Let's discuss Env. settings.

[Armistead]

Since several of us like to make our own envs, thought I would start a thread. I've been working on env. mods for years, one day I would like to get one tweaked enough for release. I have one that I use I like tweaked with sensors, but I keep finding more things I want to tweak. Hopefully someone highly skilled with env settingscan help us mere mortals out.

First thing I would like to discuss what is a sticking point with me....clouds, trying to find a realistic look, course guess it's subject to taste, but I don't like what's in game.

What I don't like is basically the same old cloud look during the day, seems you're stuck with the same cloud tiling and blur factors controlled by scene dat. I would love softer fuzzy clouds during the early day, sharper clouds at sunset and night., course slow transitions so it doesn't just go from one to the other.

Here are some SS's...playing with mainly clouds, so other colors may not be tweaked.

More blurred clouds, some different shapes
http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu235/Armistead1424/SH4Img2012-07-25_110422_265.jpg

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu235/Armistead1424/SH4Img2012-07-26_105114_828.jpg

greater, trying for more SH5 feel, lmao...
http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu235/Armistead1424/SH4Img2012-07-24_224200_453.jpg

Compared to sharper clouds, lil too sharpe for my taste, but you get the point.

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu235/Armistead1424/SH4Img2012-07-25_143907_140.jpg

Anyone know of a way to transition clouds during the same day, more blurred to sharper tiled clouds, the few settings in the env. for clouds really don't give effect like scene dat.

I also like to start my clouds higher up, more mid day, instead of seeing mass clouds on the horizon. Not sure how realistic that is, still tweaking these, need to be a lil lower. Seems to me sharper clouds on the horizon look out of shape and flat..

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu235/Armistead1424/SH4Img2012-07-26_104913_031.jpg

[0rpheus]

No opinion on the clouds, but your water looks gorgeous! :up:

[Caustic]

Armistead, how high is your sky-sun influence parameter in scene.dat? The ocean looks a bit too reflective for my tastes and like you i've been continuously disappointed by the limitations of the game engine. It seems we are stuck with a single scene.dat, if only we could set it up like the env_color files where you have different settings for sun angles.

[Armistead]

I'm not sure, like I said those SS are just playing with clouds, just pulled one of my 200 mods out of my arse and started working on clouds, not concerned about the other stuff, but I see what you're saying. Course I usually use darker cloud reflections, not white, but not sure if you're talking sun on water or clouds on water.

What drives me nuts is you can go about things many different ways and get almost the same look since most values connect. Generally I start with light, contrast and brightness with filters and scenedat, then use specific values to tone down specific items like reflection. However, in most cases I run my sky sun in scene dat higher for other factors and try to tune down where needed.

[Armistead]

Something else has totally confused me.

Take the 3 env atl env files, each having a different set up, but for the most part most env mods use same values for the first two, so look is about the same in rotation, I do mine same way, so never a big deal, but when do these patterns rotate. I first thought it was weather, however I noticed a rotation when I restart the game. For instance, doing test I noticed 1 file loaded, then restarting 1 loaded several more times, then about the 5 restart, number 2 patterns loaded....It appears to me that somehow the game picks a pattern to load with each restart...Since I always matched the first two files in look, I never noticed a rotation, I thought they rotated due to weather or time, but since I've changed the look totally between patterns, I haven't seen a rotation in about 5 days or weather changes, but if I restart game, eventually the patterns will rotate.

Also each file has roughly 9 setups as the day progresses. I've been trying to exact time each period shift. For instance, say env 1 starts with file 0

0= roughly 8AM-11am
1=roughly 11AM-13pm

and so on...

Anyone have the exact time breakout for each pattern? I noticed patterns repeat themselves, roughly the pattern for 8AM repeats itself at around 1600pm

Any further explanation how this works would be helpful, before I shoot myself or just go back to the same look.

[Hylander_1314]

I'm just working on waves myself. I haven't the knowledge to even try to figure out the morass of settings in the enviornment files.

If I had a written out guide explaining what settings did what, I would dive in head first.

