Gabriel Teles

Beautiful!

Hello, Chris! Thanks for the post. It's a great feedback for anyone who creates this kind of stuff.

Sky textures were always a problem for me too -- and I don't think I solved it with my little addon, actually. Talking about my project, specifically, I guess some words about its goal can help you understand its faults.

It's worth mentioning that I could never imagine people would actually be interested in something that I made to answer some very personal tastes. I was in the same position as you: kind of unsatisfied with sky textures out there.

Back then (and until now, for that matter) I was using ENB Series. It was a injector that seemed to cover what I considered to be two of the big flaws FSX had: 1. its lack of contrast. Sky is way brighter than terrain, but in vanilla FSX, we get a somewhat dull visual. 2. lack of the possibility to detail subtle color transitions in sky. (I will explain this better in a second).

But ENB was a solution that caused other problems. Most sky textures, being designed for vanilla FSX, don't get along well with ENB, which I was using to improve contrast in my sim. ENB uses the brightness of pixels to manage its "bloom" effect -- which just turns everything that's bright... brighter (and sometimes turns dark areas darker). Overall contrast is improved, but sunset and sunrises suffers a lot from this: the bright pixels from a sunrise / sunset texture become too bright with ENB acting; it appears that there is a nuke exploding in the horizon.

Personally, I wanted to actually see the sunset or the sunrise. So I started to design my sky textures from scratch to work with ENB series. My textures would necessarily lack some brightness because the whole set would be working with ENB, which would then give the level of brightness I was seeking. ENB was also solving that second flaw, which deserves a better explanation now.

To put in few words: FS9, FSX, and any sim based on this platform is severely limited in terms of sky design possibilities. This is related to a. the very size of the sky textures and b. the way the sims renders the sky.

As for a., we can only work in a 32x32px texture. It's actually less than this, discounting a pixel line in the textures used only for light / haze / shadow coloring information and the two bottom pixel lines, that manage color ground in the distance when your visibility isn't set to "max" (which is the case in 99,9% of flights -- any weather program will limit visibility for realism). So we have exactly 32x29px to make the whole appearence of the sky. Now, if you look at any photograph of a sunset or a sunrise, you will notice the big problem we have: there are a lot of colors in a single instant of a sunrise. We just can't replicate this in our sims working with 32x29px.

ENB was able to help here, too. Being an injector that works directly on the final image rendered by the sim, it can actually surpass these limits and, if well adjusted, create little color nuances that wouldn't be possible in vanilla FSX. This is exactly how my set works, when used with ENB. You can also refine the effect by taking advantage of some parameters from the sun effect -- which I did, and that's pretty much why my "Simple Sun mod" exists.

As for b., the way the sim uses the sky textures is somewhat clever, but it's also a limitation. The principle is easy: at ground level, you see one sky. At FL400, the sky is different: it has a deeper blue. I don't need to explain the reasons for this -- you guys know better than me... what you need to know is how FS9/FSX (and P3D, I guess) handles this. At ground level, they actually use just a portion of that sky texture, until the level of "blue" we normally see from ground. As you climb in the sim, the portion of the sky texture being used is increased. The sky textures are designed in a way that the blue in the texture becomes deeper in direct relation to how the sim will load them, thus creating this difference in the sky coloring between ground level and FL400. Well, it's hard to understand this by text, so I'm showing an image I did for a fellow simmer that wanted to understand why my sky textures did not have that deep blue in high altitudes.

(Sorry for some mistakes in the text...)

To complete the difficults in doing a set of sky textures: you have to design, say, an afternoon texture with your sunset texture in mind. The sim makes an almost imperceptible transition between one texture to another, but the looks of your afternoon texture will directly affect your sunset effect.

...

So making a "realistic" set of sky textures is a job for heroes (and they exist). I wasn't able to do it using just vanilla FSX; I had to design with ENB in mind. I simply couldn't antecipate that so many people would use my set, especially without ENB. It is possible to design a good set for an injector-free sim, but to a certain point. I guess P3D changed things a bit with its HDR settings etc., but the limitations concerning the textures itself, the rendering of the sky and the overall lightning effect are still there, as far as I know. Some developers can do incredible stuff given the difficults (HDE is a good example; Navid's too). But to achieve a photographic level of realism? In this plataform, for now, I'd say it's impossible.

PS: I won't even enter the photography-to-reality-differences discussion here because if I do, I'll write a book and not a post.

Best regards,

You have a beautiful sim there, Philipp.

Very nice shots! The cloud formations are incredible. :smile:

Beautiful sky! Incredibly realistic.

So beautiful! Amazing shots, Rich!

Really really nice, indeed!

Nice shots, nice mood!

:o

Wow...

Title is right.

Thanks for posting. Beautiful scenery!

Big difference, in my humble opinion.

And your shots definitely aren't anywhere near "ugly", Mike. :smile:

 had a strange compulsion to make a geological sculpture out of the fishcakes and waffles I had for tea tonight... I think mashed potato would have worked better!

 

Great shots yet again of one of our planet's curiosities.

Haha, I thought the same!

Beautiful shots, James!

Really nice lighting, indeed!

Thanks all, I should mention...Manfred's C-47 is an amazing freeware add-on!

This is amazing.

Many thanks, folks. :smile:

Thank you very much, everyone! I'm glad you liked it. :smile:

Well, finally I have the time to fly again! At least for the next few weeks...

So I took the PMDG's 777 for a spin. Weather was provided by ASN -- and it was kind of bad at EDDS. As you can see, I arrived... well... full of energy... and had to go around. Second approach was successful. :smile:

Hope you guys like it.

Taxi...

Right after take-off.

LGAV right there...

The sun begins to set...

People must be having a really nice day down there...

Sky is almost clear. Not for long...

Descent.

...and rain.

Following procedures to RWY07 approach...

Rain again (and a bit of turbulence, too...)

After "go-around"...

New approach, now at acceptable speed.

Sun fighting to appear between clouds as the day ends...

Final approach (don't mind the EICAS warning :ph34r: ).

At ground, finally.

...and that's it, I guess...

Thanks for viewing!

Great shots! #10 could seriously be mistaken as a photograph...

Really nice tribute. Thank you!  :smile: 

They won't vanish instantly just because there are no new once produced.

They dropped production of the 757 back in 2004, but:

http://flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/B752

You guys are right. I was kind of hasty in my statement...

It's just... well... I don't travel a lot and where I live the 777s are really taking over all the long hauls...

(In fact, I just learned that there's a British Airways flight with 747s from SBGR to EGLL... so there's still hope, I guess. I can only hope the 747s will still being used when I have the time and money to do such travels... ).

So I guess I'll never fly in one of these...

Very beautiful (and you have a pretty nice sun effect there!). :smile:

Very impressive, as always.

So many incredible places in the world to see...

Great shots!

Wonderful shots. Do I actually see a nuke going off in the last two? o.O

I'm curious about that too...

Great shots! Especially that solid undercast layer :-)

My favourite too.

Great shots. :smile:

Great topic. Following... :smile:

:o

Amazing!