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realSKY Environment 1.7

   (14 reviews)
Menrva

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About This File

realSKY Environment
January 13th, 2019 (1st Release)
by Menrva


>For Strike Fighters 2 games
This is my sky enhancement mod. It also combines the work of many other modders, in order to provide a realistic, better looking sky. Here below a quick summary of the changes:
-Tweaked sky colours, something in between Cellinsky's widesky and the stock SF2 colours.
-More realistic Night colours, sky and ambient are much darker.
-More atmospheric, reddish transition from Twilight to Night.
-New "dark blue" High Altitude colours (fly near space with a NF-104).
-Moon produces a yellowish light instead of the default purple.
-Sky is "wider" much like Cellinsky's widesky mod (background horizon clouds are bigger and more noticeable).
-Added beautiful cloud graphics made by Cellinsky and ShrikeHawk, tweaked for each weather type.
-Added a low number of stray clouds to Clear weather.
-Added noticeable clouds to Overcast weather and Inclement weather, "fixing" a known SF2 "bug".
-Combined various mods to produce a more interesting Rain Effect under Inclement weather.
-Added Stary's lens flare effects from the SARCASM 2 mod, in place of Cellinsky's widesky effects.
-Added Cloud Layer graphics by Stary, Fubar512 and Brain32.
-Reworked secondary atmospheric effects, such as contrails and wingtip vortexes.

In addition, the package includes alternative environment configuration files in the Alternative Weather folder; they enable different effects for the Inclement weather. You can choose between thunderstorm (default, adapt for most terrains), snowstorm (for cold, icy terrains) and sandstorm (for hot, desert terrains).
For those who wish not to change the effect globally, I highly suggest to try the included terrain-specific environment example provided for stock SF2 terrains; the default global effect is thunderstorm, while terrains with their own environment file either use sandstorm or snowstorm as appropriate. Use this as a basis to customize other terrains.

By setting the Effects to Unlimited, the game makes use of a DirectX 10 post processing effect; the stock game's post processing shader generates a pointless and horrible bloom effect which excessively blinds the player during twilight transitions.
By default, realSKY includes a reworked post processing shader (TWPOSTPROCESS.FX) which provides more contrast, more vignetting, minor color correction and a daytime-only bloom effect, so it's miles better than what the stock game offers. Alternative post processing tweaks are included in the Alternative Shaders folder; choose the one you wish to try (check the included screenshots for fast comparisons) and overwrite the default one in your mod's Flight folder.
If you don't care about the post processing effect, you may want to set the game's Effects to High in the Options menu.


>Credits (in no particular order):
-Cellinsky, for his fantastic widesky mod from which I borrowed some tweaks.
-Stary, for his Thunderstorm and Heavy Snowfall weather mods, and his SARCASM 2 beta mod from which I borrowed some effects.
-PanamaRed, for tweaks in regards to Clouds (especially the Broken weather ones).
-Fubar512 and Brain32, for their Cloud Layer Top bitmaps, which I have smoothed for a better looking effect.
-ShrikeHawk, for his CloudSkins mods, from which I took the spectacular cloud graphics.
-BearGryllis, for his Thunderstorm Pack With Enhanced Lightnings 2.0b package.
-Orsin, for his Improved Rain Effect and Heavy Rain 0.8 mods.
-luk1978, for his interesting WeatherEffect package.
-ArmedLightning, for his Special FX v2.2 mod for the GTR 2 game, from which I borrowed a lens flare effect.
-baffmeister, for the idea of recreating sandstorm weather effects.
-tiopilotos, for suggesting improvements on other subjects.
-Eagle114th, for his Improved Wingtip Vortex mod which I have reworked.
-JosefK, guuruu and Coupi, for their interest and support.

I included the original readme files from the mentioned mods, where available, to the end of giving proper credit to everyone involved directly or not.


>Disclaimer:
This is a freeware; yet it can be redistributed ONLY in other CombatACE mods/mod packages.
This mod may NOT in any way, shape or form be used in any payware additions.