The clouds in the game have always been a major issue with me too. I like all your settings because they are all plausible. What would be a cool thing to have, is not just having them change from blurred looking to sharp, which humidity and wind will greatly effect, is to having any number of combinations, as clouds that are geographically close to your position will often times appear more sharp, where clouds at distance will be more blurred or less defined, unless you're in a place like Colorado where i lived and the humidity was only 5 to 10%, and everything except color could be very sharp in definition.

Which is an interesting perspective in distance vs close concerning detail. Just looking at trees from a quarter mile, compared to 100ft, or even 10ft distance.

What is interesting is how it goes from just an outline of a shape with a base color, and highlight and shadow with no real definition of anything at a quarter mile, to basic shapes of of leaves and branches at 100ft to seeing individual leafs and branches, bark, and other finer details at 10ft.

What I was wondering though, as I have seen folks add nodes to ship files to add things to them, could the same thing be done with the scene.dat file to add say another cloud layer, where we could put say,.............. cumulonimbus or cumulous or nimbus clouds in kinda he way Combat Flight Simulator series does? CFS 3 just used vertical and horizontal files to give illusion of "3D" clouds.

I was wondering f that kind of thing could be done with SH3 and Sh4, since the game engine for SH5 is radically different from what I understand, or misunderstand about the enviornment structure in it, compared to the former 2 releases.

Anyways, I don't know myself, or I would have tried it, or done it. And there are also the other parameter files to consider in the Clouds Folder too, as I'm guessing they would have to be written from scratch to accomplish that part of it, and I'm not sure if what already exists could be used as a base to go off of.

What I thought was cool, was my late babysister had MS Flight Simulator 2004(?), or whatever the one was before FS 10 was released, and you could literally go online, and have the game import the weather along your flight path as per what was happening in real time in those locations globally, as per satellite collected data.

So you could end up with cloud structure at different altitudes from the thick storm clouds close to the earth's surface, to the thin whispy clouds up at 40,000ft, and whatever else may be there in between those cloud layers.

Anyways, enough of my rambling.

[Caustic]

Something else has totally confused me.

Take the 3 env atl env files, each having a different set up, but for the most part most env mods use same values for the first two, so look is about the same in rotation, I do mine same way, so never a big deal, but when do these patterns rotate. I first thought it was weather, however I noticed a rotation when I restart the game. For instance, doing test I noticed 1 file loaded, then restarting 1 loaded several more times, then about the 5 restart, number 2 patterns loaded....It appears to me that somehow the game picks a pattern to load with each restart...Since I always matched the first two files in look, I never noticed a rotation, I thought they rotated due to weather or time, but since I've changed the look totally between patterns, I haven't seen a rotation in about 5 days or weather changes, but if I restart game, eventually the patterns will rotate.

Also each file has roughly 9 setups as the day progresses. I've been trying to exact time each period shift. For instance, say env 1 starts with file 0

0= roughly 8AM-11am
1=roughly 11AM-13pm

and so on...

Anyone have the exact time breakout for each pattern? I noticed patterns repeat themselves, roughly the pattern for 8AM repeats itself at around 1600pm

Any further explanation how this works would be helpful, before I shoot myself or just go back to the same look.

Armistead, you can add as many time periods as you want if you subdivide the sun angle. For example, you can have one evn color chunk for sun-angle:90 and another for sun-angle:80; the game spreads them out though but it's possible to add a different chunk for each degree which would result in similar but a somewhat different progression of the time of day; and also days of modding....

Every chunk must begin with 'SunAltitudeAngle' - right-click 'add array item' to create a new chunk in env_color.dat

[Armistead]

Armistead, you can add as many time periods as you want if you subdivide the sun angle. For example, you can have one evn color chunk for sun-angle:90 and another for sun-angle:80; the game spreads them out though but it's possible to add a different chunk for each degree which would result in similar but a somewhat different progression of the time of day; and also days of modding....

Every chunk must begin with 'SunAltitudeAngle' - right-click 'add array item' to create a new chunk in env_color.dat

Yea, I sort of understand that, more concerned with how the sep 3 weathertype files rotate.

