Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
Hello, working with CVS MAY-08 --2 o clock-- FIRST When using -enable-real-weather-fetch, i get a non permanent presence of the clouds. once every disappear , once only one disappear, once every coming back. This, randomly during a very short period of time 3 ,4 second. Sometime its quiet. Flying during 10 min, over the se,a altitude 500. Looking at the content of the data coming from metar: elevation 907 coverage few thickness 65 If i run again without real-weather everything is good. The clouds are nice and very fluid. SECOND The option --disable-clouds3 has no effect. We still continu loading on 3D clouds. Grard ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
Gerard ROBIN wrote: Hello, working with CVS MAY-08 --2 o clock-- FIRST When using -enable-real-weather-fetch, i get a non permanent presence of the clouds. once every disappear , once only one disappear, once every coming back. This, randomly during a very short period of time 3 ,4 second. Sometime its quiet. Flying during 10 min, over the se,a altitude 500. Looking at the content of the data coming from metar: elevation 907 coverage few thickness 65 When the coverage is few or broken the cloud layer disappears when inside the layer. This behavior is rather new but is useful for training purposes. It should not be necessary to do it this way when the 3d clouds are good enough to replace the 2d cloud layers. If i run again without real-weather everything is good. The clouds are nice and very fluid. SECOND The option --disable-clouds3 has no effect. We still continu loading on 3D clouds. That's because we now have two(!) pieces of code for generating 3d clouds, this option is only for the old cloud code. You should be able to disable them by adding the following: --prop:/sim/rendering/clouds3d-enable=false Erik ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
Erik Hofman wrote: Gerard ROBIN wrote: Hello, working with CVS MAY-08 --2 o clock-- FIRST When using -enable-real-weather-fetch, i get a non permanent presence of the clouds. once every disappear , once only one disappear, once every coming back. This, randomly during a very short period of time 3 ,4 second. Sometime its quiet. Flying during 10 min, over the se,a altitude 500. Looking at the content of the data coming from metar: elevation 907 coverage few thickness 65 When the coverage is few or broken the cloud layer disappears when inside the layer. This behavior is rather new but is useful for training purposes. It should not be necessary to do it this way when the 3d clouds are good enough to replace the 2d cloud layers. Yes, even with 3d clouds there was still the 2D code running for this effect. Also your version still have an hard coded 3d cloud layer (and the base of the two layers is not coherent). I will commit in a day or two a version that handle the metar and the cloud dialog a bit better. If i run again without real-weather everything is good. The clouds are nice and very fluid. SECOND The option --disable-clouds3 has no effect. We still continu loading on 3D clouds. That's because we now have two(!) pieces of code for generating 3d clouds, this option is only for the old cloud code. You should be able to disable them by adding the following: --prop:/sim/rendering/clouds3d-enable=false Erik ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d They won't be enabled by default in my next release because I am now generating different type of layers and - ahem - it's far from perfect ;) Harald. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
On Saturday 07 May 2005 15:14, Harald JOHNSEN wrote: Lee Elliott wrote: On Saturday 07 May 2005 10:04, Harald JOHNSEN wrote: Lee Elliott wrote: On Friday 06 May 2005 17:29, Ampere K. Hardraade wrote: On May 6, 2005 10:06 am, Karsten Krispin wrote: If you bank your plane the clouds will move in the opposite direction as you turn to - They move to the right or to the left depending whether you turn left or right. (And I'am not talking about the movements through the wind ;)). It is strange to discribe this - The easiest way would be you try it your self :) - You'll immediatly recognize what I mean. - Just do some hard and fast turns. Also it looks like if they get zoomed in or zoomed out... You are right there is a strange movement. It's perhaps the rotation axes of the clouds that are a bit off. I know what you mean. It seems you can never go inside the cloud. Perhaps visibility should be decreased to a few meters when one is inside the clouds? Ampere I think that you have that effect if you fly to the border of a cloud. The quads are rotated to face the camera and when the quads are very near on the left or the right the rotation is too big and the quad go out of sight. This will be corrected. Hmm... I've flown inside them pretty convincingly but I'm seeing a darkened region within the clouds, even when I'm outside them, between the horizon and what I presume to be the bottom of the