Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
I'm not sure this is necessary. I think an opt-in checkbox would suffice. After all FlightGear has been around for personal experiments for a very long time. So why not this option. I don't mind leaving it - the rational for deleting it is that the texture sheets take up space and download bandwidth and the shader instructions take up GPU registers for everyone - even those who are not interested. So, let me just try to explain better, because we do have a case study to see what's likely to happen next. Lauri introduced the skydome shader a while ago. That was controlled by Rayleigh, Mie and density sliders. I think these are pretty technical terms - I'm not sure the average user knows or is interested in what Rayleigh scattering is. So we have a new project with impressive graphics arriving on the scene. What was the reaction? The developer community largely supported it, someone coded a place in the GUI. What I did not hear are Mathias' remarks that all this is a very bad idea and Lauri should have done it differently. I did not hear that Rayleigh, Mie and density are complicated concepts and we need to simplify that because the user gets confused otherwise. I did not hear that cranking density all the way down or up it is completely possible to generate an airless Mars-sky or a super-dense greenish gas giant atmosphere and that we need to prevent the user from moving the sliders that way. I did not hear that we shouldn't implement this because it produces glaring graphical artefacts due to the mismatch with the terrain shading. I did not hear that it doesn't work under any amount of heavier fog, because the skydome is never fogged. The user by and large community loved it. There are series of screenshots from the time where you can see that users happily accept playing with Rayleigh and Mie, accept looking at obvious mismatches with the terrain just to get the sky pictures. (Well, there was one rather critical voice - that was me. But since I believe in constructive criticism, I didn't point out the flaws before I had read up O'Neill's original article, concluded that he doesn't understand what he's really solving, re-derived the scheme from scratch by just solving the integrals analytically, and then concluded what was missing in order to make things realistic, and when I started pointing out the flaws, I could offer a clear path to correct them. As it turned out, I also ended up implementing it myself.) We may conclude that the user loves shiny and exciting graphical features, is willing to accept an un-intuitive GUI that can produce unrealistic outcome and is even willing to accept massive graphical artefacts under some conditions. The funny thing is - when I finally fixed the artefacts by writing the matching terrain shader, THEN everyone started complaining why effect XY didn't work any more when the skydome was on. It was irrelevant that the artefacts matching terrain and skydome were gone, but the fact that one could not longer have bumpmapped planes together with the skydome shader really bugged people. We may conclude that the user *really* loves shiny graphics, no matter the cost otherwise. (Btw, - could anyone tell Mathias what the end user wants? The user wants an ubershader - that's the single most requested feature I had to deal with in the last year...) Of course, the skydome shader is a non-trivial beast with lots of dynamics in, so once one changes from the isotropic default skydome to the dynamical beast, the minimal matching terrain shader suddenly uses 220 lines of light and fog code rather than just 2 lines. Pretty much anyone can tell you that if you make a system 100 times more complex, it's going to take some time to get it free of all trouble. At which point it's very helpful if the surrounding community realizes that simple fact and tries for some constructive input - which may be as simple as one or two more folks who explain forum users how the FG shader system works and why effects can't simply be switched on in a new framework and why this is not a bug, or helps by diagnosing flaws rather than just pointing at them. It turns out that in the event I was also able to remap the Rayleigh/Mie/density parameter space to a 2-parameter space covering all the situations relevant for the Earth atmosphere, ths preventing unrealistic input, handing one of the new parameters to the weather system and leaving the other under user control. In principle this implies we could have removed the Rayleigh/Mie/density control - but when I asked if that should be done, the decision was made here to keep it (!). So, what do I learn from that case study as it applied to a potential procedural season model? 1) Users are likely to love it, no matter if the GUI has three additional sliders or not. Enthusiastic forum responses seem to confirm that. 2) In the case of the skydome, I was able to get a heuristics throwing out the
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
