MSTS Clouds in OR

[advut]

I have. The difference in the configuration of the skydome still makes the MSTS environments look funny. Cloud that are supposed to be horizontal go vertical, etc. I gave up on MSTS environments for OR. Now, some of the optional skydomes for OR look great, but they tend to look good for specific times, cloudcovers, and weather types. The clouds also tend to "disappear" at night. Still a lot of work to be done by the OR Team on this one.

I agree completely.

I just use a no clouds skydome and fog tricks. I've also edited skyshader.fx to remove the ugly and unrealistic fog influence on the skydome texture. Coupling a nice sweetfx preset with monogame ORTS, it looks far better than default ORTS to me.

[wwhall]

I agree completely.

I just use a no clouds skydome and fog tricks. I've also edited skyshader.fx to remove the ugly and unrealistic fog influence on the skydome texture. Coupling a nice sweetfx preset with monogame ORTS, it looks far better than default ORTS to me.

What did you modify in the skyshader.fx file? I've never been particularly happy with how OR fog works under some sky conditions.

Thanks.

[advut]

What did you modify in the skyshader.fx file? I've never been particularly happy with how OR fog works under some sky conditions.

Thanks.

Just removed this line.

// Fogging
skyColor.rgb = lerp(skyColor.rgb, FogColor.rgb, saturate((1 - In.Normal.y) * Fog.x));

Doing this removes grey fog effect on sky. After this, when you use SHIFT + = or SHIFT + - to increase or decrease fog you will still get distant haze on scenery but the blue sky color won't be affected like before. I realize that with this line removed, you may not get horizon and sky to blend in actual foggy conditions but you can play with CTRL + = or CTRL + - increase/decrease overcast controls to minimize this unfortunate side effect.

[qballbandit]

Good evening Advut,
I don't see that line in my file. Is it possible the later Beta versions, such as X4061 don't utilize it for the reasons you mention? I use sweetfx in ms FlightSim with fantastic results. Where does one get "monogame" OR?

[advut]

Good evening Advut,
I don't see that line in my file. Is it possible the later Beta versions, such as X4061 don't utilize it for the reasons you mention? I use sweetfx in ms FlightSim with fantastic results. Where does one get "monogame" OR?

Hi, I just downloaded automatic unstable build X4068 of ORTS from James Ross's site to see this. It still has the line I mentioned in skyshader.fx. Just search for "fogging" in Wordpad, Notepad etc. It's quite towards the end.

I got monogame ORTS from the link at the Elvas Tower thread.

Thread at http://www.elvastower.com/forums/ind...-gb-of-memory/

Download is at http://www.interazioni-educative.it/Varie/OR4018_MG.zip

Unfortunately, I don't know of any more recent monogame build of ORTS beyond X4018.

[qballbandit]

Thank you!

[Shawmut]

I got monogame ORTS from the link at the Elvas Tower thread.

Thread at http://www.elvastower.com/forums/ind...-gb-of-memory/

Download is at http://www.interazioni-educative.it/Varie/OR4018_MG.zip

Unfortunately, I don't know of any more recent monogame build of ORTS beyond X4018.

As of today, 14 Feb. 2018, X4018 is still the latest MonoGame build. But its framerate advantages are so phenomenal, and its disadvantages - IMHO - so trivial, that even with this earlier build it is now the only version of OR that I run. Here is a link to a document of some screenshots I took on 3DTrains' UP Sherman Hill route coming into framerate-intensive Laramie, Wyoming. The shots were taken in X4062 (latest weekly build as of today) and the MonoGame version of X4018. Just pay attention to the FPS counter at the top left of each screen. I think you'll see what I mean

BTW, my rig is a 4-year-old core i5 @ 3.40 GHz (overclocked to 4.3) with 16 gigs of RAM and an Nvidia GTX1060 video card. I artificially cap the FPS in OR to 60, so 60's the max you'll see. It runs quite a bit higher than that (and also much hotter!) if I un-cap it. So this is now a fairly elderly rig, but with MonoGame I feel like I've just purchased the latest!


Cheers,


David

[qballbandit]

Thanks David! That has me putting this download at the top of my list.
My system is 7+ years old now, and I never see my frames past 27, but at times will be lower. I have not used the "cap" feature in OR to this date.

[advut]

Yes, it seems so. Although X4018 is quite good. Earlier monogame builds had texture flashing issues which appears to have been fixed in the X4018 build at least in my case. IMO, the only noteworthy feature of recent XNA versions that's missing in the MG X4018 is the improved path editor.

For long time I didn't like the bluish oversaturated appearance of XNA ORTS. Finally MG ORTS allowed me to use sweetfx which solved the problem.

It looks like Carlo Santucci who provided this MG build started discussion to move official ORTS to monogame. But, nothing progressive happened.

You should delete the part of your document which says Elvas Tower membership is required to download MG ORTS because it isn't true. I am not an ET member but can download because the actual file is hosted on a different site.

[qballbandit]

Hello again advut,
You've been quite helpful thus far, and I know I am asking a lot, but - would you mind sharing your sweetfx_settings? it would be great to have a working base from someone who has achieved a nice balance.
If not, I understand, and no hard feelings.

[conductorchris]

Looks like the monogame version has advanced to X4078

What I recall from the discussion is that the upcoming release of version 1.3 will be the last on the .net framework and everything going forward will be monogame. This change will (probably) mean the end of support for Windows 95 and they don't want to make that change without some notice that the upcoming version is the last one.

Christopher

[advut]

Hello again advut,
You've been quite helpful thus far, and I know I am asking a lot, but - would you mind sharing your sweetfx_settings? it would be great to have a working base from someone who has achieved a nice balance.
If not, I understand, and no hard feelings.

No problem. Things may look different because setups can vary but anyway. I use 115% brightness so it was made to work with that. My preset has very limited effects enabled.

I hope you know how to setup sweetfx for ORTS but if not here is a guide that helped me.( https://forum.msts.cz/subdom/forum/i...?threads/5434/ ). Just use Chrome to translate. The file linked here also has a sweetfx preset made by the OP which I used previously.


EDIT - I see new MG ORTS has been made. Thanks and great news.

[qballbandit]

Thanks very much!!!
I use sweetfx in MS Flightsim, so I am familiar with it.

I just tried MG ORTS. First, it tripled my frame rates, which was amazing! However, the loss of anti-aliasing is a show-stopper. I read through the Elvas thread for MG, and while much of it is over my head, I did see users reporting issues with loss of AA control. Not sure I saw a definitive resolution?
I am using an older ATI 5750 (only 1gig mem), and use the ATI Radeon Pro tool to adjust settings.
To be able to get past the AA issues would be a huge step forward for me as an OR user!

[advut]

In the "video" tab of options screen there is a checkbox "Enable multisampling", be sure you use that. Also, maybe enhance\override antialiasing through graphics driver. In Nvidia CP I use "Enhance the application setting" with 8x CSAA. With these settings I don't get aliasing problem.

[qballbandit]

I'll give that a shot this evening, and report back tomorrow. Thanks very much advut!