment the white caps, plus up close they looked too pixelated IMO.
I went here http://www.strikingsoftware.com/downloads.shtml scrolled down to the bottom and downloaded SHD Wave Animation for DX10.Simple copy/paste plus backup originals! These are 4096 textures but work well @ 2048.
I tried FSWClite DX10 shaders but had better results adjusting reflections using Steve's DX10 fixer. I then installed Gizmo's wave animation. (Don't have ActiveSky yet)
Then I opened Steve's fixer to water shader and adjusted the, what I call, color/reflection factors...
Fresnel Min (default is 0.375) in the pictures below min=0.575
Fresnel Max (default is 0.588) in the pictures below max=0.788
By reducing the min/max by a factor of 0.1 from default you get closer to base color (darker) and less reflection.
Steve says:"The two fresnel factors define the amount of sky colour when looking straight down (min) and looking along (max)."
I will mention here that with the FSWClite DX10 shaders that I discarded, at any altitude above 1000 ft or so,the repeating water pattern is very prominent at midday...YUCK!
Tested each texture/color/animation at dusk, dawn, midday and night! Another factor to consider is what are you looking at monitor wise?
Big screen, little screen, average screen or multiple screens.
Another huge factor is negative LOD bias found in Paul Johnson's DX10 How To! Adjust this in Nvidia Inspector assuming your GPU is Nvidia!
I like a little water shimmer/glimmer so I turn on LOD control and adjust to the negative!
Now throw in some sweetfx...or...not!
You may not like
my results but the point is with Steve's fixer, REX4, Activesky, sweetfx (I use 1.5), Paul's guidance, you have a tremendous amount of control and can change your FSX's look and feel at will with relative ease!
REX4 Global Water Used for the following! Medium-Clear Coral Pronounced
You might have to click on these pics to enlarge!
Without sweetfx.
With