Hi THorsten, On 02/16/2013 09:13 AM, Renk Thorsten wrote: So, let me just try to explain better, because we do have a case study to see what's likely to happen next. I really want to respond to all this but I feel I'm not really entitled to because I did little coding for FlightGear the past two years. Let me emphasize that while I joined FlightGear because it really was an accurate simulator rather than in-flight game concept like all the other simulators at that time I do bribe about FlightGear these days, pointing out the realistic weather conditions for soaring for example. Your work is highly appreciated by many and please take criticism more like there's room for improvement in this area rather than your implementation is rubbish because it's not .. 99% of the time which is a great achievement! Your comments do let me believe that an opt-out checkbox might indeed be a better idea. The user base of FlightGear Starts to shift from 'real aviation/simulator enthusiasts' and more towards users who are used to Microsoft Flight(simulator). The latter will be impressed by many other things than the accuracy of the Flight Models (which is more or less taken for granted nowadays). Anyhow, don't feel frustrated. Take criticism for what it's worth and reject it if it sounds unrealistic. Also there's no need to defend yourself every time, you for one have proven yourself to be highly capable at your area of expertise (which for FlightGear was sparse until now). Erik -- http://www.adalin.com - Hardware accelerated AeonWave and OpenAL for Windows and Linux -- The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel - in partnership with Geeknet, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials, tech docs, whitepapers, evaluation guides, and opinion stories. Check out the most recent posts - join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
Okay, after sleeping over this and going over all the feedback on this list: My original idea was that the whole concept of a continuous season model in combination with a user-customizable environment by pixel processing is a big thing - I doubt many other simulators have something like this (it doesn't really work with photo-texturing for instance) and I saw this as unique selling point for a 3.0 if this is expanded and implemented properly. After having the discussion, reading zero enthusiastic feedback and mainly concerns that this is too complicated, potentially confusing and observing that the focus of the whole discussion is more on the snags (which a complex system, especially initially, inevitably has when compared to a simple one) than on the opportunities, I realize that my opinion about the thing is just my opinion and not more widely shared. But having a dropdown menu for season selection to drive a continuous season model by pixel postprocessing just makes no sense, it's a waste of perfectly good GPU performance. If you want pre-defined seasons, the way to do it is using seasonal textures. So I will remove the option from GIT again and clear out the *-autumn.png textures in the next days and develop this further for my own private enjoyment (with the understanding that I'll make it available on request to anyone interested), which should give anyone else the chance to implement a drop-down seasons model for 3.0 without generating confusing clashes. No hard feelings from my side, I don't come with the expectation that everyone shares my enthusiasm for painting the terrain. Admittedly it's not at the core of what makes a Flightsim. * Thorsten -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On 02/15/2013 10:00 AM, Renk Thorsten wrote: So I will remove the option from GIT again and clear out the *-autumn.png textures in the next days and develop this further for my own private enjoyment (with the understanding that I'll make it available on request to anyone interested), which should give anyone else the chance to implement a drop-down seasons model for 3.0 without generating confusing clashes. No hard feelings from my side, I don't come with the expectation that everyone shares my enthusiasm for painting the terrain. Admittedly it's not at the core of what makes a Flightsim. I'm not sure this is necessary. I think an opt-in checkbox would suffice. After all FlightGear has been around for personal experiments for a very long time. So why not this option. Erik -- http://www.adalin.com - Hardware accelerated AeonWave and OpenAL for Windows and Linux -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Erik Hofman wrote: On 02/15/2013 10:00 AM, Renk Thorsten wrote: So I will remove the option from GIT again and clear out the *-autumn.png textures in the next days and develop this further for my own private enjoyment (with the understanding that I'll make it available on request to anyone interested), which should give anyone else the chance to implement a drop-down seasons model for 3.0 without generating confusing clashes. No hard feelings from my side, I don't come with the expectation that everyone shares my enthusiasm for painting the terrain. Admittedly it's not at the core of what makes a Flightsim. I'm not sure this is necessary. I think an opt-in checkbox would suffice. After all FlightGear has been around for personal experiments for a very long time. So why not this option. +1. I think removing it is going a bit far. It's early in the release cycle as well, so there's plenty of time to iron out issues and work out a suitable scheme that satisfies those who just want a quick'n'dirty way to get a roughly autumnal palette, and those willing to take the time to tune the environment to exactly match what they see outside. I've still to look