• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Prepar3D v2 support

Hi Arno,
The potential of P3D v2 got me interested in playing with effects again. As if you did not have enough to do already, it would be a big help if FXE would allow one to change the background color one way or another. The color of effects against the standard blue background is very different from what one sees in the sim at night for example. I think even just a switch to a pure gray color would help even for daytime, but for effects to be used at night I would prefer an option for pure black.

For a start, I want to play around with wake effects, including those used on float planes. As is, when viewed close up when the object is turning, I see a series of sharp edged tiles that correspond to the .bmp used in the effect. These transparencies fade out laterally but not longitudinally. I’ll bet this is the source for the sharp edge, and that I can get rid of it by using an edited bmp that also fades out longitudinally. Has anyone else played with this?
Thanks much,

Larry
 
Hi Larry,

There is a night render mode, which uses a dark background. But I'll add it to the wishlist to alter the colour like you can do in MCX.
 
Hi once again Arno!

A couple of issues and some info regarding FXE and P3Dv2.

It looks like if I select the new preferred FS option as P3D v2 and try to play an effect that has an associated sound file, I get an unhandled error message. If I use the FSX option, the effects including the sound do work properly. But more importantly, I did discover that I can offset effects in P3D v2. Must have been operator error before; now how did that happen? :)

For wakes at least, I did find that offsetting the emitter in the vertical (y) axis has no effect in FXE, but the effect is in fact offset in the sim. So this provides another easy solution to the hidden wake problem. The other option would be to offset the particles. If I did it right (always a question) the experiment did not work in the sim, but it does offset in FXE. I'm not sure what happens if the emitter is right at or below the surface but when the particles are offset up. The safer bet I think, seems to be offsetting the emitter, at least for wakes.

Speaking of offsets, I wonder how others keep track of the different coordinate systems used (including which way is plus and which way minus) and the associated units of measurement. I finally had to make a color coded table for myself. Between Sketchup, the aircraft.cfg, MCX, FSX camera locations, FSX effects, the panel.cfg, the MCX attachment point tool and landing light orientation I can get hopelessly confused with out a cheat sheet. :-)

The good thing is that all the reference frames are inertial --- that's the one thing they have in common. :)

Larry
 
Hi,

I have fixed the crash with the sound file now. So in the next development release that should be OK.
 
Hi Arno and all,

Here is yet another request for FXE; an automatic check to see that when entering values the second is greater than the first. I've done the opposite twice now! P3D v2 gives a cryptic error message on startup saying something like 2.0000043030003 is greater than 1.000205550505. And then of course I can't remember all I had done recently.

I've made two kinds of silly mistakes. One was not noticing the minus sign while tweaking an entry. So [-1.00, -2.00] will not work. Color rate can be confusing to me too. It's the fractional time that the particle is colored the start color, then the end color, but there are two ways to interpret this; if say you put 0.2 for the last value, it does not mean that the last twenty percent of the time the particle is colored the end color. It means that at the 20% time mark, the particle assumes the end color. So a color rate of [0.2, 0.1] will not work and P3D v2 (and perhaps FSX and v1?) give an error message. Fade In and Fade Out work the same way. An automatic check for these errors would be handy as they can be hard to spot quickly if there are lot's of emitters.

Speaking of color start, end and color rate, has anyone figured out how to make an effect slowly and completely fade out? This would avoid the stuttering effect that can be more or less obvious depending on the effect. One would think that simply setting the alpha value in the End Color to zero, as is done in many of the stock effects would work, but it seems not to. I did find what appears to be an explanation in the SDKs of FSX and P3D. Although it's rather hidden, under 'Color Start Red, Green, Blue, Alpha I find this:

The initial color of a particle. Use the color dialog, or input the values directly.
The alpha value here applies throughout. The alpha value in the XML file for Color End is ignored.​

Funny that a description of how the End Color works is found in the Start Color section. :) And tweaking this value in FXE seems to reflect the above; I don't notice any change.

This might be more complicated, but it would also be very handy to be able to toggle an opaque surface in the xy plane to simulate the ground or water surface. I'm experimenting with wake effects that rise and then fall, all the time being normal to the surface but it's currently hard to see what the effect will look like in the sim.

I'm interested in this now because in solving some of the problems with effects in P3D version 2 (like the floatplane wake effect being referenced to the model datum and wake effects on boats not showing) I finally decided to try to fix up the what to me are very outdated stock effects. Compared to the current standards some like the wake and spray effects look quite crude to my eye. Even the wonderful new Aerosoft Twin Otter Extended has these issues. If anyone else out there is interested this topic, I hope they might post or send me a pm.

Larry
 
Arno please, a wish for a fix!

There is something annoying with the "save as" function, because FXE does not behave as (nearly) all windows apps do.

Actually when in FXE you "save as" you create a new instance of the effect you are editing BUT this effect has still its current (former) name in memory.

Therefore, if after having saved it "as" you keep on tweaking again and again, looking at the rendition window trying to achieve the perfect effect you want, and then do a further normal "save", you save it under its former original name, not the one you gave when you just "saved as" a moment ago. And you overwrite and ruin the original effect you were starting from, without saving your tweaks into the new save name you gave.

Doing so many times in an afternoon makes a complete mess in you effects folder. Terrible!

I am aware of this bug for ages, but I can't help forgetting it and get caught again. Sometimes tens of trials and minutes of fiddling about trying to make an effect perfect, just to overwrite the previous one.

Could you make a correction for that in the next dev release? Yes? You rock! ;)
 
Hi,

Good point, that doesn't make sense. I'll check what is going on right away. Should probably be only a small bug that I can fix easily.
 
OK, I have fixed it. The new development release will be online tonight with the fix.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top