sky-sphere. I can post some screen shots of inside the clouds or of the horizon problem if anyone wants. LeeE ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-deve l 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d Can you post screen shots of the darkened clouds problem ? Harald. Hello Harald, there's a screen-grab (425k) at http://www.overthetop.freeserve.co.uk/fgfs-screen-009.jpg I've got the weather visibility set to 3m at this altitude. LeeE ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d I'm affraid I can't reproduce the problem, but I have allready changed a few things in the rendering order of clouds to correct the problem of scenario objects visible in front of clouds, I changed the transparency of clouds too, they now appear totaly transparent at the horizon. 3 screen shots, visibility set to 3, clouds visibility set at 3 different ranges : http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/fgfs-scree n-025.jpg http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/fgfs-scree n-026.jpg http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/fgfs-scree n-027.jpg another screen shot from another view : http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/fgfs-scree n-029.jpg Harald. I think you may be a bit too far away in the first three shots but I'd expect to have seen the problem in the last one, on the left hand side. The region that's getting darkened on my system is definitely outlined by the horizon, along the bottom, but I'm not sure what matches with the top. There just seems to be a 'gap' between the top of the horizon and the bottom of the sky. Incidentally, I was wrong about the visibility setting I have for that altitude - it is actually 2m. This could just be a problem with the video card driver sigh... LeeE ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
Lee Elliott wrote: On Friday 06 May 2005 17:29, Ampere K. Hardraade wrote: On May 6, 2005 10:06 am, Karsten Krispin wrote: If you bank your plane the clouds will move in the opposite direction as you turn to - They move to the right or to the left depending whether you turn left or right. (And I'am not talking about the movements through the wind ;)). It is strange to discribe this - The easiest way would be you try it your self :) - You'll immediatly recognize what I mean. - Just do some hard and fast turns. Also it looks like if they get zoomed in or zoomed out... You are right there is a strange movement. It's perhaps the rotation axes of the clouds that are a bit off. I know what you mean. It seems you can never go inside the cloud. Perhaps visibility should be decreased to a few meters when one is inside the clouds? Ampere I think that you have that effect if you fly to the border of a cloud. The quads are rotated to face the camera and when the quads are very near on the left or the right the rotation is too big and the quad go out of sight. This will be corrected. Hmm... I've flown inside them pretty convincingly but I'm seeing a darkened region within the clouds, even when I'm outside them, between the horizon and what I presume to be the bottom of the sky-sphere. I can post some screen shots of inside the clouds or of the horizon problem if anyone wants. LeeE ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d Can you post screen shots of the darkened clouds problem ? Harald. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
On Saturday 07 May 2005 10:04, Harald JOHNSEN wrote: Lee Elliott wrote: On Friday 06 May 2005 17:29, Ampere K. Hardraade wrote: On May 6, 2005 10:06 am, Karsten Krispin wrote: If you bank your plane the clouds will move in the opposite direction as you turn to - They move to the right or to the left depending whether you turn left or right. (And I'am not talking about the movements through the wind ;)). It is strange to discribe this - The easiest way would be you try it your self :) - You'll immediatly recognize what I mean. - Just do some hard and fast turns. Also it looks like if they get zoomed in or zoomed out... You are right there is a strange movement. It's perhaps the rotation axes of the clouds that are a bit off. I know what you mean. It seems you can never go inside the cloud. Perhaps visibility should be decreased to a few meters when one is inside the clouds? Ampere I think that you have that effect if you fly to the border of a cloud. The quads are rotated to face the camera and when the quads are very near on the left or the right the rotation is too big and the quad go out of sight. This will be corrected. Hmm... I've flown inside them pretty convincingly but I'm seeing a darkened region within the clouds, even when I'm outside them, between the horizon and what I presume to be the bottom of the sky-sphere. I can post some screen shots of inside the clouds or of the horizon problem if anyone wants. LeeE ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d Can you post screen shots of the darkened clouds problem ? Harald. Hello Harald, there's a screen-grab (425k) at http://www.overthetop.freeserve.co.uk/fgfs-screen-009.jpg I've got the weather visibility set to 3m at this altitude. LeeE ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