into this in detail (too many other things on my plate right now), but I'm confident I can some up with a sensible user interface. Finally, it's worth remembering the -devel list only represents a small part of the FG userbase, and those not using git have not even had the chance to try this yet. -Stuart -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On Fri, 15 Feb 2013, Renk Thorsten wrote: Okay, after sleeping over this and going over all the feedback on this list: ... But having a dropdown menu for season selection to drive a continuous season model by pixel postprocessing just makes no sense, it's a waste of perfectly good GPU performance. If you want pre-defined seasons, the way to do it is using seasonal textures. So I will remove the option from GIT again and clear out the *-autumn.png textures in the next days and develop this further for my own private enjoyment (with the understanding that I'll make it available on request to anyone interested), which should give anyone else the chance to implement a drop-down seasons model for 3.0 without generating confusing clashes. No hard feelings from my side, I don't come with the expectation that everyone shares my enthusiasm for painting the terrain. Admittedly it's not at the core of what makes a Flightsim. Hi, I, for one, would regret that choice. I see it as a promising and interesting rendering mechanism - a building block that asks for the development of heuristics to set the inputs to plausible values (for a region and season and ...). The fact that we do not have those yet does not make the mechanism useless. The user interface issue can be handled by hiding the controls from those who do not want the complexity. (Hidden by default, obviously.) Cheers, Anders -- --- Anders Gidenstam WWW: http://gitorious.org/anders-hangar http://www.gidenstam.org/FlightGear/ -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On 15 Feb 2013, at 15:35, Anders Gidenstam anders-...@gidenstam.org wrote: The user interface issue can be handled by hiding the controls from those who do not want the complexity. (Hidden by default, obviously.) Exactly. James -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On 02/13/2013 09:17 AM, Renk Thorsten wrote: OK, now I understand. Here's a screenshot: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57645542/fgfs-screen-099.png It's not good for UK - but I guess we can fix that eventually. Do you have any reference material how autumn/winter colors in the UK should look like? I think this is a reasonable representation (and happens to be my local airport (and former airbase) Twente Airport: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/69693_121284614717550_631215147_n.jpg Erik -- http://www.adalin.com - Hardware accelerated AeonWave and OpenAL for Windows and Linux -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
-Original Message- From: Erik Hofman Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 9:25 AM To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors On 02/13/2013 09:17 AM, Renk Thorsten wrote: OK, now I understand. Here's a screenshot: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57645542/fgfs-screen-099.png It's not good for UK - but I guess we can fix that eventually. Do you have any reference material how autumn/winter colors in the UK should look like? I think this is a reasonable representation (and happens to be my local airport (and former airbase) Twente Airport: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/69693_121284614717550_631215147_n.jpg Erik -- Eric The Netherlands does not look like that from the air (according to the English newspapers) See http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/04/24/article-0-0BC2A68F0578-251_964x565.jpg ;) Alan -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On 14 Feb 2013, at 07:25, Renk Thorsten thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: My goal is to be able to simulate a realistic seasonal change of the terrain by _suitable_ slider adjustments which need to be chosen based on region, vegetation and conditions. My goal is not to make any combination of slider adjustments work everywhere. But if there is otherwise general consensus that we should operate FG in such a mode as to prevent unrealistic user input, just let me know, and I remove the environment postprocessing from GIT and keep it in my own devel branch. I am decidedly not keen on feedback along the lines 'Oh, look, if I adjust the sliders like that, it really looks bad!' So if climate change affects your region and you believe that vegetation doesn't get all brown, then just do not move the slider all the way. It's as simple as that, and I really shouldn't need to write that here. Not trying to pick on Thorsten here, but in the general case, this is a dangerous approach where end-users are concerned :) In general, giving users choice is bad. What developers should do, is figure out what the user *wanted*, and then do it. Excessive choices / options / preferences are a failure to be sufficiently smart, about what the user actually wants. (Here ends the user-experience lecture) In this specific case, that means there shouldn't be a slider, there should be some additional values in a place that can be customised per-region. Since what the *user* wants is that in the region they are in, the colours / effect look plausible - that's all. Messing around with sliders they don't really understand, is not a good thing for them to be doing. If a *developer* (which, in our case is often conflated with 'user', but that's often a mistake that most Linux/open-source projects make in UX design) thinks it can be improved for a region, then they make the appropriate XML edits and submit them. Yhis approach is the most complicated to maintain, but also quite easy to *support*, because the potential for users to break themselves is limited. Giving lots of controls (checkboxes, properties, etc) to users to twiddle is easier to maintain, but a nightmare to *support*, as we experienced with the original shader management system :) James -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On 02/14/2013 10:39 AM, Alan Teeder wrote: -Original Message- From: Erik Hofman I think this is a reasonable representation (and happens to be my local airport (and former airbase) Twente Airport: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/69693_121284614717550_631215147_n.jpg Eric The Netherlands does not look like that from the air (according to the English newspapers) See http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/04/24/article-0-0BC2A68F0578-251_964x565.jpg Haha, that's just a very small part of the Netherlands, but probably the most noticeable. Erik -- http://www.adalin.com - Hardware accelerated AeonWave and OpenAL for Windows and Linux -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 9:40 AM, James Turner wrote: In this specific case, that means there shouldn't be a slider, there should be some additional values in a place that can be customised per-region. Since what the *user* wants is that in the region they are in, the colours / effect look plausible - that's all. Messing around with sliders they don't really understand, is not a good thing for them to be doing. We could provide some per-region customization within materials.xml, for example. Unfortunately the current materials.xml format is getting quite unwieldy, particularly with all the regionalized settings. I have a long-term plan to structure the information better. A shorter term solution might be to offer a default Autumn drop-down with generic plausible values, and an Advanced dialog with sliders. I need to integrate support for autumnal trees anyway, so this fits in with that. -Stuart -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
In general, giving users choice is bad. What developers should do, is figure out what the user *wanted*, and then do it. Excessive choices / options / preferences are a failure to be sufficiently smart, about what the user actually wants. I disagree with this on a very general basis. It seems to me the whole point about OpenSource is freedom (we're advertizing Fly Free! as well). Freedom inevitably means giving choices to the user/redeveloper/ and not making that choice for him. I would agree that it is my task to figure out what the customer wants and provide that to him in a commercial environment, but this is not what we are. There is an (admittedly small) fraction of users who enjoy that freedom they can never get with a commercial product - does it make any sense to focus on the others and try to emulate commercial? * Thorsten -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
-Original Message- From: Erik Hofman Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 9:42 AM To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors On 02/14/2013 10:39 AM, Alan Teeder wrote: -Original Message- From: Erik Hofman I think this is a reasonable representation (and happens to be my local airport (and former airbase) Twente Airport: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/69693_121284614717550_631215147_n.jpg Eric The Netherlands does not look like that from the air (according to the English newspapers) See http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/04/24/article-0-0BC2A68F0578-251_964x565.jpg Haha, that's just a very small part of the Netherlands, but probably the most noticeable. Erik Yes, I have friends in the area and have visited Anna Paulowna many times to see the annual flower festival. ongelooflijk !! Alan -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
Just what is it you want to customize? Consider a simple 'snow in the mountains'. You can have * early snow up north, the leaves have just started turning and the snow is on slightly yellowish trees up the slopes, no snow on green trees down * one day later - a bit of snow is still on the ground but has dropped from the trees * late snow - no snow on either slopes or valleys, but all leaves have fallen * snowfall a while ago, then winds - snow on the ground both on the slopes and in the valley, but the wind has cleared the snow from the trees on the slopes * fresh snowfall in midwinter - both ground and trees are snw covered (...) add your other 10 different combinations here Each of these can occur - so how is FG supposed to know what you'd like to see? Well, we don't need to simulate all of them, but the point is - I actually want to simulate all of them, because I like the idea of having infinite ways to see the same scene. Just how would you teach FG that the Netherlands are unlikely to be dust-covered, that autumn colors in Finland are never red, that German farmers