#4590930 - 02/05/22 01:44 PM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 7,993
Robert_Wiggins
BWOC Survivor!...So Far!!
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BWOC Survivor!...So Far!!
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Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 7,993
Lindsay, Ontario, Canada
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Hi Becker
Just curious why you don't want Java on your system. I would like to understand your thoughts.
Best Regards
Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper PSU: Ultra X3,1000-Watt MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme Mem: Corsair Vengeance (2x 8GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, Unbuffered CPU: Intel i7-4770K, OC to 4.427Ghz CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler Vid Card: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX 6GB OS and Games on separate: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD Monitor: Primary ASUS PG27AQ 4k; Secondary Samsung SyncMaster BX2450L Periphs: MS Sidewinder FFB2 Pro, TrackIR 4
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#4590951 - 02/05/22 06:13 PM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: Becker01]
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Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 7,993
Robert_Wiggins
BWOC Survivor!...So Far!!
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BWOC Survivor!...So Far!!
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Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 7,993
Lindsay, Ontario, Canada
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Hallo @Robert,
I have had big trouble / problems with Java a few years ago. So I decided not to work with Java any longer. And the result: In all the time till today there is no function, no program on my system for which I need Java. All works fine without it.
I hope you can understand my decision.
Greetings Thanks Becker!
Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper PSU: Ultra X3,1000-Watt MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme Mem: Corsair Vengeance (2x 8GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, Unbuffered CPU: Intel i7-4770K, OC to 4.427Ghz CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler Vid Card: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX 6GB OS and Games on separate: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD Monitor: Primary ASUS PG27AQ 4k; Secondary Samsung SyncMaster BX2450L Periphs: MS Sidewinder FFB2 Pro, TrackIR 4
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#4591038 - 02/07/22 05:11 PM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: May 2016
Posts: 1,523
BuckeyeBob
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Ohio, USA
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Herr Becker,
Check your PM's please.
“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”
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#4593474 - 03/06/22 03:32 AM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: May 2016
Posts: 1,523
BuckeyeBob
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I found a minor error in the BB Large Fluffy Clouds.xml file that makes it have very few large, fluffy clouds. Fortunately, the fix is very easy to do. First, navigate to the WOFF OCM 4.2 OBDWWI Over Flanders Fields/weather folder. Open up the Off_BB Large Fluffy Clouds.xml file with any text editor. In the third line, delete the "X" from "cloudcumulostratusX.xml" so it reads "cloudcumulostratus.xml" Save and close the file, then reload the mod. The cloud should now display correctly.
“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”
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#4599037 - 05/07/22 03:33 PM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: May 2016
Posts: 1,523
BuckeyeBob
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I've discovered something interesting about cloud flickering and why there seems to be more of it in the campaign. During development of the cloud mod, I naturally did most of my testing using free flight in QC because it is faster and has fewer variables to worry about, including having to worry about getting shot down. Therefore, the only plane in the sky during testing was my own, naturally. It turns out, apparently, that this was a mistake. Last night, while testing a cloud with flashing in the campaign that doesn't flash much in QC, I changed my usual testing procedures and added eight wingmen to my free flight. Suddenly, the cloud that I thought I had fixed was flashing again! Something about the presence of other aircraft, either friendly or not, seems to increase the risk of flashing (this may also explain why I have also noticed an increase in flashing when flak appears or when you fire your guns).
At this point, I am not sure exactly why this occurs. It could be a video memory issue, or something to do with the Dx9 shaders, etc. Those of you with beefy video cards might be able to help sort out this issue for me by flying a free flight mission in QC using the BB_Fog.xml cloud, both with and without wingmen, to see if you notice any increase in flashing. I would be very interested in your results, which I could then report back to Winder to see what he has to say about the subject.
For now, this means I will have to go through all my weather types, including the "good" ones, to see if they have more flashing when other aircraft are present. I may also have to remove, or substantially revise, several cloud types from the next version of the cloud mod. I am already considering removing BB_Cloud and Fog.xml and BB_Cloud and Fog Low.xml due to this persistent issue.
On another weather "front" I will be releasing updates to both versions of the OFFHistoricalWeather files in a few days or so. Both will work in any version of WOFF.
