Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
Hi Cathy, Let me know if you'd like some performance tests. My system is relatively old and slow. Without local weather on, no shadows, no 3D clouds, and no material shaders, I typically get frame rates around 20. With no local weather, shadows on, 3D clouds on, material shaders on, I get 2 - 4 fps. Material shaders and 3D clouds both cause big hits to frame rate. Hm, it'd be interested if you can run light cloud configurations at all with decent framerates. I'm fairly certain that some multilayer overcast cloud configs will mean instand death for your system, but the ones with relatively low cloud count (say, higher pressure, morning flights to keep convective clouds down or island hopping, relatively low visible range ~15 - 20 km, maybe also no detailed clouds) might be easier on your system than the standard layers. Cheers, * Thorsten -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
How about using plain old textured plane crosses for clouds at bigger distances? (the way trees are done, only with a (or several) horizontal plane(s) added) These might work better for bigger structures like cumulonimbus, and such, too, as you can control the shape a bit. (no fancy shader needed ;) ) I don't think that works. Issue 1: I have never been able to work out a geometry for a static, believable cloud. I have tried plane crosses, intersecting spheres and ellipsoides, stacks of curved sheets, bubble foam geometries,... no joy, all looked quite bad even from some distance. I have tried for a month, no success. However, you are one of the best 3d modellers around here - so maybe you can pull it off. Issue 2: Shading - if faraway clouds are not shaded, they look unrealistic if nearby clouds are shaded away from the sun. If they are shaded, I don't see how the shading of any static geometry will be able to mimick the shading of the rotated sheets - especially plane crosses look very different when shaded. Issue 3: Transitions approaching the cloud: Nearby clouds are created as random stacks of different cloudlets - so there's no way one could know in advance how the detailed version of the cloud will look. Therefore, the faraway proxy and the nearby realistic cloud will almost certainly look differently, and this will give you a rather ugly transition. Issue 4: Transitions leaving the cloud: Nearly as bad - once in the scenery, I make no distinction of what a cloud is, individual textures are on their own - in principle a cloud can partially decay, merge with a different one, merge with a layer, separate itself from a layer,... That goes along with nature where 'cloud' is also not a well-defined object. So in going from a multi-texture stack to a single static model, you'd somehow group clouds again and make a decision which of your textured surfaces are supposed to represented by the placeholder. Consider an undulatus pattern - what is it you'd replace - the whole layer, one strand of clouds, parts of a strand where it is disconnected? How do you group technically - you'd somehow probe the whole geometry and match it to some predefined pattern. You also can't store the info what a cloud is supposed to be at creation time, because clouds are allowed to evolve and to change. So, looking into the details, it's really far from trivial how to use placeholders, and that is why I haven't been able to work out a viable scheme. I'll have a go at retexturing, redimensioning and choping this weekend if that's ok with you. Yes, certainly. I suggest that we pack your /Models/Weather/ then into a tarball and I host that for the time being as a dds texture patch to Local Weather so that people can test what works better for them. Once we know how this affects different systems, we can decide what to do and which version should go into GIT. Based on the Electra responses in the forum, dds doesn't seem to run for everyone without problems... * Thorsten -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
On Saturday 26 March 2011 10:16:47 thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: Yes, certainly. I suggest that we pack your /Models/Weather/ then into a tarball and I host that for the time being as a dds texture patch to Local Weather so that people can test what works better for them. Once we know how this affects different systems, we can decide what to do and which version should go into GIT. I'll probably put them up on a project at gitorious.org, with versions of the .ac's referencing both .dds and .png (for easy switching between the two). -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
Yes, certainly. I suggest that we pack your /Models/Weather/ then into a tarball and I host that for the time being as a dds texture patch to Local Weather so that people can test what works better for them. Once we know how this affects different systems, we can decide what to do and which version should go into GIT. Is this an area where you are looking for performance tests on different systems? I have FG 2.0 and the git-master build installed, and I'm in the process of setting up to build and run git-next. I have a version of local weather installed and I've been playing with it, but I'm sure it's not the latest. Let me know if you'd like some performance tests. My system is relatively old and slow. Without local weather on, no shadows, no 3D clouds, and no material shaders, I typically get frame rates around 20. With no local weather, shadows on, 3D clouds on, material shaders on, I get 2 - 4 fps. Material shaders and 3D clouds both cause big hits to frame rate. Video card is a GEForce FX 5500. System memory (not video card memory) is 1 G. Processor is AMD Athlon(TM) XP 2500+, 1.8GHz. If this is too fossilized a system to be useful to you, just let me know. :-) --Cathy -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