tend to plough their fields before the winter so they appear earth-coloured in late fall, that tropical environments do not have four seasons, ... and at the same time consider plausible assumptions for what has happened the last few days? If you start thinking about it, the problem doesn't really factorize into regional xml and pre-defined dropdowns. Allowing the user to use snow-covered textures in Hawaii (about which nobody complained so far - it's a bit telling that the glaring flaws of the current scheme never seem to be a topic, but the inevitable flaws of any novel idea immediately make it prominently into the discussion ) is as bad as allowing the user to set too strong vegetation decay because he is still south. If you really want a heuristics which drives the shader based on some understanding of vegetation patterns, you need a lot of additional parameters. A dropdown doesn't solve anything on its own. * Thorsten -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
Thorsten Renk -Original Message- From: [mailto:thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi] Sent: 14 February 2013 07:25 To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors ..maybe in the old days, nowadays, some grass is green, most of it, say 4/5 is a pale dull yellow when the snow comes. Climate change, grass grows about 3 months longer now, than in the 1960-ies when grass was cut once, nowadays farmers get 3 harvests. The whole discussion brings again a long standing issue to my mind. It's a slider. It's in fact part of a menu of several environent-controlling sliders. Which means that you (the user) is supposed to adjust it. Now, my philosophy is - what you get as a user here is a tool which gives you infinite options how precisely your terrain may look like. You can have a dry autumn, a wet autumn, just a bit of snow on dry autumn - all by adjusting the sliders. The price you have to pay is that you actually have to think a bit, because the system allows you to select silly and unnatural combinations. You can have snow in Hawaii, you can have desert dust in rainforest, you can combine dust and season to kill vegetation off completely in central Europe. From where I stand, having infinite possibilities seems more interesting than just having 4 pre-defined season textures. But having 4 pre-defined scenarios is on the other hand fool-proof - you will not be able to select a silly combination. But we may disagree on that. My goal is to be able to simulate a realistic seasonal change of the terrain by _suitable_ slider adjustments which need to be chosen based on region, vegetation and conditions. My goal is not to make any combination of slider adjustments work everywhere. But if there is otherwise general consensus that we should operate FG in such a mode as to prevent unrealistic user input, just let me know, and I remove the environment postprocessing from GIT and keep it in my own devel branch. I am decidedly not keen on feedback along the lines 'Oh, look, if I adjust the sliders like that, it really looks bad!' So if climate change affects your region and you believe that vegetation doesn't get all brown, then just do not move the slider all the way. It's as simple as that, and I really shouldn't need to write that here. I fell into the pooh trap - I read your instructions, looked at the slider, set late autumn, and Kent turned an impossible shade of brown. Now that you have explained it, I see that if the slider is set to early autumn that this gives me much more reasonable results for a southern UK late autumn. What I expected was that having selected Regional scenery, then the slider would give me reasonable results for my region. Perhaps that's simply too difficult, or the region is defined too widely. I also see that the regional scenery for the area is wrong as well, but I'm working on that. Right now there are a number of inconsistent approaches. We can select pre-set Summer/Winter, but not Autumn. We can select snow by METAR, but not in Winter, however, the slider works even when METAR is selected. We can set various parameters by slider for the scenery, which the GUI says requires shader effects, but apart from the snow thickness, in fact all require Atmospheric Light Scattering, which is in a different menu and this connection is not mentioned. In addition one slider only works with Regional scenery, and that's not mentioned anywhere either. Wetness effects the scenery, but not runways, while moss seems to grow on taxiways and runways. It it's raining, there's a nice effect of puddles on runways and taxiways, but nowhere else. I'm not at all sure that I've got that all right, and I can't imagine how the average user is going to figure it out. I suspect that the user will try it, might or might not discover how it works, and never try it again. It's just too complex to get the average head around. Even just trying to summarise it makes mine ache! Finally, I write this in the hope it might be helpful, and not be taken as negative criticism. Vivian -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 10:17:13 +, Renk wrote in message e495a106ff5f31448739e79d34138c192789b...@mbs2.ad.jyu.fi: Just what is it you want to customize? Consider a simple 'snow in the mountains'. You can have * early snow up north, the leaves have just started turning and the snow is on slightly yellowish trees up the slopes, no snow on green trees down * one day later - a bit of snow is still on the ground but has dropped from the trees * late snow - no snow on either slopes or valleys, but all leaves have fallen * snowfall a while ago, then winds - snow on the ground both on the slopes and in the valley, but the wind has cleared the snow from the trees on the slopes * fresh snowfall in midwinter - both ground and trees are snw covered (...) add your other 10 different combinations here ..the obvious way to control all this, is use e.g. FG time and METAR history to set up a credible scenery appearance. -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt Karlsen ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