“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”
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#4599066 - 05/07/22 10:37 PM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 220
gecko
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Do you know which type of sprite was flashing? In CFS3, I have determined that extremely large sprites, such those used with cirrus clouds and using the "Lockroll" parameter have Z-order issues and just don't like to play nice. I have also determined that tracers in particular will cause them to flash.
In addition, these clouds also suffer from a different mode of flashing and popping that is related to where you are looking relative to the origin point of the cloud. When the origin point is far enough off screen, the sim decides to save resources by not displaying clouds you can't see. The problem is that some of these cloud sprites have a size of 20,000 meters or more, so even though you might be looking away from the cloud's center, a large part of it is still visible when the sim stops rendering it. This can be improved significantly. This is because CFS3 does not place cloud sprites centered on the origin point of the cloud. For vertical sprites, the origin point is at the middle of the bottom edge of the sprite if all offsets are set to 0. This is useful for setting the altitude of cloud bases consistently. For horizontal (lockroll) sprites the origin is in the center of their southern edge, again if 0 offset is used. This greatly increases the popping issue when viewing from certain directions, since the whole cloud is actually to the North of the cloud's origin. The first thing is to keep the X and Y offset values to a minimum, with 0 being preferable. The Z offset adjusts the sprite North (positive values) and South (negative values) of the origin. So to account for the fact that the sprite's southern edge is on the origin with 0 Z offset, you will need to set the Z offsets to a negative value of half the height value of the sprite to center it. So for example, if your MaxHeight value for the sprite is 10000, you will want the maxZOffset value to be -5000, with the X and Y offsets set to 0. This places the sprite exactly centered on the origin point of the cloud. I have found this to dramatically reduce this kind of popping, through it does not fully eliminate it. That is dependent upon the size of the sprite and how close you are to it. The larger the sprite and the closer you are to it, the more chance you have of encountering popping.
Last edited by gecko; 05/07/22 10:41 PM.
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#4599074 - 05/08/22 12:59 AM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: May 2016
Posts: 1,523
BuckeyeBob
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Ohio, USA
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Hi, gecko. I wondered where you may have gone! Thanks for explaining the role of the offset values again. I think I have a basic understanding of how they work, but obviously, I have more work to do. So far, I have not had a whole lot of luck setting the Z offset to a negative value that is half of the height of the cloud. You are absolutely correct that cloud flashing is associated with the size of the cloud sprite and how close you are to it. I have tried to deal with this by reducing cloudRadius and increasing the altitude of problem clouds, but without 100% success. I'm not sure, but I think the size of the .dds file may also play a role here. I have also experimented a bit with the "Lockroll" parameter. Do you know what the default setting for this is, i.e., the setting when you don't put it in the cloudfile? For the most part, I think I have fixed the flashing issues with most high-level clouds. It's the low-level clouds that are still giving me the most problems.
“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”
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#4599202 - 05/09/22 07:35 PM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: May 2016
Posts: 1,523
BuckeyeBob
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Ohio, USA
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Hi, gang! As you by no doubt already know by now, I am STILL trying to track down the source of cloud flashing in CFS3 clouds and the OCM. In the course of testing different clouds in the OCM, VonS noted that some clouds that flash on my computer do not seem to flash on his rig. Notably, I have an nVidia card, and he has an AMD. Could cloud flashing have something to do with the choice of video card? To find out, I thought I might conduct the following poll. In addition to voting, please feel free leave a brief comment describing your experiences with cloud flashing. Posting your cpu processor stats may also be helpful. Thank you.
EDIT: All of the poll questions should be changed to ask if the user is experiencing some cloud flashing, not if they have a lot of cloud flashing. While some clouds in the OCM still have some occasional problems with cloud flashing, most users should not see it very often. I am only trying to track down the relatively few cases of cloud popping and flashing which may still exist for some users.