The main thing that bugs me with the system is that the view frustum culling around the edges of the screen is visible, so you continuously see the clouds being created and disappearing at the edges of the screen as you turn or change views. If it was once in a while I could live with it, but it's continuous and perpetual and distracts from the overall experience. :-( Hm, from the description this could be one of two things: 1) Clouds are 2d sheets placed into the scenery with a true orientation, then the shader matrix magic grabs them and rotates them into an apparent orientation. However, generically a sheet can be outside the view when unrotated but in view when rotated while the shader acts (and rotates) only when the object in its true orientation is inside the field of view. Thus, for relatively large cloudlets and in directional corridors, it can happen that an object would be in view, but isn't actually shown, i.e. a cloud suddenly vanishes at the edge because the true position of the vertices is no longer in the field of view, although the apparent still would be. There are a few solutions inside Local Weather to lessen the problem, e.g. using smaller cloudlets at the expense of performance, down-scaling of models in the shader so that the true model is much larger and more likely to be in view than the apparent model. A clean overall solution would involve applying the shader to objects slightly ouside the view. I suspect that effect is also there for the default 3d clouds, although less pronounced since they use on average smaller cloudlets. All in all, I find this effect mild, I usually don't even notice it and it goes away when you turn by 90 degrees (and hence true and apparent orientation coincide). It bothers me about as much as trees suddenly being drawn once you reach a certain distance to a forest-textured area... just a little bit. 2) A while ago a video was posted here http://www.easy-share.com/1912919971/Clouds03.mpg which showed a view from the front window with many clouds. When the view changed to the side window, for a second empty sky was visible, which then rapidly filled with reloading cloud models. What you describe here sound pretty much like that, and that is very annoying. It's not something I have ever seen on my computer, for me clouds behave just as the default clouds, i.e. they are already there when I turn my view, there is no culling and redrawing happening. For the case in the video, I have verified that the effect doesn't come from within Local Weather (I asked to switch off all Nasal loops which load and unload clouds, and the effect remained unchanged). My suspicion is that it is generic at least for Nasal-spawned models, i.e. if you would place 1000 objects with the ufo around you and turn the view rapidly, you would see the same thing. I have never been to observe it in either 2.0.0 or any of my GIT pulls and with no version of OSG I've ever compiled against. In short I have no clue what it is, but I know that the problem lies outside the Local Weather package. * Thorsten -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
On Friday 25 March 2011 10:01:33 thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: The main thing that bugs me with the system is that the view frustum culling around the edges of the screen is visible, so you continuously see the clouds being created and disappearing at the edges of the screen as you turn or change views. If it was once in a while I could live with it, but it's continuous and perpetual and distracts from the overall experience. :-( Hm, from the description this could be one of two things: 2) A while ago a video was posted here http://www.easy-share.com/1912919971/Clouds03.mpg which showed a view from the front window with many clouds. When the view changed to the side window, for a second empty sky was visible, which then rapidly filled with reloading cloud models. What you describe here sound pretty much like that, and that is very annoying. It's not something I have ever seen on my computer, for me clouds behave just as the default clouds, i.e. they are already there when I turn my view, there is no culling and redrawing happening. For the case in the video, I have verified that the effect doesn't come from within Local Weather (I asked to switch off all Nasal loops which load and unload clouds, and the effect remained unchanged). My suspicion is that it is generic at least for Nasal-spawned models, i.e. if you would place 1000 objects with the ufo around you and turn the view rapidly, you would see the same thing. I have never been to observe it in either 2.0.0 or any of my GIT pulls and with no version of OSG I've ever compiled against. In short I have no clue what it is, but I know that the problem lies outside the Local Weather package. * Thorsten This happens here as well (nVidia 8600GT (256MB VRAM) on linux). Now that I think of it it looks and behaves like graphics card memory bandwidth issue, maybe it is cured with the image cache set with CACHE_ALL? as by adding some more sistem RAM things haven't improved here. At one point I thought it was because of your code, as I remember something about a custom culling thing in there (maybe I remember wrong, or understood something wrong). -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