What I expected was that having selected Regional scenery, then the slider would give me reasonable results for my region. Perhaps that's simply too difficult, or the region is defined too widely. I also see that the regional scenery for the area is wrong as well, but I'm working on that. We have a very limited set of regions defined at all. It's a bit of a high expectation that a proof of concept comes out as corrrect per region. Right now there are a number of inconsistent approaches. We can select pre-set Summer/Winter, but not Autumn. That's purely texture-based approaches, we can't do autumn because we don't have autumn terrain textures, and we've recently discussed the merit of keeping texture-based winter because shader-based stuff is always and unconditionally more demanding for the GPU. So I would consider that a fallback scheme for the folks with Intel chipsets. We can select snow by METAR, but not in Winter, however, the slider works even when METAR is selected. Long standing discussion - METAR can't really tell if snow is on the ground or not. But some people like snowline by METAR (I'm not a fan). We can set various parameters by slider for the scenery, which the GUI says requires shader effects, but apart from the snow thickness, in fact all require Atmospheric Light Scattering, which is in a different menu and this connection is not mentioned. Okay, that's our development model striking. We add features, but we don't delete or heavily modify features added by others without their consent. I frankly never wanted to get into terrain texturing, I was always more interested in weather phenomena. But atmospheric light scattering needed new terrain shaders anyway - so that gave me the chance to code things how I personally believe they should be coded - i.e. in an xml-configurable approach consistent with regional texturing which enables a user to make use of the full effect suite for any regional texturing project without the necessity of learning GLSL or how effect files work. So, Advanced Weather, Atmospheric Light Scattering and the procedural/regional terrain texturing form an integrated environment with well-defined interfaces. The rest, default scheme effects, Basic Weather and other materials definitions do not. I've offered certainly 10 times here that I'll help anyone who wants to interface Basic Weather properly with the framework. I'm not the maintainer of Basic Weather, it's not my call to make. I've offered at least 5 times that I'll help anyone interested in doing so to port all the procedural texturing strategies to other frameworks. I'm not the maintainer of Rembrandt or default, it's not my call to make. Can you actually imagine the storm that would break if I would simply start removing other schemes so that our GUI gets less cluttered and we end up with a consistent approach? In addition one slider only works with Regional scenery, and that's not mentioned anywhere either. Well, yes, again, that's a bit of a high expectation for a week-old proof of concept just arrived on GIT to have a crystal-clear GUI. Wetness effects the scenery, but not runways, while moss seems to grow on taxiways and runways. I'm pretty sure it affects runways... Moss grows on runways, I thought that'd be a nice touch for some really wet locations, but it's easy to make it go away. It it's raining, there's a nice effect of puddles on runways and taxiways, but nowhere else. http://users.jyu.fi/~trenk/pics/ultra11.jpg I'm not at all sure that I've got that all right, and I can't imagine how the average user is going to figure it out. You know, that's kind of not my problem. I mention these issues every half year, offer to work with the maintainers on a solution, and that's where it stops for me. I can code a consistent framework for the stuff I maintain, but I can't be consistent with other frameworks without the help of other maintainers. So I care up to a point, but not beyond. And I'm most definitely not the intuitive GUI designer. If someone else comes up with a better GUI, I haven't refused in the past. * Thorsten -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