Lee Elliott wrote: On Saturday 07 May 2005 10:04, Harald JOHNSEN wrote: Lee Elliott wrote: On Friday 06 May 2005 17:29, Ampere K. Hardraade wrote: On May 6, 2005 10:06 am, Karsten Krispin wrote: If you bank your plane the clouds will move in the opposite direction as you turn to - They move to the right or to the left depending whether you turn left or right. (And I'am not talking about the movements through the wind ;)). It is strange to discribe this - The easiest way would be you try it your self :) - You'll immediatly recognize what I mean. - Just do some hard and fast turns. Also it looks like if they get zoomed in or zoomed out... You are right there is a strange movement. It's perhaps the rotation axes of the clouds that are a bit off. I know what you mean. It seems you can never go inside the cloud. Perhaps visibility should be decreased to a few meters when one is inside the clouds? Ampere I think that you have that effect if you fly to the border of a cloud. The quads are rotated to face the camera and when the quads are very near on the left or the right the rotation is too big and the quad go out of sight. This will be corrected. Hmm... I've flown inside them pretty convincingly but I'm seeing a darkened region within the clouds, even when I'm outside them, between the horizon and what I presume to be the bottom of the sky-sphere. I can post some screen shots of inside the clouds or of the horizon problem if anyone wants. LeeE ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d Can you post screen shots of the darkened clouds problem ? Harald. Hello Harald, there's a screen-grab (425k) at http://www.overthetop.freeserve.co.uk/fgfs-screen-009.jpg I've got the weather visibility set to 3m at this altitude. LeeE ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d I'm affraid I can't reproduce the problem, but I have allready changed a few things in the rendering order of clouds to correct the problem of scenario objects visible in front of clouds, I changed the transparency of clouds too, they now appear totaly transparent at the horizon. 3 screen shots, visibility set to 3, clouds visibility set at 3 different ranges : http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/fgfs-screen-025.jpg http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/fgfs-screen-026.jpg http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/fgfs-screen-027.jpg another screen shot from another view : http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/fgfs-screen-029.jpg Harald. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
Am Samstag 07 Mai 2005 11:04 schrieb Harald JOHNSEN: You are right there is a strange movement. It's perhaps the rotation axes of the clouds that are a bit off. I think that you have that effect if you fly to the border of a cloud. The quads are rotated to face the camera and when the quads are very near on the left or the right the rotation is too big and the quad go out of sight. This will be corrected. Harald. Well, I'am not envolved in 3d-programming. But what would happen if you suppress the rotating in whole. If i look sideward out the the cockpit I see a couple of clouds rotating - other not. This looks ugly ;) The other thing is the lightning which also changes when the cloud rotates. When it was darker befor, then it is brighter, even white - depending of where the sun is - sure. When you apply the patch, do you just query whether the plane is too near to the cloud or is it something more complex? If so, I would try a always-false condition to the query to see what's the result if rotating is turned off. Karsten ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
Hi, I think that you have that effect if you fly to the border of a cloud. The quads are rotated to face the camera and when the quads are very near on the left or the right the rotation is too big and the quad go out of sight. This will be corrected. so are you using billboards rather than impostors? Is a single cloud represented by multiple billboard primitives or by a single quad? In the latter case, you could try to use impostors with fixed world-space orientation, which are invalidated (updated) above a certain viewing angle treshold and distance treshold (which depend on the extent of the cloud bounding box and impostor texture resolution, respectively). Manuel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
