Sarcasm 2.0 Beta By Stary

[Blackburn32 110]

This is outstanding work, your push for advances in the game never ceases to amaze me! 

[+Stary 2,426]

this one I think it does a bit of justice to the terrain features sizes and distances/height perception thanks to bit more "real" aerial perspective coming with the new bluish fog, here's the overcast sky lighting and fog:

 

 

(the plane is RAZBAM Banshee, the terrain is another test Korea set)

 

 

one more note, currently due to the way the fog distance is calculated and used in shaders the clouds don't seem to be visible in overcast and inclement (been such way since SF2 came out) will search for fix for that possibly

[+Coupi 4,279]

Oh! I like these environmental effects...

[+Heberth 159]

Stary, you ROCK!

[+Menrva 3,998]

 

And again, this isn't new "widesky" or "better widesky", or any similar "full realism of looks" mod, it is and allways been Slightly Artistic Representation (of) Clouds And Sky Mod

 

However sky colours seem to be both pretty realistic and slightly artistic as it was always meant to be, so all in all it's a very good compromise.  The new effects are a huge step forward, unfortunately we have the same bugs introduced by TW's shaders (especially clouds and fog distance).  Maybe mue could have a look at them.  Oh, and the new korea tileset seems to be more appropriate now, great job!

[+Stary 2,426]

the shaders are a good thing in general when it comes to contemporary graphics but only if those are well written with comments what does what and cough fully cough utilise the graphics libraries. The Thirdwire ones do not

 

that said it's as allways compromise here and there

[+Menrva 3,998]

Exactly Stary, if only we had comments written inside these shaders...

 

Speaking of which, have you ever managed to get those locked shaders in the IcelandNA terrain?  Thing is I've learned C++, I'm no expert but, if we could take a look at them I could try to fix the reflective water in the old engine based terrains.  I'm aware of the bugs that happen if you try the SF2NA water shaders on the old engine terrains, I've once tried to make an old engine terrain use the IcelandNA .cat so that it would use such shaders, what a mess it was.

[+Stary 2,426]

Blaze,

here are NA shaders I got from Gerwin somewhere in early 2012 before TK locked them for as Gerwin said really, really good. Gerwin had quite a trouble to extract them with his own made custom CAT extractor. Hope you'll find them useful.

 

Shaders FlightData.zip

yes reflective water AND simple terrain texture bumbmap/emboss would do wonders to the looks of game. I dream of being programmer but not going to happen, so I'll leave this to folks like you Blaze

 

ohhh, if we could get cockpits self-shadowing too -but that is much harder given the engine uses stencil shadows projection and not shadowmaps, anyway have fun and will keep my fingers crossed

cheers
Stary

[+Stary 2,426]

small update, install ontop of Beta 2 in your flight folder:

 

SARCASM 2 Beta 2 update 1.7z

 

now broken weather horizon clouds have slight bluish tint to them added at the bottom making the billboard (particle) clouds look less fake when fading in into the scene at the distance, some tweaks to the clouds graphics in general, small fixes to clouds sizes in clear etc

[+Menrva 3,998]

Thanks for the shaders and the SARCASM update, Stary.  I'll see what I can do, no promises since I have a love-hate relationship with C++, but thankfully my passion for SF2 might help.

[+Menrva 3,998]

Bad news about these shaders, Stary.  I've just noticed that the ones you gave me are the ones that are being used by old engine terrains.  According to the ICELANDNA_DATA.ini file, these are the three shaders used by the terrain:

 

iceland_WaterEffect.fx

iceland_TerrainEffect.fx

iceland_Waves.fx

 

As far as I can remember these shaders should be inside the IcelandNA.cat, while the general common ones are from the FlightData.cat.  I think such three shaders have always been locked since SF2NA was released, then TK decided to lock the old ones as well

[+Stary 2,426]

I have'em too, but thought you wanted the old engine ones

[+Menrva 3,998]

I have'em too, but thought you wanted the old engine ones

 

I already had some of the old engine, they were posted by you at another thread a lot of time ago, in fact these shaders I have are dated 2010.  The ones you attached are more recent so they should be better for use.  I also need those three shaders too, it's great news that you have them (after all I should have guessed that you had them, IIRC you managed to make some LOD terrains).

Edited August 19, 2015 by blaze95

[+Menrva 3,998]

 

one more note, currently due to the way the fog distance is calculated and used in shaders the clouds don't seem to be visible in overcast and inclement (been such way since SF2 came out) will search for fix for that possibly

 

IIRC in my modded WideSky EnvironmentSystem.ini clouds do appear in both overcast and inclement, I guess it has something to do with transparency values in both the .ini and in the alpha channel of the .tga files

 

EDIT: I'll check it and post any results here, I'm pretty sure it's fixable.  BTW I should have added that in my modded install clouds do appear in such weather conditions, but they are almost transparent, which I guess it's something that happens by default.

Edited August 19, 2015 by blaze95

[+Stary 2,426]

yes exactly that is one of the culprits

 

as for the NA shaders be patient while i'll look for them

[+Stary 2,426]

good thing is I keep files at hand, here are the IcelandNA shaders I found:

 

IcelandNA shaders.zip

 

hope this would be of any use for you Blaze

[+Menrva 3,998]

Sure thing Stary, it seems these are the files I need, thank you very much, I hope I can conclude something.

 

BTW, below here two screenshots I've just made, with my modded SF2.  I'm using a modded EnvironmentSystem.ini and I've borrowed the new overcast layer texture form your SARCASM, as a test.  Anyway, as you can see there are clouds, but for some reason they are showed right below the overcast layer (locked height as it happened in one of the patches I guess).

 

 

[+Stary 2,426]

yes that is locked somewhere I just lost the clouds billboards in my tests at one point as the earlier Sarcasm (or is it SARCASM? dunno) do have clouds no matter how faint in the overcast and inclement, might be indeed the targa aplha channel vs fog calculations issue

[KJakker 875]

Just a notice to everyone, if you are using both SARCASM 2.0 beta and Mue's Distance Fix you need to make sure that the "SkyDistance=" entry under [sky] in your EnvironmentSystems.INI matched the FarClipDistance= under [backgroundSceneClip] in your FlightEngine.INI or you can have Sky appearing in front of the terrain. 

[KJakker 875]

Stary, you said earlier in the thread that clouds in SF2 do not cast shadows. If so then what is causing a shadow like effect to be cast onto the terrain in the three images below?

 

 

 

[+Menrva 3,998]

KJakker, you're probably confusing cast shadows with the bump map effect, that is caused by terrain shaders and bump map textures, it has nothing to do with shadows.

[Erab1000 0]

How do I install this?

[Spudknocker 241]

WOW!  Sarcasm 2 is amazing Stary!  I hope we all get to enjoy more of your great work!

[+Stary 2,426]

glad to hear that

 

I think I'll leave it at this version now and focuse on other aspects of SF2 when I get back to it somewhere next year

[+Coupi 4,279]

glad to hear that

 

I think I'll leave it at this version now and focuse on other aspects of SF2 when I get back to it somewhere next year

 

Hello Stary,

 

Happy to read You!!!

 

Best regards,

 

Coupi.