..the obvious way to control all this, is use e.g. FG time and METAR history to set up a credible scenery appearance. Right, so we somehow get the METARs for the last month for a location, have the environment model run the consequences and use that. Sounds not so easy to me. But... I never fly with real weather fetch, and I sometimes feel like flying in summer even when it's actually winter! * Thorsten -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:01:58 +, Renk wrote in message e495a106ff5f31448739e79d34138c192789b...@mbs2.ad.jyu.fi: ..the obvious way to control all this, is use e.g. FG time ..to clarify FG time: what we set using FG's Time Options: and METAR history to set up a credible scenery appearance. Right, so we somehow get the METARs for the last month for a location, ..from weather history databases, and not only METARs, e.g. http://om.yr.no/verdata/klimadata/ (or in googlish: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=autotl=enjs=nprev=_thl=enie=UTF-8eotf=1u=http%3A%2F%2Fom.yr.no%2Fverdata%2Fklimadata%2F ) ..and more people are thinking this way, e.g.: http://forums.vatsim.net/viewtopic.php?t=23335 have the environment model run the consequences and use that. Sounds not so easy to me. ..no, but it's possible to shag in meteorologists here, best way is polish the build-from-source scripts and expand them beyond Debian and ubuntu users, most people are still using Wintendo, and today we only offer them the binaries, and the big scare. ..even if we have a sizable GNU/Linux crowd in e.g. yr.no, we don't wanna scare them off with POSIX sh, cvs, svn, git, gcc, autotools, cmake _etc_, I want them diving right into the FG weather model source trees and give us clue whacks. But... I never fly with real weather fetch, and I sometimes feel like flying in summer even when it's actually winter! ..I went for the real deal on the fjord ice, 5 cm snow on top of the ice, floats are nice skis. ;o) I tested tufts to see stalls, worked nicely. I use the big 7mm fluffy kinda wool yarn taped to the leading edge and stretched back to the trailing edge, that leaves it half way back onto the ailerons in flight. -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt Karlsen ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
OK, now I understand. Here's a screenshot: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57645542/fgfs-screen-099.png It's not good for UK - but I guess we can fix that eventually. Do you have any reference material how autumn/winter colors in the UK should look like? ..desert? Severe drought? -20 degrees, 10 cm snow - now remove the snow, and what is underneath will pretty much look like this - soil, dead branches, dead plants, decayed leaves. This is what the color is for - providing a plausible background for frost and snow patterns with incomplete cover of the ground (which look silly superimposed on bright breen fields). * Thorsten -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On 12 Feb 2013, at 22:08, Vivian Meazza vivian.mea...@lineone.net wrote: OK, now I understand. Here's a screenshot: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57645542/fgfs-screen-099.png It's not good for UK - but I guess we can fix that eventually. I'd say for Scotland in autumn / winter, with potential snow on top, and trees separately changing/keeping colour, it looks plausible. That's based more on moorland than farmed agriculture of course. James -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 08:17:32 +, Renk wrote in message e495a106ff5f31448739e79d34138c192789a...@mbs2.ad.jyu.fi: OK, now I understand. Here's a screenshot: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57645542/fgfs-screen-099.png It's not good for UK - but I guess we can fix that eventually. Do you have any reference material how autumn/winter colors in the UK should look like? ..desert? Severe drought? ..those were suggestions ;o), looked quite like the desert around In Amenas, Algeria, if I can believe the oily news pictures. -20 degrees, 10 cm snow - now remove the snow, and what is underneath will pretty much look like this - soil, dead branches, dead plants, decayed leaves. This is what the color is for - providing a plausible background for frost and snow patterns with incomplete cover of the ground (which look silly superimposed on bright breen fields). ..maybe in the old days, nowadays, some grass is green, most of it, say 4/5 is a pale dull yellow when the snow comes. Climate change, grass grows about 3 months longer now, than in the 1960-ies when grass was cut once, nowadays farmers get 3 harvests. -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt Karlsen ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
..maybe in the old days, nowadays, some grass is green, most of it, say 4/5 is a pale dull yellow when the snow comes. Climate change, grass grows about 3 months longer now, than in the 1960-ies when grass was cut once, nowadays farmers get 3 harvests. The whole discussion brings again a long standing issue to my mind. It's a slider. It's in fact part of a menu of several environent-controlling sliders. Which means that you (the user) is supposed to adjust it. Now, my philosophy is - what you get as a user here is a tool which gives you infinite options how precisely your terrain may look like. You can have a dry autumn, a wet autumn, just a bit of snow on dry autumn - all by adjusting the sliders. The price you have to pay is that you actually have to think a bit, because the system allows you to select silly and unnatural combinations. You can have snow in Hawaii, you can have desert dust in rainforest, you can combine dust and season to kill vegetation off completely in central Europe. From where I stand, having infinite possibilities seems more interesting than just having 4 pre-defined season textures. But having 4 pre-defined scenarios is on the other hand fool-proof - you will not be able to select a silly combination. But we may disagree on that. My goal is to be able to simulate a realistic seasonal change of the terrain by _suitable_ slider adjustments which need to be chosen based on region, vegetation and conditions. My goal is not to make any combination of slider adjustments work everywhere. But if there is otherwise general consensus that we should operate FG in such a mode as to prevent unrealistic user input, just let me know, and I remove the environment postprocessing from GIT and keep it in my own devel branch. I am decidedly not keen on feedback along the lines 'Oh, look, if I adjust the sliders like that, it really looks bad!' So if climate change affects your region and you believe that vegetation doesn't get all brown, then just do not move the slider all the way. It's as simple as that, and I really shouldn't need to write that here. * Thorsten -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
Thorsten Renk wrote I've just pushed the current state of the autumn color model where the amount of coloring is encoded in the texture alpha channel. I've tried to be very conservative and pushed alternative textures (marked with *- autumn.png) where this is done - I could not see any negative effects in the default rendering scheme (no terrain holes or so), but this way it's easy to roll back in case of unexpected problems - only the regional texture scheme references the alternative textures, neither dds or default do. Please let me know if there is trouble. If anyone wants to try the scheme, use high quality level with the Atmospheric Light Scattering scheme and the regional texturing scheme, then change season in the environment settings. I have tested mainly in central Europe, so it's rather likely that there will be texture sheets without alpha channel set, which will stick out if you test elsewhere. I regard the current state as proof of concept. If there is a graphic artist available who wants to optimize the texture alpha channel settings for best effect, please get in touch - I am not very good with gimp, and I've just coarsely painted on the textures to get a feeling for the effect. Trees are not color-changed, so if you want autumn trees, you have to edit Materials/regions/materials.xml manually and change to the autumn or winter tree variants. It looks nice though... Otherwise enjoy! I think I must have something wrong here: much of the textures which were green turn a horrid brown colour, it looks like nothing I have ever seen on the ground in the UK. Is that what is intended? Vivian -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
I think I must have something wrong here: much of the textures which were green turn a horrid brown colour, it looks like nothing I have ever seen on the ground in the UK. Is that what is intended? That'd depend on the slider position and the landclass I guess - no way to tell without a screenshot. Full late autumn turns everything earth-coloured and is supposed to be the background for a snow cover. I doubt the UK gets cold enough in winter that the vegetation dies off to such a degree (it does in Finland...) and there is no attempt made to regionalize the slider effect - it probably looks really silly if you use it in a tropical location. Otherwise: I have tested mainly in central Europe (...) I regard the current state as proof of concept. If there is a graphic artist available who wants to optimize the texture alpha channel settings for best effect, please get in touch. Best, * Thorsten -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
Thorsten Renk wrote I think I must have something wrong here: much of the textures which were green turn a horrid brown colour, it looks like nothing I have ever seen on the ground in the UK. Is that what is intended? That'd depend on the slider position and the landclass I guess - no way to tell without a screenshot. Full late autumn turns everything earth-coloured and is supposed to be the background for a snow cover. I doubt the UK gets cold enough in winter that the vegetation dies off to such a degree (it does in Finland...) and there is no attempt made to regionalize the slider effect - it probably looks really silly if you use it in a tropical location. Otherwise: I have tested mainly in central Europe (...) I regard the current state as proof of concept. If there is a graphic artist available who wants to optimize the texture alpha channel settings for best effect, please get in touch. OK, now I understand. Here's a screenshot: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57645542/fgfs-screen-099.png It's not good for UK - but I guess we can fix that eventually. Vivian -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Autumn colors
On Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:08:54 -, Vivian wrote in message 000301ce096d$8bf3d0a0$a3db71e0$@lineone.net: OK, now I understand. Here's a screenshot: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57645542/fgfs-screen-099.png It's not good for UK - but I guess we can fix that eventually. ..desert? Severe drought? -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt Karlsen ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. -- Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