Manuel Massing wrote: Hi, I think that you have that effect if you fly to the border of a cloud. The quads are rotated to face the camera and when the quads are very near on the left or the right the rotation is too big and the quad go out of sight. This will be corrected. so are you using billboards rather than impostors? Is a single cloud represented by multiple billboard primitives or by a single quad? In the latter case, you could try to use impostors with fixed world-space orientation, which are invalidated (updated) above a certain viewing angle treshold and distance treshold (which depend on the extent of the cloud bounding box and impostor texture resolution, respectively). Manuel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d A cloud is represented by multiple billboard primitives. Above a certain distance they are replaced by an impostor (one quad). When they are near I draw all their billboards, each having its viewing angle to face the camera. It's that angle that must be locked above a certain value. Harald. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
Harald JOHNSEN wrote: A cloud is represented by multiple billboard primitives. Above a certain distance they are replaced by an impostor (one quad). When they are near I draw all their billboards, each having its viewing angle to face the camera. It's that angle that must be locked above a certain value. I think this is the same problem that the viewer code has when looking straight up (or straight down). It supposedly has something to do with the rotation matrix and should be solved by using quaternations. Now, if I only knew what those are :-) Erik ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
From: Erik Hofman Harald JOHNSEN wrote: A cloud is represented by multiple billboard primitives. Above a certain distance they are replaced by an impostor (one quad). When they are near I draw all their billboards, each having its viewing angle to face the camera. It's that angle that must be locked above a certain value. I think this is the same problem that the viewer code has when looking straight up (or straight down). It supposedly has something to do with the rotation matrix and should be solved by using quaternations. Now, if I only knew what those are This describes the matrix conversions and the problem with them: http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/geometry/rotations/conversions/matrixToAngle/ You can see it in flightgear by going into chase view and looking straight down at the aircraft (scenery normal 0,0,0). The camera and hence the whole scene will start doing rapid rotations. This describes the Quaternian: http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/algebra/realNormedAlgebra/quaternions/index.htm You don't really need to understand how a quaternian works to use one. There are quaternian objects and methods in plib that correspond to the matrix methods now used in the veiwer and model position/animation code (see plib's sgQuat class). You can convert between quats and matrices and concatenate multiple quats just like the matrices. Now that the viewer code is pretty stable it might be a good time to try to convert. Norman has suggested this to me serveral times in the past and I've pretty much tried to ignore him :-). I think my concern was with the prospect of trying to fix a rotation related bug when everything is quaternian. Matrices on the other hand are pretty easy to visualize if you've been working with them for a little bit. As much as I've looked at examples I haven't been able to do that with quats. But since we know the viewer code works pretty well, then we could probably go ahead and switch it. I guess if a problem did come up we could alway convert the quaternian to a matrix and dump the resulting matrix. Best, Jim ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
On Thu, 5 May 2005 19:35:36 -0400, Ampere wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On May 5, 2005 06:32 pm, Curtis L. Olson wrote: They look a lot nicer in 24bit depth, there are some issues, but I ..also be aware that ATI cards are strictly 24 bit, so running 16 or 15 bit is about as pointless as 32bit, 8bit _may_ be an idea if you dont mind ugly performance. Nvidea will do 15, 16 and 32 bit much better, because they went that extra mile (2*16bit 1*32 rather than just 1*24) on their hardware, AFAIU my web research of video cards. -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;o) ...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. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
From: Curtis L. Olson Ampere K. Hardraade wrote: The new 3D clouds are great! However, on the ground, I noticed the clouds seem a bit grainy. They are also darker than they should be. On closer observation, I see this: http://www.students.yorku.ca/~ampere/fgfs-screen-006.jpg Does anybody know I am seeing these artifacts? Would my use of 16-bits depth be one of the contributions Yes, the clouds look a lot nicer in 24 bit depth. 16bit depth only gives you 4 bits each for RGB and A so you see a *lot* of banding with alpha textures. They look a lot nicer in 24bit depth, there are some issues, but I assume this is still a work in progress so I'll wait a bit longer before I start complaining. It would be possible to improve that though by reducing the number of shades and doing appropriate dithering. Best, Jim ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
