[FS.E652 091]

Such a great work, thank you for that! :-D

[pschlik]

Erick,

Chris is interested in having a go at enhancing the built-in graphics assets, and your set of enhancements is a good starting point (don't know of anyone else who has directly shown interest in contributing assets to official builds). I am planning to put what I can into the Unstable version to get the ball rolling and gather some feedback on the potential changes (eg: we might need to desaturate the colors on that headlight flare so it works to replicate lights of any color). Don't worry if there's still more you want to do, this first test won't be final by any means. (Side note: Since smoke textures are an MSTS GLOBAL folder thing, I don't think that's feasible to include in OR builds.)

And for everyone else, consider this an open request for other assets:

• Snowflake.png We have permission to use an existing freeware Snowflake texture from Paul Peterson
• SignalLightGlow.png
• Starmap_N.png and Starmap_S.png Thanks Baldo for contributing a signal light glow and nice high res starmaps!

I haven't seen as many complaints about the MoonMap or Raindrop images, so those aren't a high priority but I'd be interested to know if anyone has made better versions of those too.

Remember, since these changes are planned to go to every OR user, they need to be relatively "vanilla" (like Erick pointed out, that means a skybox with no clouds baked in) and adaptable to all kinds of content, anything more exotic will have to remain as a mod. Also, no changes to the HUD.

[FS.E652 091]

Last summer I worked on the rework of the stardomes, using 8k images from the NASA website, the night resolution is phenomenal, I also updated the flare of the signal lights a bit, if there is interest in using them to improve the program, I can also send them.

Same thing as the skydomes, i have dozens of various types from sunny to cloudy in 4096x4096, maybe they can be useful for a futur rework of the enviroment criterials..

here is a render screen of the Stardome:

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[pschlik]

FS.E652 091, on 06 March 2024 - 08:32 AM, said:

Last summer I worked on the rework of the stardomes, using 8k images from the NASA website, the night resolution is phenomenal, I also updated the flare of the signal lights a bit, if there is interest in using them to improve the program, I can also send them.

Same thing as the skydomes, i have dozens of various types from sunny to cloudy in 4096x4096, maybe they can be useful for a futur rework of the enviroment criterials..

here is a render screen of the Stardome:

That looks nice, please do send it over. And I'm curious to see what you have tried for the signal lights; anything is better than my current plan of winging it.

And multiple skydomes is a good idea, I don't think it would be too difficult to allow an activity to define which skydome it uses. But that'll have to wait for later, as that begs some other questions. (Is it even a good idea to allow content to look for custom files in the OR 'Content' folder?)

[FS.E652 091]

I will send you a Private Message by now.! in relation to the use of skydomes, I think of managing them similar to that of Eurotruck Simulator 2. For each phase of the day, from dawn to dusk\night, the program preloads a certain typology. of skydome at random, the same thing then for the various types of dynamic weather conditions

[Genma Saotome]

pschlik, on 06 March 2024 - 10:10 AM, said:

I don't think it would be too difficult to allow an activity to define which skydome it uses.

I have long held the opinion that OR needs features that are activity specific (e.g., a subset of sprite text to display) and it seems perfectly reasonable to me that more options for a skydome is perfectly reasonable proposal(e.g., a pointer to file that may be in the OR content folder... or in a route's base directory).

IOW something that builds upon the features that MSTS put in the .env files and .trk files but not limited to route-wide solutions.

[FS.E652 091]

Genma Saotome, on 06 March 2024 - 11:17 AM, said:

I have long held the opinion that OR needs features that are activity specific (e.g., a subset of sprite text to display) and it seems perfectly reasonable to me that more options for a skydome is perfectly reasonable (e.g., a pointer to file that may be in the OR content folder... or in a route's base directory).

I think that with the advent of the webserver, it is also more feasible to be able to connect everything to a weather data server to have realistic conditions based on coordinates :-D

By my way this is an example of concept of skydomes.. keep in mind that i change it in base of the activity type and time..

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[ExRail]

ErickC, on 19 February 2024 - 11:08 PM, said:

Note the original texture inset at top left - MSFS uses a texture mapped from the side rather than the top, and it also has a special row of pixels which sets the lighting colour parameters for each sky texture. Note that, in MSFS, the sky is animated in that several different sky textures are used to correct for for time of day, latitude, season, and so on (no, you don't need a separate sky for each route and season if you design your simulation properly, ACES figured this out 20 years ago), hence the need for the texture to somehow indicate how the world should be lit with each sky texture. I also created a stratus layer based on the FS2004 stratus textures:

Those 140 32x32px FS2004 textures are indeed interesting, and I still have to make a C++ function that sample them and create a fullHD/4K graduated background out of them for my 2D(SFML) point and click adventure game. My FS2004 installation is running with modified versions of them that are a bit de-saturated.

ErickC, on 19 February 2024 - 11:08 PM, said:

The effect was quite satisfactory

I agree. Good stuff.

ErickC, on 19 February 2024 - 11:08 PM, said:

but there was a major problem: technically, these aren't redistributable since they are Microsoft property,

Flightsim.com has many of them, they are properly inspired by the originals, but seams to be redistributable
https://www.flightsi...nvironment-v20/
https://www.flightsi...2004-sky-light/
https://www.flightsi...w-sky-textures/

Searching the 1.5.1 source code for SkyDome1.png brings up MSTSSky.cs and sky.cs

I wrote the above some days ago and save it in a text file for later,
because today I focused on sky.cs and has created separate Skydome and cloud texture loads for each of the tree weather settings,
so i have more room to play than a single one for all domes and clouds - no reason for a blue skydome in rain and snow eg.



The main difference is these clouds are moving where my skydomes with these kind of clouds are static.




The clouds texture must be made like a seamless pattern if they goes to the edge or hard lines are visible.
Fog must be turn all the way down in rain and snow before the skydome and cloud texture becomes visible.

I've attached the program if anyone want to play with it, it takes some ctrl +- shift -+ to get it right,
since the fog cover it, or the cloud transparency is to little.
The included skydomes are just the default(256x256) with some small changes and the clouds texture are some
i spend 5 minutes on for prof of concept. The snowflake texture is also created in 2 minutes.

This version has windspeed externalized and it can be changed with windows RegEditor - search for ExWindSpeed in HKEY/current user
after first run. It also have the dark themed MapViewer.

Attached File(s)

•  Program.zip (40.09MB)
  Number of downloads: 86

[railguy]

FS.E652 091, on 06 March 2024 - 11:22 AM, said:

I think that with the advent of the webserver, it is also more feasible to be able to connect everything to a weather data server to have realistic conditions based on coordinates :-DBy my way this is an example of concept of skydomes.. keep in mind that i change it in base of the activity type and time..

That first screenshot has a fantastic sky. Also, not to derail the thread, but what route(s) is/are those and where might they be available? They look quite interesting. Thanks.

[Weter]

These are Baldo's WIP project - whole-Sicilian railroad network.
Hover Your mouse pointer on picture for a while - and You'll see it's title, containing details about a train and a place.
see more (open spoiler at the bottom of picture)