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FS2004 Color Banding and Background Bitmaps

Messages
228
Country
us-kentucky
Hello,

While working on bitmaps for the background and for gauges, I've noticed that, regardless of format, FS will convert them to 8 Bit on the fly. This is most annoying because it produces ugly color banding, especially at night. I have tried several dithering methods but nothing seems to produce a nice result at both times of day. It is especially bad at night where I get bands of greens where things should appear dark blue. See screenshots below. It looks pretty okay during the day but at night it is ugly as sin...

PS. Any way to do away with the dark artifacts around switches, selectors, and guards?

Any ideas on what I can do here?
 

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Messages
2,077
Country
us-ohio
FS9 doesn't support 24-bit images. Everything gets transferred to an 8-bit image. Which means if you make your image higher than 8-bit... it's going to dither.... horribly.
 

DragonflightDesign

Resource contributor
Messages
1,082
Country
northernireland
Download sd2gau38.zip from here or Avsim and read the section 'Understanding How FSX and P3D treat Bitmaps and Colours in Gauges'. The rest will be no use to you because it's all about programming in C.
 
Messages
228
Country
us-kentucky
I see and I understand... I still haven't quite gotten the ugly green color banding out of my night bitmaps but my day ones do look much nicer now.

I did have an idea... is it possible to have an XML gauge read different bitmaps according to time of day? I.e. if Time Of Day is not Day, use this bitmap, else use this bitmap?
 
Messages
258
Country
ireland
You could try this for each image you have...

Code:
<Element>
   <Position X="1" Y="1"/>
    <Select>
      <Value>(E:TIME OF DAY,enum) 1 == </Value>
        <Case Value="0"><Image Name="DUSK AND NIGHT IMAGE.bmp"/></Case>
        <Case Value="1"><Image Name="DAY IMAGE.bmp" /></Case>
    </Select>
</Element>

Works for FSX and P3D, not too sure what the E: might be in FS2004

Walter
 
Messages
205
Country
netherlandsantilles
I remember some suggestions in this thread help me somewhat with this issue:

When I'm back home I will post a few other hints I compiled from forums to tackle this annoying issue...really hope ASOBO/MS fixed this with the new sim, but nobody has it confirmed as yet.
 
Messages
205
Country
netherlandsantilles
You could try this for each image you have...

Code:
<Element>
   <Position X="1" Y="1"/>
    <Select>
      <Value>(E:TIME OF DAY,enum) 1 == </Value>
        <Case Value="0"><Image Name="DUSK AND NIGHT IMAGE.bmp"/></Case>
        <Case Value="1"><Image Name="DAY IMAGE.bmp" /></Case>
    </Select>
</Element>

Works for FSX and P3D, not too sure what the E: might be in FS2004

Walter

I use this trick as well but it is only good for gauges unless you turn all your background bitmaps into gauges..
 
Messages
258
Country
ireland
In P3D, and I am not sure at all of what FS2004 or FSX allow, you can use a file_1024_night=panel_night.bmp line in your panel.cfg file to get the sim to use a different bmp at night - never tried it though.
 
Last edited:
Messages
205
Country
netherlandsantilles
In P3D, and I am sure at all of what FS2004 or FSX allow, you can use a file_1024_night=panel_night.bmp line in your panel.cfg file to get the sim to use a different bmp at night - never tried it though.

You are right...I was referring to the banding issue.
 
Messages
205
Country
netherlandsantilles
these are other tips I have got on this forum:

1. Convert your 24 bit artwork to 256 colors.
2. Select the area with banding. Apply 50-75 percent motion blur at an angle 90-degrees to the banding.

------------------
One idea. In order to avoid 'banding' on a continuous shaded surface we (a/c developers) often add a grain or sandstone filter and then blur a bit. Worth a try perhaps ...
 
Messages
228
Country
us-kentucky
In P3D, and I am not sure at all of what FS2004 or FSX allow, you can use a file_1024_night=panel_night.bmp line in your panel.cfg file to get the sim to use a different bmp at night - never tried it though.

A quick test reveals that this does not seem to work in FS9, which is most unfortunate.

Code:
<Element>
   <Position X="1" Y="1"/>
    <Select>
      <Value>(E:TIME OF DAY,enum) 1 == </Value>
        <Case Value="0"><Image Name="DUSK AND NIGHT IMAGE.bmp"/></Case>
        <Case Value="1"><Image Name="DAY IMAGE.bmp" /></Case>
    </Select>
</Element>

This works! I have to specify my night lighting as a separate gauge, which allows it to display over the background.

The problem now is, by making my night lighting its own gauge, the click areas of the electrical system blank out sections of the night lighting when activated...
 
Last edited:

JB3DG

Resource contributor
Messages
1,325
Country
southafrica
Actually, FSX does support 32bit colors. The problem is actually caused by the conversion to sRGB. Normalize the RGB values to 0-1.0 and pow 2.2 on them and it will get rid of the banding although your colors may need re-working.
 
Messages
205
Country
netherlandsantilles
Actually, FSX does support 32bit colors. The problem is actually caused by the conversion to sRGB. Normalize the RGB values to 0-1.0 and pow 2.2 on them and it will get rid of the banding although your colors may need re-working.
Can you translate to mere humans like me? :rotfl: How do you acomplish that in photo editing tool (step by step). thnx
 

DragonflightDesign

Resource contributor
Messages
1,082
Country
northernireland
Jon: that is the first time I have ever seen anyone give an explanation of how 32-bit colours work in FSX. The information is in the gauges.h file but I've never been able to figure out how to make use of it.

Adino: it's a code-only job. Not necessarily C or C++; the OpenCV library (which is the one I'm looking at) can also be driven from Java, Python, etc., etc.. If you're familir with dotNet, that has built-in libraries to allow you to do it.

 
Last edited:

JB3DG

Resource contributor
Messages
1,325
Country
southafrica
Jon: that is the first time I have ever seen anyone give an explanation of how 32-bit colours work in FSX. The information is in the gauges.h file but I've never been able to figure out how to make use of it.

Adino: it's a code-only job. Not necessarily C or C++; the OpenCV library (which is the one I'm looking at) can also be driven from Java, Python, etc., etc.. If you're familir with dotNet, that has built-in libraries to allow you to do it.


I only figured it out when we started getting the same banding in our cockpit lighting in P3Dv4 which uses raw DirectX11 shader based rendering direct into D3D11 surfaces. A chat with the LM devs revealed that they had switched to sRGB image format and then the penny dropped.
 
Messages
2,077
Country
us-ohio
Ironies... I use Adobe, set up to use sRGB as the color space. Which means my images are defined with sRGB values by default. Explains why I don't see banding.
 

DragonflightDesign

Resource contributor
Messages
1,082
Country
northernireland
Could you screenshot your Color Settings please Ed? I'm using North American General Purpose 2 with an sRGB colorspace and I still get banding.
 
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