On May 6, 2005 10:06 am, Karsten Krispin wrote: If you bank your plane the clouds will move in the opposite direction as you turn to - They move to the right or to the left depending whether you turn left or right. (And I'am not talking about the movements through the wind ;)). It is strange to discribe this - The easiest way would be you try it your self :) - You'll immediatly recognize what I mean. - Just do some hard and fast turns. Also it looks like if they get zoomed in or zoomed out... I know what you mean. It seems you can never go inside the cloud. Perhaps visibility should be decreased to a few meters when one is inside the clouds? Ampere ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
Le vendredi 06 mai 2005 16:06 +0200, Karsten Krispin a crit : Hi! I've tried FG from CVS (05.05.05 haha...). Great work with the 3d-clouds. But there are two things to mention: If you bank your plane the clouds will move in the opposite direction as you turn to - They move to the right or to the left depending whether you turn left or right. (And I'am not talking about the movements through the wind ;)). It is strange to discribe this - The easiest way would be you try it your self :) - You'll immediatly recognize what I mean. - Just do some hard and fast turns. Also it looks like if they get zoomed in or zoomed out... Second thing: please make a switch for both cloud types. Flying with plain 3d-clouds looks truly great, but not really realistic if there are more than one layer or even there is just one, but it should be overcast. I agree with Karsten. and in addition to these wishes the option --disable-clouds3d is not operational now. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new 3d clouds - strange movement
On Friday 06 May 2005 17:29, Ampere K. Hardraade wrote: On May 6, 2005 10:06 am, Karsten Krispin wrote: If you bank your plane the clouds will move in the opposite direction as you turn to - They move to the right or to the left depending whether you turn left or right. (And I'am not talking about the movements through the wind ;)). It is strange to discribe this - The easiest way would be you try it your self :) - You'll immediatly recognize what I mean. - Just do some hard and fast turns. Also it looks like if they get zoomed in or zoomed out... I know what you mean. It seems you can never go inside the cloud. Perhaps visibility should be decreased to a few meters when one is inside the clouds? Ampere Hmm... I've flown inside them pretty convincingly but I'm seeing a darkened region within the clouds, even when I'm outside them, between the horizon and what I presume to be the bottom of the sky-sphere. I can post some screen shots of inside the clouds or of the horizon problem if anyone wants. LeeE ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
The new 3D clouds are great! However, on the ground, I noticed the clouds seem a bit grainy. They are also darker than they should be. On closer observation, I see this: http://www.students.yorku.ca/~ampere/fgfs-screen-006.jpg Does anybody know I am seeing these artifacts? Would my use of 16-bits depth be one of the contributions? Thanks in advance, Ampere ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Ampere K. Hardraade wrote: The new 3D clouds are great! However, on the ground, I noticed the clouds seem a bit grainy. They are also darker than they should be. On closer observation, I see this: http://www.students.yorku.ca/~ampere/fgfs-screen-006.jpg Does anybody know I am seeing these artifacts? Would my use of 16-bits depth be one of the contributions Yes, the clouds look a lot nicer in 24 bit depth. 16bit depth only gives you 4 bits each for RGB and A so you see a *lot* of banding with alpha textures. They look a lot nicer in 24bit depth, there are some issues, but I assume this is still a work in progress so I'll wait a bit longer before I start complaining. :-) Curt. -- Curtis Olsonhttp://www.flightgear.org/~curt HumanFIRST Program http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/ FlightGear Project http://www.flightgear.org Unique text:2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
On May 5, 2005 06:32 pm, Curtis L. Olson wrote: They look a lot nicer in 24bit depth, there are some issues, but I assume this is still a work in progress so I'll wait a bit longer before I start complaining. :-) hehe. I see why you would think I am complaining. I missed the word why in one of my sentences. =P What I meant to say was: Does anybody know _why_ I am seeing these artifacts? Would my use of 16-bits depth be one of the contributions? Sorry if I cause any misunderstanding. =P Ampere ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
