About This File
By introducing additional camera lensflares, I created a very hard and brilliant tiny sun surrounded by a large glare. In optimizing the brightness of the sun and glare, I was pushed to deeply modify much of the Enviro file more than I thought was needed. One result has been the development of a different philosphy on aircraft lighting and its relation to terrain, sky, and cirrus clouds, appropriate to early Cold War strategic operations at high altitude. Another result has been a focus on improving terrain shading at low sun elevation angles.
Included are a number of Enviro files with varying levels of changes, two grafix tga files, and instructions to get started. This is an experimental mod and will be continually developed for my own use, but with some work can be adapted to any taste for any use by anyone. I don't know where to start here, as this goes far beyond just the sun effect. I've started a thread at the ThirdWire webboard with screenshots and will try to describe what I'm doing. If any are interested, it would be helpful if you poast your changes to your Enviro system and screenshots in the ThirdWire thread.
ThirdWire Siberian Sun thread ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=25572#25572
Several topics will be covered as listed below; all of them related to each other which requires a tricky balance among them to optimize the overall environmental effect.
Sky colours.
Intense sun and large sun glare.
Terrain shadowing at low sun elevation angles.
Sun glare effect on cirrus clouds and new contrails.
Ambient lighting, and direct sun lighting and sun reflections on aircraft.
Appearance of aircraft, objects, and exhaust/weapon effects against the terrain and blue sky.
Moonlight effects on all the above.
* INSTRUCTIONS *
The project assumes the latest SF1 version (currently, v.08.30.06) and the WoV/WoE equivalents.
Extract into a seperate folder for downloads. Then copy the 3 Enviro files and the two tga files into the sim Flight folder. To select an Enviro file to test with, rename it Environmentsystem. In the game grafix options menu, Camera Lens Flares must be turned ON for the Siberian sun to work, although in each Enviro file listed below at the location of the lensflare data, there are instructions on how to turn OFF the normal camera lensflares if desired while still using the new sun effect. The included Enviro files are...
Environmentsystem-0 --- Fully modded Siberian Sun Enviro file as developed currently, with full functionality of the stock Enviro file except the old sun.
Environmentsystem-1 --- the stock ThirdWire Enviro file with only the Siberian sun added, and the ThirdWire sun taken out. The hard intensity of the Siberian sun effect is rather washed out by the bright sky colours of the stock Enviro file, so...
Environmentsystem-2 --- the above Enviro-1 file with my current changes to the sunheight environment colour blocks (...[Day], [Day1], [Twighlight2], etc...). This offers darker sky colours so allows a relatively more intense sun effect.
In the fully changed Enviro-0, I use a new star tga file (ss-Star), and added changes to the stock [stars] data block. One may easily return to the stock Star tga file or the stock star Enviro data if desired. If you are now running a modded Enviro file, re-name it Environmentsystem-sav or otherwise BACK IT UP so you still have it.