I thought about adding chunks, slippping more angles in, mostly towards dusk/dawn, still seems the chunk timing doesn't hold in order as the day progresses.

[stanger]

Take the 3 env atl env files

Aren't those three files a leftover from sh3? Sh4 only uses one (atl). Look at seainf.bmp from sh4 and compare it with the same file from sh3. Sh3 one is the same, except Arctic is grey, and if you look closely, the Mediterranean is greyish too, the rest is black. That would correspond to the three env files\three sea types.

[Armistead]

Aren't those three files a leftover from sh3? Sh4 only uses one (atl). Look at seainf.bmp from sh4 and compare it with the same file from sh3. Sh3 one is the same, except Arctic is grey, and if you look closely, the Mediterranean is greyish too, the rest is black. That would correspond to the three env files\three sea types.

I'm talking about the 3 env weathertypes in the atl files, not to be confused with the other env color files not used....

Again, not sure how each weathertype rotates, I only notice it restarting the game. Like I've said before, be nice to see different weathertypes every other day, but not sure how they work or rotate. Just wondered since you can add as many weathertypes as you want, why couldn't you have more rotation in your daily looks, different sunsets, etc..

[Caustic]

I'm talking about the 3 env weathertypes in the atl files, not to be confused with the other env color files not used....

Again, not sure how each weathertype rotates, I only notice it restarting the game. Like I've said before, be nice to see different weathertypes every other day, but not sure how they work or rotate. Just wondered since you can add as many weathertypes as you want, why couldn't you have more rotation in your daily looks, different sunsets, etc..
Well, 0 is Clear, 1 is Cloudy, and 2 is stormy right in the envcolors_atl? Mabye discover how to make the game believe it is something other than clear, cloudy, or stormy; then mabye you could rotate different weathers.

[stanger]

I'm talking about the 3 env weathertypes in the atl files, not to be confused with the other env color files not used....

Again, not sure how each weathertype rotates, I only notice it restarting the game. Like I've said before, be nice to see different weathertypes every other day, but not sure how they work or rotate. Just wondered since you can add as many weathertypes as you want, why couldn't you have more rotation in your daily looks, different sunsets, etc..

My mistake then, sorry.

Did you try running scene.dat with debug info enabled?
It displays ColorIndex, ColorNextIndex,ColorRatio (+time and position).
It may be related to weather types colors in env file, or it may be related to envsim > sky in scene.dat. Or not related at all, who knows :D
CRatio looks to be some sort of timer\counter. It goes from 0,0 to 0,9 (or inversely), once it reaches 0,9 (or 0,0), the ColorIndex changes to next one. I have counted 12 of those indexes (1 - 12), but weather type 0 has 10 colors (0 - 9), and sky in scene.dat has 13 elements (0 - 12).