Last edited by BuckeyeBob; 05/10/22 05:03 AM. Reason: poll questions should be revised
“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”
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#4599235 - 05/10/22 03:14 AM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 936
VonS
WWI Flight Sims on a Mac
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WWI Flight Sims on a Mac
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Thanks for the interesting pol BB -- have voted for option two - AMD with 3+GB and no flashing noted. Further details, clock/memory numbers at my end in stock form are 850 MHz / 1370 MHz. Have lightly overclocked to 1024 MHz / 1380 MHz; stock voltage and wattage numbers with no manipulation; works a treat (locked in via MSI Afterburner). Two AMD FirePro D700s at my end, by the way, cross-fired but I doubt that the WoFF series cares for cross-firing. I point my PE/UE 4.18 install to the cfs3.exe and only use one vid card for the retro install - BH&H2 on the other hand points directly to WoFF.exe with no oddities noticed in cross-fired mode. 2048 pipelines per vid. card at my end but I don't know if that detail matters any vis-à-vis cloud flashing or lack thereof. (Also important to note may be vid. DLL generation installed - I am using the venerable ver. 17.x.x generation AMD vid. drivers for BootCamp, which date to around 2017 or so. I suppose that I should eventually test out the ver. 20.x.x generation, or at least 19.x.x, but don't see much point at the moment.) In terms of CPU info. as suggested in the post containing the poll -- here's a bit of info., some of it taken from the relevant "EveryMac" stats. page: 3.5 GHz (TurboBoost to 3.9 GHz) Six Core 22-nm Xeon E5-1650v2 processor with a dedicated 256k of level 2 cache for each core and 12 MB of level 3 'Smart Cache.' 32 GB of 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM. (I am at times tempted to upgrade to the E5-2690v2, a 10-core processor sold by OtherWorldComputing, but top GHz then drops to 3.0, with TurboBoost at 3.5 or 3.6 GHz -- so I will likely stay with the trusty six-core since it it is fine for simming and hits the good GHz.) NOTE: ham-fisted overclocking of GPUs and imprecise tweaking of wattage/voltage throughput may result in occasional texture corruption in the WoFF series, so thread carefully if going that route. Mac BootCamp users are recommended to download the Windows ver. of "Mac Fans Control" and to set up more robust temp. controls than stock on Macs if interested in some GPU overclocking for good WoFFing. Cheers all and happy over/under clocking (and don't burn out a vid. card, or two), Von S
Last edited by VonS; 05/10/22 04:09 AM. Reason: Added (hopefully) relevant info.
~ For my various FM/AI/FPS/DM Mods. for First Eagles 2, WoFF, RoF & WoTR, and tips for FlightGear, recommended is to check over my CombatAce profile ( https://combatace.com/profile/86760-vons/) and to click on the "About Me" tab while there. ~
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#4599271 - 05/10/22 01:31 PM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: VonS]
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Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
kksnowbear
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(I am at times tempted to upgrade to the E5-2690v2, a 10-core processor sold by OtherWorldComputing, but top GHz then drops to 3.0, with TurboBoost at 3.5 or 3.6 GHz -- so I will likely stay with the trusty six-core since it it is fine for simming and hits the good GHz.) Not at all to derail this thread...but don't do it. (A 2690, that is) I have several models of Xeon CPUs in that range, notably the 2690v2 you mentioned. I don't work with Macs at all, but I'm inferring your system uses an X79 chipset (based on the Xeon CPUs you've mentioned). I've built a half-dozen of these over the past year or so, experimenting with Nvidia dual-card SLI setups. A better choice if you want to change CPUs is the Xeon e5 1680v2 - almost universally recognized as *the* best upgrade one can do on a X79 platform for the cost. It has the same boost freq as your 1650 (3.9) as well as the same number of PCIe 3.0 lanes (40) and so on, for all the other pertinent areas. I've easily managed a 4500Mhz overclock out of a 1680 chip with good cooling, putting it in the ballpark of an i7-9700k that was running at 5200 in benchmark tests - not too bad for an older setup (X79 is such a great platform...don't get me started ) The extra cores in a 2690 aren't going to matter a lot in (most) games where they aren't used anyway; with the 1680 you still get 2 more cores than the 1650 and (much more significantly, in my experience) you get the same increase in cache over the 1650 as the 2690 offers (12 > 25M). That last bit - the cache - makes a significant difference in performance, even where more cores aren't necessarily useful. In my experiments with this group of socket 2011 CPUs (2690, 1680, 4960x, 3820...) the 1680 performed about 6% better than the 2690 (which itself outperforms the others: 1680>2690>4960x>3820). Here's an Intel comparison tool with the 1650, 1690, and 2690 already loaded: >Intel ARK 2011 Compare< BTW a final thought: You mentioned OWC...those Xeon server CPUs can be had for a *fraction* of the price at OWC, regardless of which chip...OWC wants $299 for the 2690, but that's insane...those CPUs sell (same exact chip/condition and yes, sellers who do return/refund) every day for ~$50. The 1680s are a bit more than the 2690 elsewhere (because everyone knows they're a better choice) - but even then, they're way less than at OWC; about $90 vs 219. Sorry for the interruption, I'll be go back to (quietly) following the cloud popping discussion now