RE: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Erik Hofman wrote Frederic Bouvier wrote: I know this is preliminary code, but is there a reason why 100% cloud density doesn't give us overcast rather than scatered/broken as it is now ? I don't think we want to draw overcast (and cirrus) using 3d clouds but rather using the existing code, don't we? The existing medium and high clouds seem to be drawn very nicely with the existing code. Regards, Vivian ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Quoting Erik Hofman: Frederic Bouvier wrote: I know this is preliminary code, but is there a reason why 100% cloud density doesn't give us overcast rather than scatered/broken as it is now ? I don't think we want to draw overcast (and cirrus) using 3d clouds but rather using the existing code, don't we? So the 3d code shouldn't exclude 2d clouds but fade into them. But if we want to model front one day, it is a thing to ponder now. Overcast layers are flat at the base but often show towers from the top, at altitude a 737 or an Airbus are supposed to fly. I wish we could one day see really big clouds in FG and not only small cumulus blobs. I agree cirrus can stay 2d. BTW: how are computed cloud shapes ? In the M. Harris code, they are modeled with a tool he never released and stuck to the same set of shape ( stored in a binary format file ). Is it a procedural function or something fixed ? I am dreaming loudly here but we could envision in a distant future that clouds could be reshaped at runtime by wind and current. So implementing a very simple procedural function rather than something fixed could be seen as the first step of something more ambitious later. In fact I was thinking about implicit surfaces ( see http://www.unchainedgeometry.com/jbloom/papers.html ) aka metaballs in blender to picture the sky at a rough level and refine individual clouds with impostors like M. Harris' or now Harald's code. /dreaming -Fred ideas provider ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Frederic Bouvier wrote: So the 3d code shouldn't exclude 2d clouds but fade into them. But if we want to model front one day, it is a thing to ponder now. Overcast layers are flat at the base but often show towers from the top, at altitude a 737 or an Airbus are supposed to fly. I wish we could one day see really big clouds in FG and not only small cumulus blobs. Is that towering cumulus or perhaps some cumulonimbus ? I agree cirrus can stay 2d. Yup. BTW: how are computed cloud shapes ? In the M. Harris code, they are modeled with a tool he never released and stuck to the same set of shape ( stored in a binary format file ). Is it a procedural function or something fixed ? I am dreaming loudly here but we could envision in a distant future that clouds could be reshaped at runtime by wind and current. So implementing a very simple procedural function rather than something fixed could be seen as the first step of something more ambitious later. In fact I was thinking about implicit surfaces ( see http://www.unchainedgeometry.com/jbloom/papers.html ) aka metaballs in blender to picture the sky at a rough level and refine individual clouds with impostors like M. Harris' or now Harald's code. /dreaming -Fred ideas provider ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d I made 3 screenshot of my lab test program. First I give position and size of containers, those will give the general shape of the cloud : http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/cldbuild1.jpg With that, and given some hardcoded rules (cu bottom are flat, stratus only use 1 metaball, etc), metaballs are generated : http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/cldbuild2.jpg We have now a sort of volumetric shape that we render with simple quads for speed : http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/cldbuild3.jpg The idea is to build the cloud with a very simple definition (position of boxes, size, content). This definition will be in an xml so everybody will be able to test new shapes. To reply at your question, yes it is fixed, but there is still the possibility to alter the shape by moving the metaballs or adding new. Harald. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
I think the old implementation has some features that the new one is missing. Of course the new one is better integrated with FG, so that's a big plus. I'd leave them both for now. On a related note, I seem to recall MS having some patents on cloud rendering. They had an article in game developer a while back that discussed it. I think they implemented the Mark Harris method or something very much like it (or did he do it for them?). Anyway, as long as Marks contribution is in FGFS I don't think anyone can claim any proprietary ownership of his methods :-) -Paul K. On Sun, 2005-04-24 at 08:43 -0700, Andy Ross wrote: Erik Hofman wrote: I have added the new 3d clouds code from Harald Johnson to CVS. Should we then remove the previous implementation? Ultimately, there is only space for one cloud implementation; if the existing clouds3d stuff isn't going to be the current target of development, it is only complicating things by being present. Andy ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Jon Stockill wrote: Yes, it's slightly odd seeing the clouds appear/disappear (even when stationary - just rotating the view seems to cause the problem). However, the overall effect is fantastic - is there any way to see the precipitation model yet? Great work Harald! Shame on me. I was not using an up to date flightgear cvs, now that I have updated it I see the desastrous effect. Clouds are not culled correctly. That explains the poping, but it had also an enormous impact on fps. In attachment is a quick hack. Harald. cvs diff -u -- cloudfield.cxx (in directory F:\dvlp\SG\source\simgear\scene\sky\) Index: cloudfield.cxx === RCS file: /var/cvs/SimGear-0.3/source/simgear/scene/sky/cloudfield.cxx,v retrieving revision 1.4 diff -u -r1.4 cloudfield.cxx --- cloudfield.cxx 26 Apr 2005 09:08:58 - 1.4 +++ cloudfield.cxx 26 Apr 2005 18:28:46 - @@ -180,6 +180,7 @@ // correct the frustum with the right far plane ssgContext *context = ssgGetCurrentContext(); frustum = *context-getFrustum(); + frustum.setFOV(55.0,0); frustum.setNearFar(1.0, CloudVis); } ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Selon Melchior FRANZ: * Harald JOHNSEN -- Tuesday 26 April 2005 20:41: Clouds are not culled correctly. That explains the poping, but it had also an enormous impact on fps. In attachment is a quick hack. Ahh. That makes a big difference. Almost usable now. :-) Now, if you could fix the fog problem and fade clouds inout rather than popping them up abruptly, it would be quite cool already. I just compile them with MSVC without a single warning. And they work fine ( I missed the initial glitches ;-). I am really impressed. I know this is preliminary code, but is there a reason why 100% cloud density doesn't give us overcast rather than scatered/broken as it is now ? -Fred ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Frederic Bouvier wrote: Selon Melchior FRANZ: * Harald JOHNSEN -- Tuesday 26 April 2005 20:41: Clouds are not culled correctly. That explains the poping, but it had also an enormous impact on fps. In attachment is a quick hack. Ahh. That makes a big difference. Almost usable now. :-) Now, if you could fix the fog problem and fade clouds inout rather than popping them up abruptly, it would be quite cool already. I just compile them with MSVC without a single warning. And they work fine ( I missed the initial glitches ;-). I am really impressed. Erik did a few adaptations, I'm only using .net since a week or two and I have allready forgotten the headach I had with templates and MSVC ;) I know this is preliminary code, but is there a reason why 100% cloud density doesn't give us overcast rather than scatered/broken as it is now ? -Fred ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d The density is supposed to reduce the number of clouds on low to mid level computer, it won't change a broken layer into an overcast one. Harald. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Hi guys! Seen new clouds code but to be it need some tweaks to work perfectly 1) use pointsprites to render impostors because they are quads (all cards supports them) 2) use FBO to reder-to-texture it gives us speedup.(all cards supports them) 3)use at least ARB vertex programs (will work on geforce3) to calculate lighting and billboard transformations 4) use ARB fragment programs (will work on geforceFX) for hardware blending. But clouds looks good to tweak them out :) Roman ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Harald JOHNSEN wrote: - fog bug : ok I think I have not re-enable fog Sort of. The terrain seems to be hidden by fog at the appropriate range, but any objects appear to have infinite visibility, so they appear to float until the ground eventually comes into view beneath them. -- Jon Stockill [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
RE: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Erik Hofman writes: Another thing is that it seems to depend on glut functions which need to be resolved for SDL users also. Hmm... a quick grep of the directory yields f:\tmp\fgfs\SimGear\simgear\scene\sky\bbcache.cxx: #include SG_GLUT_H f:\tmp\fgfs\SimGear\simgear\scene\sky\cloudfield.cxx: #include SG_GLUT_H f:\tmp\fgfs\SimGear\simgear\scene\sky\newcloud.cxx: #include SG_GLUT_H so it looks as if it is only that the headers are being included but nothing is actually being used Norman ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Erik Hofman wrote: Hi, I have added the new 3d clouds code from Harald Johnson to CVS. The code is not yet perfect (the movements to the viewer needs some tweaking) but the effects are really nice. I hope we can figure out the problems and eliminate them because the results are even better than I had expected! Yes, it's slightly odd seeing the clouds appear/disappear (even when stationary - just rotating the view seems to cause the problem). However, the overall effect is fantastic - is there any way to see the precipitation model yet? Great work Harald! -- Jon Stockill [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