This happens here as well (nVidia 8600GT (256MB VRAM) on linux). Now that I think of it it looks and behaves like graphics card memory bandwidth issue, maybe it is cured with the image cache set with CACHE_ALL? as by adding some more sistem RAM things haven't improved here. Hm, I'm running an nVidia GeForce 8600M GT from linux - unless the mobile version makes all the difference, that would argue against a graphics card issue (or maybe I'm missing something, I'm not a hardware specialist either...). At one point I thought it was because of your code, as I remember something about a custom culling thing in there (maybe I remember wrong, or understood something wrong). The code has an option 'asymmetric buffering' which does remove clouds from the scenery to improve performance. However, there are several reasons to think that this has nothing to do with what is observed: 1) 'asymmetric buffering' removes clouds in the backward hemisphere of the airplane, not of the view axis, i.e. you can turn the view to look into the rear of the plane and see the gap in the clouds. If the effect depends on the view axis, it must be something else. 2) 'asymmetric buffering' is off by default, it doesn't (ot at least it shouldn't) do anything unless you activate it 3) the effect of clouds (dis-)appearing when the view changes persists if all running Nasal code of Local Weather is terminated 4) the effect is somehow system dependent - I have never ever seen it, others never got rid of it. So unless there is a fairly developed conspiracy of bugs which somehow mixes plane orientation and view axis, improperly reads out options and keeps loops running despite a termination signal, it can't be related. * Thorsten -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
On Friday 25 March 2011 11:31:57 thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: Hm, I'm running an nVidia GeForce 8600M GT from linux - unless the mobile version makes all the difference, that would argue against a graphics card issue (or maybe I'm missing something, I'm not a hardware specialist either...). * Thorsten If the card is sharing system RAM, it might not run out of bandwidth, but would certainly draw things slower afterwards. Since in the default config each cloud drawn requests a new copy of the texture, and that happens for a lot of them at once (since if an object is culled, I understand that it's texture might get flushed from the VRAM), it might be reaching the hardware limits. If your card is sharing system ram, if this happens it will throttle the card's output, as the whole frame draw is slower. On cards that don't share system ram, I'm guessing the card just draws what's available, and loads the other object later... I'm not a hardware specialist either, just guessing and throwing ideas into the mix. -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
Or maybe the mobile card's design is a bit different, or a bit newer and might have better memory specs.(bandwidth, timings, size etc...) -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
Hmm, I'm gonna do a compile with the changed CACHE_OFF to CACHE_ALL, and see if that makes a difference. -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
On Friday 25 March 2011 11:57:38 Emilian Huminiuc wrote: Hmm, I'm gonna do a compile with the changed CACHE_OFF to CACHE_ALL, and see if that makes a difference. Yep things improve, noticeably. And I'm more convinced it's a lack of gpu memory issue (as in it gets filled up pretty quick with the clouds), as I caught a glimpse of scenery getting redrawn too. (this with a warmfront over tncm, before I couldn't change the view direction at all, as that would cause massive redraws in the clouds, and fps woud drop dramaticaly) So cache-ing helps somewhat. I guess it's hitting the limit of my gpu memory, at least here... -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
Yep things improve, noticeably. And I'm more convinced it's a lack of gpu memory issue (as in it gets filled up pretty quick with the clouds), as I caught a glimpse of scenery getting redrawn too. You may be right - I looked up the specs of my computer, and it seems I have 512 MB VRAM, so that's a difference. What would then reduce memory consumption to see if the problem goes away? Using lowres textures? Using fewer clouds? Can you play with the Local Weather cloud generation menu to see if there's a number beyond which problems start? Or simply reduce the view range in the config menu to see if the problem goes away? * Thorsten -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
On Friday 25 March 2011 12:52:58 thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: Yep things improve, noticeably. And I'm more convinced it's a lack of gpu memory issue (as in it gets filled up pretty quick with the clouds), as I caught a glimpse of scenery getting redrawn too. You may be right - I looked up the specs of my computer, and it seems I have 512 MB VRAM, so that's a difference. What would then reduce memory consumption to see if the problem goes away? Using lowres textures? Using fewer clouds? Can you play with the Local Weather cloud generation menu to see if there's a number beyond which problems start? Or simply reduce the view range in the config menu to see if the problem goes away? * Thorsten Quick and easy way out, compressed textures for the clouds as in .dds textures :D (sorry about that, couldn't help myself :P) I've played around a bit with the config settings, the greatest effect was noticed with the visible range slider, and max clouds in loop. The most efficient way seems to have everything else maxed out, and selected. Visible range hits really hard 25 km here. (this is the biggest hitter, I guess it's to be expected since this increases the area drawn) Max clouds in loop 0.3-0.4 of the slider (I'd guess about 200 km ?) (too bad the sliders don't display the actual value somewhere :( ) (with the visible range to the minimum: max clouds in loop has very mild adverse effects when increased) Also massive effects where noticed when disabling any of the buffering options, or lowering their value. (I guess system ram helps here) Back to the efficiency thingy, clouds further out (20 km ?) should really be big boxes, as it's not worth it do draw them one by one, don't know how to solve this but I guess we could come up with an idea that's both visually pleasing and efficient to draw. One thing i'm thinking, is that the range animation drawback can be overcome by doing it in your code, like selecting the big box version for clouds that are a certain range out from the POV? (iterations in the nasal code seem to work pretty fast, it's just the gpu cannot keep up with them) HTH Emilian -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
