> What version number will we give to the new
> release? Are we ready for a 3.0 or is it 2.12?

Looking through my list of goals for the last coding period:

> * Get a high-quality model shader running under Atmospheric Light Scattering

This is now available, working for random buildings and for several aircraft. A 
reminder to aircraft creators using the ubershader - normal mapping requires to 
declare tangent, normal and binormal generation airplane-side. These need to be 
also declared as vertex attributes in a numbered technique - in order for this 
to work, the technique n=4 matching the model ubershader effect in 
model-combined.eff for ALS has to be added, otherwise normal maps do not work 
and the model receives incorrect lighting.

> * Implement a scheme for generating autumn colors procedurally

The scheme exists and generates autumn colors in central Europe. Since the 
majority of feedback for this was rather skeptical, I have not pursued the idea 
much further or extended it to tree autumn coloring, but Stuart has implemented 
his tree work in a nice way that trees shed all leaves in late autumn, so it's 
not as good as it could be, but reasonably plausible. At least I like changing 
the colors a bit.

Since autumn coloring doesn't work correctly everywhere in the world (I've 
mainly adjusted Europe and the North Atlantic Islands), I would regard it as 
experimental.

>* make clouds render faster

Stuart has done the main work on this one with a LOD scheme dropping sprites 
beyond some distance. Since this mutilated faint clouds which have just 1-2 
sprites to begin with, I recently pushed a way that these clouds are not 
treated by the LOD system at all.

I'd say we need feedback from users playing with the LOD distance if it 
improves framerates while keeping the visuals or not. We now have overall cloud 
density, draw distance and the LOD distance to configure the framerate impact 
of 3D clouds - is this enough? In what form should this best be exposed to the 
user? What are reasonable defaults?

>* Improve cloud appearance from high altitude

This is mostly done - I've introduced three quite sophisticated cloudlet 
placement scheme, and it does miracles from high altitude. There are still the 
rather blocky 8/8 cover scenarios remaining when clouds tend to cover the whole 
square tile - I wanted to do something to the edges, but haven't gotten around 
to doing so. Not sure if this qualifies as a bugfix or a novel feature, but I 
think it's harmless.

>* The 'ultra' terrain shader

This is done - at highest landmass and transition slider setting, the terrain 
shader renders details to a quality that you can park your helicopter in the 
scene and have a nice ground resolution (the smallest details are cm-sized, and 
they move with the wind). From my side, this would be the main selling point 
for a 3.0 release.

The water shader also has received upgrades with color and reflectivty 
variations of the water and a trick to generate surf at steep coasts. Also 
drift ice and be procedurally drawn on the water. In arctic regions, we have 
drifting icebergs by default now.

> * Regional texturing

Since the last release, I've added Indonesia, Madagascar, North Atlantic 
Islands (Greenland, Faroe, Shetlands,...) and Middle East and Vivian added UK 
definitions.  Combined with Hawaii, Iceland, Caribbean and tropical South 
America which we've had previously, this is already a substantial variation to 
illustrate how FG can look like. Especially Hawaii can serve very well as a 
showcase scenery now.

>* Atmospheric light scattering and Rembrandt

There hasn't been a volunteer to help me look into this from the Rembrandt 
side, and so according to the plan there has been no development. Based on my 
current test results, my computer doesn't seem to be able to get Rembrandt fast 
enough for this to make any sense, although I don't understand this finding.

While things can always be better, from my side that's a clear vote for 3.0. 
With the hires terrain shader and wind effects on terrain and vegetation, 
combined with the pixel post-processing effects, we can offer much higher 
resolution visuals on the terrain than before (and I understand with the autum 
color effect or drift ice some genuine novel effects which are in no other 
flightsim).

* Thorsten
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