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#4599286 - 05/10/22 06:15 PM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: kksnowbear]
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Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 936
VonS
WWI Flight Sims on a Mac
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WWI Flight Sims on a Mac
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... Not at all to derail this thread...but don't do it. (A 2690, that is) ... Many thanks KK for that excellent and valuable info. - and no need to apologize for the post. In case I decide to upgrade the CPU, I will therefore go with the 8-core (the 1680) - I was under the mistaken impression that the 10-core is also as easily tweakable/overclockable as the 8-core, so your post came in very handy - there's also a 12-core variant (the 2697) but I have no use for that one and the GHz then drop below 3.0 . And thank you for the tip regarding OWC; will look elsewhere if I decide to swap CPUs. The chipset in that generation of Mac Pros (trash can shaped model) by the way is Intel C600 PCH - from what I've been able to find on the internet, it is similar to the X79 you've mentioned. At any rate I'm pleased with the computer - it's very stable - reminds me of the good days of beige box computing in the Mac world (the Power Mac line of the 1990s, with the 7500/8500/9500 and later 76xx/86xx/96xx series -- those used IBM processors - I think it was the 604 and 604e processors - anyway, good times on workstation-quality rigs). Cheers all and happy tweaking, Von S
~ For my various FM/AI/FPS/DM Mods. for First Eagles 2, WoFF, RoF & WoTR, and tips for FlightGear, recommended is to check over my CombatAce profile ( https://combatace.com/profile/86760-vons/) and to click on the "About Me" tab while there. ~
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#4599424 - 05/12/22 01:23 PM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: Sep 2020
Posts: 58
R.Talbot
Junior Member
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Junior Member
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Posts: 58
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Anecdotal note:
I went from a 5700XT to a 3080ti and went from constant flashing to zero flashing...
The game also looks completely different and i get constant 140 FPS with max everything.
Last edited by R.Talbot; 05/12/22 01:23 PM.
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#4601553 - 06/12/22 05:05 AM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: May 2016
Posts: 1,523
BuckeyeBob
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Very brief update: I will be releasing two updated versions of the Historical Weather mod in the next few days, so stand by for that. Although both are designed to work with BH&H2, version 1.5 is designed to work best with vanilla BH&H2, while version 2.1 is designed to work best with the Optional Cloud mod.
R. Talbot: Interesting! I am currently working on a version of the cloud mod that I hope at least won't flash when guns or flak are firing, but your solution sounds even better!
“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”
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#4601589 - 06/12/22 10:40 PM
Re: Optional Cloud Mod (with Historical Weather files)
[Re: BuckeyeBob]
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Joined: May 2016
Posts: 1,523
BuckeyeBob
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All right, all right, all right! (Matthew McConaughey voice) Version 1.5 and version 2.1 of my Historical Weather mod are now available at the following LINK Both are compatible with BH&H2, and for that matter, all previous versions of WOFF. Why two versions, you ask? To be honest, I'm not really sure myself. It just sort of happened that way. Technically, I guess you could say that version 1.5 is designed to work better with vanilla BH&H2, while version 2.1 works better for those of you who also use some version of my Optional Cloud Mod. However, you can use either version as you see fit. As far as the main differences between the two versions, I would say that version 2.1 is somewhat more historically accurate than 1.5. In 1.5, you are more likely to find yourself flying in rainy and cloudy conditions, while 2.1 has more "No Fly" days, where you used to be totally grounded. Of course, since OBD changed the weather system back in patch 1.26, you now have the option of either always flying, never flying, or choosing on a day-to-day basis whether to fly in rainy conditions, so No Fly days are less of a factor now. Personally, I prefer the old system of some days being complete washouts and other days being "iffier" weather-wise, but that is another discussion. I should point out that under the current system, you will be more likely to encounter heavy or medium rain on a No Fly day, so take that into account when choosing whether to fly or not on those days. There is a readme file for both versions that more fully explains the differences between them, so take a look at them if you have any questions. Good luck and happy flying! BB
“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”
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