On Friday 25 March 2011 13:38:38 Emilian Huminiuc wrote: On Friday 25 March 2011 12:52:58 thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: Yep things improve, noticeably. And I'm more convinced it's a lack of gpu memory issue (as in it gets filled up pretty quick with the clouds), as I caught a glimpse of scenery getting redrawn too. You may be right - I looked up the specs of my computer, and it seems I have 512 MB VRAM, so that's a difference. What would then reduce memory consumption to see if the problem goes away? Using lowres textures? Using fewer clouds? Can you play with the Local Weather cloud generation menu to see if there's a number beyond which problems start? Or simply reduce the view range in the config menu to see if the problem goes away? * Thorsten Quick and easy way out, compressed textures for the clouds as in .dds textures that is, small textures, 1/cloud model. -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
On Friday 25 March 2011 14:00:20 thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: The most efficient way seems to have everything else maxed out, and selected. Not always. Asymmetric buffering is good if you fly straight, but very bad if you circle - for soaring it's completely unsuitable as you'd constantly shuffle things in and out of the buffer. With CACHE_ALL it's probably more efficient than it used to be... Well I was up at 50k ft, with the ufo, looking around, max fov, and it isn't as bad (sure there's some redrawing visible at the edges) but it certainly was worse with any decrease in any of the buffering options. Visible range hits really hard 25 km here. (this is the biggest hitter, I guess it's to be expected since this increases the area drawn) Max clouds in loop 0.3-0.4 of the slider (I'd guess about 200 km ?) (too bad the sliders don't display the actual value somewhere :( ) The slider really represents an number (from 100-400) - the range is derived from that number dependent on the density of clouds. mdap, typo on my part (was thinking about the range at wich clouds shoud become boxes, hence the km ;) ) I've been thinking about the problem for a year now (my rational was that layered clouds from 30.000 ft should be visible for much more than 55 km, and the only way to do that is using sheets. I haven't been able to come up with a viable solution :-( So if you have one, let me know... it's a much harder problem than one would assume naively. Cheers, * Thorsten How about using plain old textured plane crosses for clouds at bigger distances? (the way trees are done, only with a (or several) horizontal plane(s) added) These might work better for bigger structures like cumulonimbus, and such, too, as you can control the shape a bit. (no fancy shader needed ;) ) BTW: A question for our more knowledgeable graphics coders: I don't know if and how this is affecting the VRAM usage, or gpu performance, shouldn't we have the default wrapping mode for textures on models (not terrain) set to clamp, not repeat (as most usualy use parts of one bigger texture, or it's extents), and use repeat only where that's needed? (that is if that's what the wrap-s/ wrap-t/ tags control in the texture definiton inside the effect files) Emilian -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
On Friday 25 March 2011 14:00:20 thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: Quick and easy way out, compressed textures for the clouds as in .dds textures :D (sorry about that, couldn't help myself :P) I doubt it's a general solution since I get 30% framerate reduction for dds textures. But you can do it for yourself and see if it helps your case - all models and texture sheets are in Models/Weather/. Cheers, * Thorsten Well, sorry to dissapoint ;) you, but with everything converted to .dds (with pregenerated mipmaps), there's a HUGE improvement in performance. Now I can have everything maxed out, sure you see some redraw, but there's a very small performance hit when that happens. With conservative settings, once evrything is loaded there's almost no noticeable impact when rotating the view anymore. Almost same conditions as before. Almost, because I've done the tests with the lowpressure tile, and not with creating a custom setting in the Local weather dialogue. conversion done with : nvcompress -alpha -bc3 -repeat file.png file.dds (I'm thinking you have to specify -alpha if the source has an alpha channel, maybe there's some optimisation at work there, also pregenerated mipmaps help) size of all rgb textures is 43.5 MB size of all dds textures is 38.8 MB , so size on disk is a nonissue.. sure in some cases it might increase dramatically, but here it isn't the case. Off to fly the electra in some tropical thunderstorm :P. Emilian. -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Local Weather: Clouds culled and redrawn
Nice white-out or rather gray-out when entering the rainy bit :) . (Not recommended with a plane that has no interior :P ) As for texture sizes, I think that those that are 6-9/sheet can be converted to 6-9 textures of 256x256, for the rest I think it depends on their shape, and of course actual cloud model dimensions. This way I think we save some memory from all those unused transparent areas in each of those sheets. Also elongated shapes should be stretched, to minimize the amount of complete transparent areas in the textures (if the models are textured corectly, then the correct shape of the cloud should be restored at runtime). I'll have a go at retexturing, redimensioning and choping this weekend if that's ok with you. Greetings, Emilian -- Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
