Thorsten > Sent: 18 June 2013 07:40 > To: FlightGear developers discussions > Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now > > > 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). >
A nice list and it's all worthwhile improvement, but it's all tinkering around the edges of existing stuff. There's no step change which would justify 3.0 IMO. For that we need something major, like new terrain (850) or Rembrandt as the default. Right now we have Terrasync partly broken in Win 64, which will probably not be fixed until after the release. We still cannot select the Screenshot Directory from the gui. I think that all argues for 2.12. Unfortunately, only Fred really understands Rembrandt and he is very busy, so progress is likely to be slow. I understand scenery development has also slowed right down. Vivian ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: Build for Windows Store. http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