What's New in Version 1.7

Released

Version 1.7 --- September 13th, 2022 (8th Release)

  • Added custom cloud shaders to alter their rendering for each weather type.
  • Reworked twilight colors, more purple-ish transition when night is closer.
  • Included reworked contrail effect made by guuruu.
  • Removed unnecessary lens flare textures for performance.
  • Like 26
  • Thanks 14

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Menrva
On 18/1/2019 at 10:35 PM, WH357 said:

Looking so neat! btw, Can this be used in WOE/SF1?

Unfortunately no, not out of the box. SF2 uses a different and bigger set of shaders. The environmentsystem.ini file in SF1/WOE is somewhat simpler in certain sections. It can be made to work with SF1, but it's up to you. I have no plans to make a SF1 version.

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Warad

Is there a chance to make the Lightning effects optional or is there a value in the INIs I can tweak or a file I can delete myself to disable them specifically? They're certainly nice to see but the way SF2 seems to handle the effect it makes you feel like you're flying on Jupiter with how many strikes are going on around you and its a little bit too much for my taste.

Other than that, the sky sure is pretty now.

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Menrva
31 minutes ago, Warad said:

Is there a chance to make the Lightning effects optional or is there a value in the INIs I can tweak or a file I can delete myself to disable them specifically? They're certainly nice to see but the way SF2 seems to handle the effect it makes you feel like you're flying on Jupiter with how many strikes are going on around you and its a little bit too much for my taste.

And I agree with you. I tried to tweak the rain effect to reduce the number of lightnings, because they are too many for my taste too. However, I failed to find a good solution; I could slow down the lightning strikes, but at the expense of the other effects, so rain was not showing properly anymore. I wanted to release this mod as is, instead of keeping it on my HD until it was perfect.

I will try to improve it for a next version. If you want to disable the lightnings, have a look at the RainEffect.ini file. It's all in there, together with other effects meant to enhance the stock rain effect. 

Edited by Menrva
  • Like 1

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Warad
4 hours ago, Menrva said:

And I agree with you. I tried to tweak the rain effect to reduce the number of lightnings, because they are too many for my taste too. However, I failed to find a good solution; I could slow down the lightning strikes, but at the expense of the other effects, so rain was not showing properly anymore. I wanted to release this mod as is, instead of keeping it on my HD until it was perfect.

I will try to improve it for a next version. If you want to disable the lightnings, have a look at the RainEffect.ini file. It's all in there, together with other effects meant to enhance the stock rain effect. 

Yeah I tried commenting them out of the raineffect.ini but it happened to have the side effect of also disabling the fog and heavier rain effects so I noticed that "expense" as well; definitely a bummer. I'm guessing they're tied with each other somewhere but I honestly don't have the first clue to try to work that out.

When I had all those effects disabled though I began to notice the cockpit drops effect acting a bit funky as well. It's fine when you're sitting still but once you start moving you notice they start flying by like bubbles which was also kinda weird for Central Europe/'Nam/whereever. They also don't mesh at all with any external camera views though that's easily ignored if you don't happen to use those at all. It's obviously another engine side effect that can't really be helped but fortunately in this case when I commented the drops effect out of the .INI it went away without lowering the quality of the rest of the storm effects so that at least is an easier fix for those who'd prefer it off if it happens to start bugging others as well.

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Falcon1364

Hi guys,

Thank you so much for this great mod. I installed this mod, but I have come across a filed view issue. My screen is darker around the game. It is more evident in the center. Could you please help me with this issue? Thanks a lot. 

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Menrva
On 4/11/2021 at 7:14 AM, Falcon1364 said:

I installed this mod, but I have come across a filed view issue. My screen is darker around the game. It is more evident in the center. Could you please help me with this issue?

That's the post processing shader. Vignetting is the effect you describe as an issue. If you don't like it, set Effects to High instead of Unlimited in the game's menu graphics options.

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Nazr

I quite like this mod but there is one big problem. The post processing effect can look quite nice but especially in planes like F-14A, the centre of the screen in the cockpit looks so absurdly bright with the vignetting that I literally cant see anything directly in front of me.

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Menrva
14 hours ago, Nazr said:

I quite like this mod but there is one big problem.

That's no big problem. The mod offers alternative post processing effects you can choose from, and if they all are an issue on your end, you can just disable the post-processing by putting Effects graphics settings to High instead of Unlimited in the game's options.

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