I've run it for 24 in-game hours just to test. Started new campaign, 7 june 1943, 13:00 (5:00 GMT), location: Potshot, started engines and headed north at standard speed. Weather: clouds - clear, precipitations - none, fog - none, wind speed - 5 m/s, direction - 0. That weather didn't change for 24 hours.
Debug info:
13:00 (5:00 GMT) - CIndex - 2; CNextIndex - 3; CRatio - 0,00000 to 0,99999;
14:30 (6:30 GMT) - CIndex - 3; CNextIndex - 4; CRatio - 0,00000 to 0,99999;
16:00 (8:00 GMT) - CIndex - 4; CNextIndex - 5; CRatio - 0,00000 to 0,99999;
17:00 (9:00 GMT) - CIndex - 5; CNextIndex - 6; CRatio - 0,00000 to 0,99999;
Missed ColorIndex=6 - too much time acceleration
17:55 (9:55 GMT) - CIndex - 7; CNextIndex - 8; CRatio - 0,00000 to 0,99999;
18:25 (10:25 GMT) - CIndex - 8; CNextIndex - 9; CRatio - 0,00000 to 0,99999;
18:55 (10:55 GMT) - CIndex - 9; CNextIndex - 10; CRatio - 0,00000 to 0,99999;
22:12 (14:12 GMT) - CIndex - 10; CNextIndex - 11; CRatio - 0,00000 to 0,99999;
23:15 (15:15 GMT) - CIndex - 11; CNextIndex - 12; CRatio - 0,00000 to 0,99999;
8 june 1943, around 0:30 - almost missed that, CRatio has reached 0,9 and started to count down (to 0,0)
1:20 (17:20 GMT) - CIndex - 10; CNextIndex - 11; CRatio - 0,99999 to 0,00000;
2:28 (18:28 GMT) - CIndex - 9; CNextIndex - 10; CRatio - 0,99999 to 0,00000;
5:43 (21:43 GMT) - CIndex - 8; CNextIndex - 9; CRatio - 0,99999 to 0,00000;
6:10 (22:10 GMT) - CIndex - 7; CNextIndex - 8; CRatio - 0,99999 to 0,00000;
6:46 (22:46 GMT) - CIndex - 6; CNextIndex - 7; CRatio - 0,99999 to 0,00000;
7:10 (23:10 GMT) - CIndex - 5; CNextIndex - 6; CRatio - 0,99999 to 0,00000;
7:46 (23:46 GMT) - CIndex - 4; CNextIndex - 5; CRatio - 0,99999 to 0,00000;
8:45 (00:45 GMT) - CIndex - 3; CNextIndex - 4; CRatio - 0,99999 to 0,00000;
9:50 (1:50 GMT) - CIndex - 2; CNextIndex - 3; CRatio - 0,99999 to 0,00000;
11:20 (3:20 GMT) - CIndex - 1; CNextIndex - 2; CRatio - 0,99999 to 0,00000;
12:20 - CRatio almost stopped @ 0,6, and then very slowly started to rise again (to 0,9) (sun @ 90 deg. ?);
13:26 (5:26 GMT) - CIndex - 2; CNextIndex - 3; CRatio - 0,00000 to 0,99999.

So, it took 24 hours for the whole loop to complete. But can it be used to understand weather mechanics in the game? (Don't know)

[Armistead]

Well, 0 is Clear, 1 is Cloudy, and 2 is stormy right in the envcolors_atl? Mabye discover how to make the game believe it is something other than clear, cloudy, or stormy; then mabye you could rotate different weathers.



but if you add more weather types, what controls if they're clear, cloudy, etc...be nice to have 6 types, two for each, clear, cloudy, stormy, if they rotated... Seems with some things you can add an array, but the controllers block it from working.

This is what I found strange, say for white clouds in morning I set to hard pink and purple for 0 and green and black for 1. Game always starts with clear weather, but when I reset weather -Cnt N- when clear to bring on the clouds, I would get the cloud colors of 0, not 1...........but not always, after several restarts, reset weather, I might get colors of 1, not 0.

[Armistead]

caustic,

What does Haze Y factor do? I thought it was the haze of how clouds appear on the horizon, more a blur to mimmick haze or distort the horizon, not to be confused with hazerel that position where clouds spawn. Even with radical adjustments I can't really tell what it's doing.

[Armistead]

I'm just working on waves myself. I haven't the knowledge to even try to figure out the morass of settings in the enviornment files.

If I had a written out guide explaining what settings did what, I would dive in head first.

The clouds in the game have always been a major issue with me too. I like all your settings because they are all plausible. What would be a cool thing to have, is not just having them change from blurred looking to sharp, which humidity and wind will greatly effect, is to having any number of combinations, as clouds that are geographically close to your position will often times appear more sharp, where clouds at distance will be more blurred or less defined, unless you're in a place like Colorado where i lived and the humidity was only 5 to 10%, and everything except color could be very sharp in definition.

Anyways, enough of my rambling.

You can add another array item under cloud scene parameters, give it a different bump, then adjust the values different. Then go to enviroment and change the hazerel to where clouds spawn on the horizon. Caustic discussed adding more chunks in env, which could be a good idea, but I've tried to stay away from it, as you don't want many changes, basically the chunks we have give a good progessive look, but adding chunks may have great benefit in slowly changing how clouds spawn and where, add enough chunks, you could slowly change how clouds spawn, etc...but it would take a lot of chunks and a lot of work, wonder if people would even notice.