On my system the new 3D clouds only appear when I look directly at them. I have to move the pan cursor over them to see them. Paul On Sunday, 24 April 2005 13:35, Erik Hofman wrote: Hi, I have added the new 3d clouds code from Harald Johnson to CVS. The code is not yet perfect (the movements to the viewer needs some tweaking) but the effects are really nice. I hope we can figure out the problems and eliminate them because the results are even better than I had expected! Another thing is that it seems to depend on glut functions which need to be resolved for SDL users also. A third problem is that it uses the RenderTexture class which hasn't been implemented for MacOS-X yet. Anyway, en ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Norman Vine wrote: Hmm... a quick grep of the directory yields f:\tmp\fgfs\SimGear\simgear\scene\sky\bbcache.cxx: #include SG_GLUT_H f:\tmp\fgfs\SimGear\simgear\scene\sky\cloudfield.cxx: #include SG_GLUT_H f:\tmp\fgfs\SimGear\simgear\scene\sky\newcloud.cxx: #include SG_GLUT_H so it looks as if it is only that the headers are being included but nothing is actually being used I thought I had seen some references to glut but it turned out to be glu only. Erik ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Erik Hofman wrote: Hi, I have added the new 3d clouds code from Harald Johnson to CVS. The code is not yet perfect (the movements to the viewer needs some tweaking) but the effects are really nice. I hope we can figure out the problems and eliminate them because the results are even better than I had expected! Another thing is that it seems to depend on glut functions which need to be resolved for SDL users also. A third problem is that it uses the RenderTexture class which hasn't been implemented for MacOS-X yet. Anyway, en ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d Ok let's see the different problems : - use of RenderTexture class on MacOs : I didn't know (and didn't look very hard either), I am wondering if its is not implemented in the cvs tree of SDL, should check that. - poping clouds when rotating view : I don't think I had this bug, will recheck that, perhaps it depends on the location. - FPS droping from 40 to 10 and can't disable clouds : try to set 0 in texture cache size to disable but I must admit that this code was a bit bugged, its allready corrected at home. Also there was another bug, a lot of computation were done even for impostors. Never push the visibility of 3d clouds behind 3 meters. Also try to set the texture cache to 1024k, that should give a lot of impostors. The default number of impostor is not right and that's why you have a degradation of fps. - fog bug : ok I think I have not re-enable fog Harald. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Roy Vegard Ovesen wrote: On Sunday 24 April 2005 15:21, Paul Surgeon wrote: On my system the new 3D clouds only appear when I look directly at them. I have to move the pan cursor over them to see them. Same thing here, and there are red/white squares around the clouds that have not yet turned into 3D clouds. Red/white square was for debug only. If the rendering options don't do anything when you press ok perhaps you missed the flightgear patch in envirenment_mgr.cxx. About the display bug, nobody can see that at KSFO ? on ground : http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/fgfs-screen-017.jpg in the air : http://sites.estvideo.net/tipunch/flightgear/images/fgfs-screen-018.jpg Harald. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Erik Hofman wrote: I have added the new 3d clouds code from Harald Johnson to CVS. Should we then remove the previous implementation? Ultimately, there is only space for one cloud implementation; if the existing clouds3d stuff isn't going to be the current target of development, it is only complicating things by being present. Andy ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Andy Ross wrote: Erik Hofman wrote: I have added the new 3d clouds code from Harald Johnson to CVS. Should we then remove the previous implementation? Ultimately, there is only space for one cloud implementation; if the existing clouds3d stuff isn't going to be the current target of development, it is only complicating things by being present. To be honest I'm not sure yet. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages at this point. I would like to keep the Haris' code just a little bit longer. Erik ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-devel] New 3d clouds
Erik Hofman wrote: To be honest I'm not sure yet. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages at this point. I would like to keep the Haris' code just a little bit longer. Off course I couldn't resist: http://www.a1.nl/~ehofman/fgfs/gallery/clouds/fgfs-screen-007.jpg http://www.a1.nl/~ehofman/fgfs/gallery/clouds/fgfs-screen-008.jpg http://www.a1.nl/~ehofman/fgfs/gallery/clouds/fgfs-screen-009.jpg :-) Erik ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
