Albert was kidding. There's no 'g_bGlueCloudsToTerrain' switch... I think HA Ha ha ha ha ..

Shot taken in the morning of the 7th day of the campaign I keep forgetting the name of. I love this
time of the day. Beautiful colors everywhere, and they get better as the time advances to 08:00.

Look, the moon almost eclipses the sun:


Nice
Later on I noticed the two were even closer, but I didn't take a pic as I was busy slamming a Su-39.
The damn thing wanted 2x 120s to go down. Stubborn bogeys.


I've been playing with different nVidia drivers lately. What a hell...
Trying to find the most recent one that would support the Force MipMaps 3D setting, I came
across the 186.18 version, which lies to my face by saying that it supports the Force MipMaps
3D setting! Once in the sim, looking at the ground, it's shimmering galore. Haha.

Drivers past that version (186.18) officially drop support for the Force Mipmaps.
Looks like I'll have to stick with the older 181.22 until I find a way to force the mipmaps outside
of the display driver. With that driver version, which I used for like a lifetime, there's no such
thing as shimmering in FalconAF.


May you have a coffee, folks.



EDIT:

For those interested, at the link below can be found loads of old drivers no longer hosted on their
respective devs' websites. Bless the guy that had the idea. When a download category contains modified
files, it'll say (Modified). Otherwise assume that the files are unaltered copies of the originals.
Here's the link: http://downloads.guru3d.com/

Now have another coffee.

Hi.
I'm interested about that. Are those the BOM0001.GIF - BOM0022.GIF files located at \terrdata\misctex?
If so, those files are 256x256 sized in FalconAF and 64x64 in vanilla Falcon 4.0, IIRC. Do you need to resize the later for them to work in AF, or just copy them as they are?

Sorry for the OT, BTW.

Regards.

@Comet

Very interesting screenshot, but in RL apparent size of Moon and Sun seen from Earth is almost the same, in the screenshot the apparent size of the Moon looks like 2x of the Sun.

Or maybe you played the campaign set in thousands of years BC, when the Moon was closer to Earth

I can answer that.
I'm using 2048x2048 gif's at the moment. My guess is that AF will accept any-sized images so long
the files' name and format are respected.
Cheers.




Hehe. I recall there's a period of the year (in RL) in which the moon appears to be *much* bigger
than usual. Perhaps it was that period?
Good observation though.

The campaign is... *checking*... Balance of Power, in the Balkans (1998) theater. I'm replaying
the old campaigns, as I found them to be the most interesting. In the screenshot there's a group
of 4x F16 ramping up (you can spot their lights). I was in the second one from the right (or just
draw an imaginary X from corner to corner of the screen and the jet in the center is me - Hi mom! ).


OT:
Man you should see how pretty become those clouds when the clock is around 10 in the morning (there's
a few pics earlier in this thread -2/3 pages ago- if you want to take a look).
I just can't get enough of the candy. But it sometimes make low-alt bombing runs very challenging.
At times I have to flex, waiting for the wind to push the clouds away so I can get visual of the
target. Not very RL-like, admittedly. I ought to drop the clouds' density to reduce the chances that
one of them will sit right on target. But I'm still busy with testing different nVidia drivers.

So far the one that gives the absolute best visual quality for AF is the old 181.22. The screen is
just... perfekt. I imagine that those with too beefy a gfx card can't afford to run 181.22, lest
their hardware ain't even recognized. Thank goodnesss I don't have this problem, yet.

Thx mate.
Regards.

Falcon AF was a waste of money !!! period

I disagree and kindly point out that Falcon 4.0: Allied Force was THE product that brought a
much needed standardization in the jeopardy that had become the jungle of modifications to F4
over the years.
No more dance and no more what-do-I-need-to-download-in-order-to. You simply
installed it, patched to latest version, and you were good to go and play carefree whatever
mode you wished - Multiplayer and Campaign(!) not least of all.
The developers did focus more on getting the problems solved rather than giving you yet another
eye-candy that only served to steer your attention from the plethora of lurking bugs. Modern
games should have taught you something: they are all graphics and no polishment. Then you have
to wait for patches to no end and pray that in the meantime the publisher won't cease support,
leaving you with a buggy product forever.

Have a coffee

I agree with that, the only reason I entered the Falcon world was because of AF. It was: run the installer, click next, next, next, and play. Period. No mods, no patches (except the updates that were also next, next, next), no settings, no "why I just get a black screen?"... Just run and play, as it should be.

I want to show something.

I was testing cloud patterns vs. cloud distribution vs. performance. To get the cumuli clouds
I so much like I have the habit of altering the wheater of the campaign missions I fly in.
Perfornace wise the cumulus cloud is the heaviest type. It is heavy because of its translucency,
which has a cost for the GPU, and it is heavy because of the shadows cast on the ground, which
have a cost mostly for the CPU.
In the past I was used to activate inordinate amounts of cumuli clouds all over the theater.
It was pretty, for sure, but it made A-G missions a PITA. What with clouds likely obscuring my
targets? Flexing in wait for the wind to push the clouds away was rarely an option.
I kept refining my algorithm for clouds distribution, and have lately found a good one that
gives me satisfactory theater coverage without clustering the clouds in a predictable manner.
In no way it simulates real world clouds coverage, be clear, but for what the virtual pilot
gets to see during his flight the overall result looks plausible.

What's important is that the new clouds distribution allowed me to dramatically raise the terrain
quality without suffering a severe performance hit. I do this during Campaign. It's no TE with
limited action going on.

1) Using the following nVidia control panel overrides:

(Note: In short, everything but FSAA is maxed. Further raising the FSAA is a waste as
it won't improve the screen quality past what 8xQ already does. In my case, at least.)

2) Using the -g5 command line parameter:

(Note: Every new -g you ask for gives the Landscape and Object Detail sliders 6 more notches.
For example, at -g4 the sliders cap at: 1 + g(4) * 6 = 25)

3) Using the following Simulation and Graphics Setup:

(Note: Landscape Detail is set to 31. Object Detail is set to 14. With hindsight, raising Object
Detail was bad. Too high FPS loss for too little gain in far objects' visuals -buildings, mostly-.
Also notice the Disable Shadows in Simulation Setup. It ought to be Disable Clouds' Shadows, really.
With this On, in fact, sim objects still have their shadows. Only the clouds no longer shade
the ground below. The change in visual quality is negligible while the gain in FPS is huge.)

4) It is possible to obtain THIS hi-poly terrain along with lots of Cumuli. Notice how defined
the mountains' profile is. Also notice the reported FPS. Keep in mind that the overrides set in the
nVidia control panel were hitting the performance heavily. And yet...

(Note: Tiles are from the HiTilesAF addon. Active season is: Fall.
Sorry if the pics are somewhat dark. It was ~17:40 in the sim at the moment.)

It doesn't take a super computer to render this beauty, folks. Give it a try
P.S.= Just in case, the last 4 pics are taken from the standard Balkans theater, about 70 nm
East-South-East of the town Split. I hijacked a BARCAP to run tests.

Goodnight


[edited for grammar]