We also have to keep in mind how env. effects sensors, scene dat settings on sensors can be minor to drastic, mainly light. I prefer a brighter more neutral day and a darker night. Even the sun light effects in env files can effect sensors. You've seen my more moon light at night, those changes highly increased night visuals, but I think moonlight should. I could tweak visuals and light down in sensors, but that would impact day, so the balance is how much light. What I can't put my finger on is how do clouds and colors effect sensors. If I use sharper clouds that block moonlight at night visuals go up, blurred darker near sun clouds, visual ranges go down. Light also causes more reflection, brightens wakes, etc.. away from the moon light my night env is fairly dark, maybe even darker than TMO, in the light glare on the horizon visuals go way up, away from it down. I never thought direction of
light effected visuals, but with testing I'm sure it does. My night surface attacks if I let the moon get behind me I can easily get seen at longer ranges than if I put the moon behind the enemy.

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu235/Armistead1424/SH4Img2012-07-24_022533_328.jpg

Same settings as above, just different clouds/colors, visuals went down a few thousand yards.

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu235/Armistead1424/SH4Img2012-07-24_014754_140.jpg

The real challance to envs is not looks, you can get many great different looks, but tweaking them realistically with sensors takes hours...lots of them.. I like my env mod I use for myself, but it doesn't look near as good as the one I've been working on, because the better I find I can make it look, more impact and testing on sensors, can be 100's of hours of work, so I play with it, shelf it.....it can wear you out.

Don't worry about learning, it just takes a lot of time, I'm dumb, but basically taught myself, but with so many back operations I had time. Many of of env. modders like Wclear have moved on, so not many here to discuss it anymore. Glad to see caustic still
doing it, I loaded his mod and in so many ways he likes the same looks I do...

[Caustic]

caustic,

What does Haze Y factor do? I thought it was the haze of how clouds appear on the horizon, more a blur to mimmick haze or distort the horizon, not to be confused with hazerel that position where clouds spawn. Even with radical adjustments I can't really tell what it's doing.
I'm not sure, most environmental mods I've looked at don't utilize this setting. Probably something very subtle.

[Hylander_1314]

The real challance to envs is not looks, you can get many great different looks, but tweaking them realistically with sensors takes hours...lots of them.. I like my env mod I use for myself, but it doesn't look near as good as the one I've been working on, because the better I find I can make it look, more impact and testing on sensors, can be 100's of hours of work, so I play with it, shelf it.....it can wear you out.

Don't worry about learning, it just takes a lot of time, I'm dumb, but basically taught myself, but with so many back operations I had time. Many of of env. modders like Wclear have moved on, so not many here to discuss it anymore. Glad to see caustic still
doing it, I loaded his mod and in so many ways he likes the same looks I do...

Oh man, sorry about the back. I know, I'm not very far behind you, as I took a 60ft drop out of a tree I was trimming, and the rope broke (found out from the supplier it was defective inner braid so it couldn't be seen) 30 years ago right before my 20th BD.

Only thing that saved my bacon, was landing on the brushpile under the tree. It was about 10ft high, but it did cause some damage to the lower back (the disks are getting thinner and thinner between L2 and L5), that over the years is getting worse. Causes numbness in the outter side of my left foot, and sometimes, my calf muscles will start twitching for no reason.

Yeah, I'm not versed enough in messing wth the sensors and all the intricacies of how light affects them.

Too bad SH4 didn't get the same treatment that the GWX modders did for SH3. A real shame as SH4 is a nicer enviornment to work with, and it could have made a great base for adding in a full blown SH3 type mod for it. And the plus, of having the US Navy side in there too. Kinda like IL2 did there with all the mods that were added to it.

Well, I hope all goes well with the back. Man, that's rough.

