On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 8:15 AM, Thorsten Renk wrote: > 1) placement in flat layer instead of curved
OK. I'll get the fix for this committed as soon as I get the chance. > 2) clouds don't obscure some objects (newly discovered) This may be a problem related to the rendering order of objects with alpha layers. The clouds are in a different RenderBin from other objects. I'll take a look and see what's different about the Vegas tower - the fix may be simply to remove the alpha layer from the texture. The stratus and rain layer textures are going to be much more difficult to resolve. For the stratus layer, I thought by putting in the z-scaling parameter you would be able to use the 3D clouds modeling? I'd really like the 3D cloud infrastructure to be used for all the clouds, so if there are features missing we should address them. Would it be possible to modify the 3D clouds so that they can be used for the rain texture as well? For example, I could provide a sprite distribution on the surface of a cylinder rather than a sphere if that would help. That would allow us to work around the rendering bin problem. > 3) Antishading > > For some reason, I still get antishading in many situations even when I > make cloud size larger than texture size. Looks odd in many cases and > prevents me from adjusting the shade parameters. You mentioned finding a > bug? I thought I had seen a bug, but in fact I was getting confused between the sun and the full moon - at very wide angles of view they both look like white points ;) > If it's of any help, I can pack my current devel version of everything and > you can see for yourself what happens (with the understanding that only > specific settings in the gui are meaningful). If you can provide the parameters of a cloud that is exhibiting the problem, that would be most useful. > Apart from the issues above, there are some things to discuss and think > about: > > 4) Fading in poor visibility > > I'm now in the shader down to 0.1 for the fading factor in > > fogFactor = exp( -gl_Fog.density * fogCoord * 0.1); > > This looks too crisp in slightly hazy conditions, but I was basically > forced to the setting by rainy conditions with ~2-4 km visibility. What > happened otherwise was that clouds in that amount of haze faded so much > that blue sky became visible above where the overcast cloud layer should > have been drawn, which looks really bad. > > Maybe there shouldn't be a fixed number intended to fit all but a function > of visibility? Or a parameter to be passed on - although you mentioned > that passing too many parameters to the shader may lead to different > problems... Making it a function of visibility should be the way forward. I think that's what the gl_Fog.density is supposed to represent, so it may simply be a question of modifying the function further. Perhaps it shouldn't be exp()? Given the number of parameters being passed into other shaders, I'm less worried about the 3D cloud shader than I was. There's also the possibility of creating a second, more complex shader for use with high quality settings in the Rendering Options dialog. > 5) Specify top and bottom shade > > I mentioned that previously - it's not in any sense a 'must', but I think > it would allow for very cool visual effects if the system had the > possibility to shade clouds in a different way if there's a layer above > (or even do some simple ray intersection tests when drawing a tile for > greater realism). Again - would require to pass more parameters. I'm thinking that we need a top, middle and bottom shade, as the current model shades only from the middle of the cloud downwards. > I think that's pretty much it. There's still lots of parameter tuning to > be done on my side, and vertical motion of clouds still needs to be done, > but basically it's functional (see the screenshots I'm already producing) > - I haven't encountered any other problems so far. So we're clearly > getting somewhere :-) Excellent! -Stuart ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Malware Security Report: Protecting Your Business, Customers, and the Bottom Line. Protect your business and customers by understanding the threat from malware and how it can impact your online business. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51427462/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