[Armistead]

Oh man, sorry about the back. I know, I'm not very far behind you, as I took a 60ft drop out of a tree I was trimming, and the rope broke (found out from the supplier it was defective inner braid so it couldn't be seen) 30 years ago right before my 20th BD.

Only thing that saved my bacon, was landing on the brushpile under the tree. It was about 10ft high, but it did cause some damage to the lower back (the disks are getting thinner and thinner between L2 and L5), that over the years is getting worse. Causes numbness in the outter side of my left foot, and sometimes, my calf muscles will start twitching for no reason.

Yeah, I'm not versed enough in messing wth the sensors and all the intricacies of how light affects them.

Too bad SH4 didn't get the same treatment that the GWX modders did for SH3. A real shame as SH4 is a nicer enviornment to work with, and it could have made a great base for adding in a full blown SH3 type mod for it. And the plus, of having the US Navy side in there too. Kinda like IL2 did there with all the mods that were added to it.

Well, I hope all goes well with the back. Man, that's rough.

That was quite a fall. My isssues started around 28 from a bad car wreck, flipped my 1972 recently refurbished Dodge Charger at about 100mph's. I passed a car, but as I did a car in front came from the side road and blocked that lane, all I could do is take it off the road. That was 20 years ago and maybe 7 surgeries total, but still have to get my neck fused. Both my legs twitch badly, twitches don't hurt, just nerves misfiring, but the cramps drive you nuts..Bad thing about neck and back, issues worsen as you get older. I put off surgeries for years, only made things worse.

[Hylander_1314]

Oh man,............... nice car! I love old muscle cars! Pre-pollution control leaded high octane gas!

Funny thing, before my 68 Torino GT Fatback got stolen and totalled, I took it to a shop for emmissions testing, and because I kept the 429 Cobra Jet properly tuned, and the Holley 4bbl carb properly adjusted, the owner showed a comparison from a newer car only a year or 2 old, and with all the computer controlled junk it actually put out more pollutants than my old hotrod. And I ran a Richmond 6spd racing tranny, and 4:11 posi Ford 9 inch rear end, that was the one where the gears dropped out the front, once you backed off the axles.

He even made xerox copies and hung them in his shop, mostly for the rodders that liked running a rich mixture.


So what's under the hood? And the tranny, and gears in the rear end?

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread. Back on topic now.

[Armistead]

440 340 TorqueFlite, 4-Speed Manual , 4 barrel. Had a 9.34 Dana 60 rear end for it, can't remember what the existing was. I paid $1500 for it in 80,
put about 4 grand in it, rebuilt engine, ect...but it was 95% original. It was a bigger car, the SE having more luxury, low end OK, but with trans and rear end it rolled at the high end. Had 180 speedometer, but it rolled well beyond that.

I had several cars back then, my favorite was 1969 Oldsmobile W2, 442 with the W-30 force air performance package, stock about 370HP. That sucker smoked bottom end, during a storm a huge tree stuck fell center hood, total lost, cept selling parts piece meal......

Those Torinos were monsters with the 429 Cobra Jets..seems they had about 370 hp stock as well.

My Aunt drove a 70 Superbird, 426 Hemi when I was a kid. I hadn't seen her since I was 14, finally saw her two years ago....she still has it, still in fairly good shape and runs well.....She wouldn't give it to me....

Wish I still had both, geesh, what they sell for today. Could talk muscle cars all day....

[Caustic]

That was quite a fall. My isssues started around 28 from a bad car wreck, flipped my 1972 recently refurbished Dodge Charger at about 100mph's. I passed a car, but as I did a car in front came from the side road and blocked that lane, all I could do is take it off the road. That was 20 years ago and maybe 7 surgeries total, but still have to get my neck fused. Both my legs twitch badly, twitches don't hurt, just nerves misfiring, but the cramps drive you nuts..Bad thing about neck and back, issues worsen as you get older. I put off surgeries for years, only made things worse.
It sounds like you were quite the speed racer back in the day, and still living fast. I'm disappointed to see that young people have less interest in history and simulation games, your modding efforts are not a lost cause and it's a good way to utilize your time in some situations.

:salute: