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FSXA Propellers & Clouds
- Thread starter JPetroSS
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D
Deleted member 1281
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That happens with all portover aircraft and some AI.
Nothing you can do about it, except setting clear skies.
You'll also find that the prop discs of portovers cast a solid shadow.
Nothing you can do about it, except setting clear skies.
You'll also find that the prop discs of portovers cast a solid shadow.
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Indeed, it can happen with any FS9 plane you use in FSX. And not just props, glass also. In many cases, you can do something about it. Sometimes the texture folder will have an alternate FSX prop texture. If so, make sure you rename textures to use that prop. Other than that, you can alter the alpha channel of the prop texture. Search this site and the internet for instructions.
Bob
Bob
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Its a bit late for thiis thread, but I thought I'd also add my experience with aircraft I've built myself. The props are from a template I made when the first aircraft was being made (DA42 Twinstar) and they have transparency set in the model for the prop_slow and prop_blurred prop-disks, and the prop texture uses transparency too (alpha channel).
The odd thing about this is that my aircraft props are compiled using the FS9 SDK and are running in FS9. It seems to be clouds that are darker are more obvious in this effect and the brighter ones would tend to show through the prop better anyway, so the illusion works for that context.
The aircraft I notice it on the most are the Piper Tomahawks for the Liverpool Flying Club, which have alternate red & white high-visibility props. As you can see, the distant clouds are eclipsing the prop, yet in that cloudscape there are thinner patches that the prop shows on top of.
I'm very new to this; my first aircraft was the Twinstar and although I have made another 4 aircraft since, I never noticed the prop problem because I was testing for frame-rates at a remote airport in Libya with 150 parking spots and no weather set.
is the AA5, same prop, same problem, as it will be for the Rockwells (112/4/5) and the ones subsequent to the AA5 - the Jodel and then the Tomahawk. I will probably experiment when I have the time to see whether its my transparency in the model's prop, or the alpha, or the combination of the two that is the problem. I suspect that the problem will be that I have chosen to make the prop disk material (actually two square planes back-to-back, which might also cause the problem (!)) fairly transparent. Since I'm presently running a Twinstar as a flyable plane I will probably experiment on the props after I've refined the wings and fuselage (I'm thinking of a V2 of that model).
I noticed a short time later that the prop sits in front of the clouds until the texture is applied. I was using ctrl-W to switch between AI planes in Spot View and sometimes the textures take a moment to load, especially if you've switched from an AI plane at a heavy scenery airport when I assume the prop texture falls out of the cache. For a fraction of a second the square plane I use to map the texture to, was visible in a ghostly form, then the texture was applied and the prop became round and behind-the-clouds again. I assume from this that I can make all prop transparency built into the model and then apply a solid bitmap on there (eg black disk for a black prop, silver for silver etc). The alpha would then only be used to cut away the square corners of the plane object to give the illusion of a disk, and it wouldn't matter whether the corners were behind the clod since they're not supposed to be there at all anyhow. Of course that might just make the prop disappearance really obvious instead ... if you can see the clouds therough the prop them the alpha was the problem, if it is even more obvious, then the texture would be the problem (because the material untextured shows in front of the clouds as it should). I don't know if that's a good assumption, but from the few clues I have presently, that's the most likely hypothesis.
Assuming I'm right, for planes that don't behave (at least in FS9, which is my sim of choice) someone with experience of hex codes might be able to go into a model and alter the material properties to provide transparency (but then they'd not be able to legitimately re-distribute the model).
The odd thing about this is that my aircraft props are compiled using the FS9 SDK and are running in FS9. It seems to be clouds that are darker are more obvious in this effect and the brighter ones would tend to show through the prop better anyway, so the illusion works for that context.
The aircraft I notice it on the most are the Piper Tomahawks for the Liverpool Flying Club, which have alternate red & white high-visibility props. As you can see, the distant clouds are eclipsing the prop, yet in that cloudscape there are thinner patches that the prop shows on top of.
I'm very new to this; my first aircraft was the Twinstar and although I have made another 4 aircraft since, I never noticed the prop problem because I was testing for frame-rates at a remote airport in Libya with 150 parking spots and no weather set.
is the AA5, same prop, same problem, as it will be for the Rockwells (112/4/5) and the ones subsequent to the AA5 - the Jodel and then the Tomahawk. I will probably experiment when I have the time to see whether its my transparency in the model's prop, or the alpha, or the combination of the two that is the problem. I suspect that the problem will be that I have chosen to make the prop disk material (actually two square planes back-to-back, which might also cause the problem (!)) fairly transparent. Since I'm presently running a Twinstar as a flyable plane I will probably experiment on the props after I've refined the wings and fuselage (I'm thinking of a V2 of that model).I noticed a short time later that the prop sits in front of the clouds until the texture is applied. I was using ctrl-W to switch between AI planes in Spot View and sometimes the textures take a moment to load, especially if you've switched from an AI plane at a heavy scenery airport when I assume the prop texture falls out of the cache. For a fraction of a second the square plane I use to map the texture to, was visible in a ghostly form, then the texture was applied and the prop became round and behind-the-clouds again. I assume from this that I can make all prop transparency built into the model and then apply a solid bitmap on there (eg black disk for a black prop, silver for silver etc). The alpha would then only be used to cut away the square corners of the plane object to give the illusion of a disk, and it wouldn't matter whether the corners were behind the clod since they're not supposed to be there at all anyhow. Of course that might just make the prop disappearance really obvious instead ... if you can see the clouds therough the prop them the alpha was the problem, if it is even more obvious, then the texture would be the problem (because the material untextured shows in front of the clouds as it should). I don't know if that's a good assumption, but from the few clues I have presently, that's the most likely hypothesis.
Assuming I'm right, for planes that don't behave (at least in FS9, which is my sim of choice) someone with experience of hex codes might be able to go into a model and alter the material properties to provide transparency (but then they'd not be able to legitimately re-distribute the model).
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D
Deleted member 1281
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I actually wonder whether Blinn Opacity makes it into the sim or whether it's displayed only for Gmax puposes. Blinn Opacity may also be handled differently in FS9 and FSX.
Note that in the DC-3 ACES set prop0_blurred to 90% opacity and did the rest (ie practically everything) via alpha in the texture. And doesn't look bad either.
So I am following your tests with great interest.
Note that in the DC-3 ACES set prop0_blurred to 90% opacity and did the rest (ie practically everything) via alpha in the texture. And doesn't look bad either.
So I am following your tests with great interest.
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I managed to get a little more time with the sim and can report that the Tomahawk prop behaves normally when I'm flying the plane, so the earlier image of the Tommy with the dark clouds showing through the prop (when the same plane was flying as AI) seems to indicate different behaviour to this morning. I've not changed the model at all.
While looking for a Tommy flying as AI, I noticed that an AI Robin 400 (FPLoire) works the opposite way, with the prop disk removing the clouds behind it, rather than the prop hiding behind the clouds.
My Tommy flying as AI without the striped prop *seems* to have a vanishing prop but it is harder to tell in cases where the clouds and prop are closely alike in colouring. The prop arc shows against the haze layer just fine, as it does with the sky background, but against the cloud there's still no prop arc, when you'd think that the contrast would show it up even more.
Since the same thing happens with Henry Tomkiewicz's Cessnas, TFS Dash 8s and Andras Neuman's Pipers, I'm not too worried. Its odd though that the effect applies to a model flying as AI but not when being flown as a UI plane. That is strange to me. Perhaps there's something I need to be aware of about when flying as UI - something subtle about the way FS "thinks" of a UI model and renders it?
Does FS by any chance think of AI planes as "animated scenery"?
You know, I think that perhaps FS sees a prop without transparency in its material as "solid" and can't make the jump to "know" that the texture has alpha and that is what gives transparency instead. I wouldn't mind betting that the FPLoire Robin has a solid material and uses only alpha to determine transparency, and that there may be some "sweet spot" in material transparency where clouds render behind the prop correctly. Perhaps the 90% opacity is that sweet spot. I might mod the Twinstar to try that on one of the props and not the other.
While looking for a Tommy flying as AI, I noticed that an AI Robin 400 (FPLoire) works the opposite way, with the prop disk removing the clouds behind it, rather than the prop hiding behind the clouds.
My Tommy flying as AI without the striped prop *seems* to have a vanishing prop but it is harder to tell in cases where the clouds and prop are closely alike in colouring. The prop arc shows against the haze layer just fine, as it does with the sky background, but against the cloud there's still no prop arc, when you'd think that the contrast would show it up even more.
Since the same thing happens with Henry Tomkiewicz's Cessnas, TFS Dash 8s and Andras Neuman's Pipers, I'm not too worried. Its odd though that the effect applies to a model flying as AI but not when being flown as a UI plane. That is strange to me. Perhaps there's something I need to be aware of about when flying as UI - something subtle about the way FS "thinks" of a UI model and renders it?
Does FS by any chance think of AI planes as "animated scenery"?
You know, I think that perhaps FS sees a prop without transparency in its material as "solid" and can't make the jump to "know" that the texture has alpha and that is what gives transparency instead. I wouldn't mind betting that the FPLoire Robin has a solid material and uses only alpha to determine transparency, and that there may be some "sweet spot" in material transparency where clouds render behind the prop correctly. Perhaps the 90% opacity is that sweet spot. I might mod the Twinstar to try that on one of the props and not the other.
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Okay, after a brief experiment on changing the prop for the Tomahawk (there were more flying around in the NW of England than there were Twinstars), the 90% prop opacity with moderate alpha seemed to give a similar result to a 10% opacity prop and a severe alpha (RGB 39/39/39). When flying over clouds, the prop shows against the bright wing but not against the slightly less bright clouds, however it is obvious against ground haze and distant horizon haze. What it does with the horizon haze is darken it enough that it has the visual effect of clearing the haze.
The distant clouds do seem to be "behind" the prop, but because it is clearing a disk of haze the clouds seem more prominent.
This is really "doing my head in"!
The distant clouds do seem to be "behind" the prop, but because it is clearing a disk of haze the clouds seem more prominent.
This is really "doing my head in"!
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Had a few more thoughts on this. It seems obvious to me that FS can't guess what texture will be mapped onto an object and makes no assumptions about whether it will be transparent, so if you make an opaque prop material that characteristic is "burned" into the model and the sim engine can definitively say "this will be less than fully opaque" and will render something behind it in some muted way simply because the model is telling the sim "this is how this part really is - a little bit see-through". Make a 100% opaque material transparent using alpha, and the drawing of the object occludes things behind it that the alpha then allows us to see, so a prop done solely using alpha would remove clouds (such as the FranceVFR Robin I saw yesterday) because the sim thinks the prop is an opaque thing. Moving on from that, it would follow (from what I've been seeing, at least) that making the material steadily less opaque allows the background to show even more to the point where the graphics engine begins to give clouds too much priority. This does kind of lead me to the conclusion yesterday, that there is probably only so far you can go with opacity before you let the clouds show through, and after that any shortfall in opacity needs to be made up with alpha. Too much opacity and the clouds vanish, too little and they take over - maybe a drawing order thing - I'm a newbie, so that's a guess?
And Manfred? I am sure Blinn opacity makes it into FS9 at least. I flew around a demo Twinstar that I'm using to make refinements to the AI model and copied over a new model with the opacity changed from 10% to 90%. Refreshed the model in-sim and the props went almost completely black and had to be knocked back into shape using the alpha channel as I mentioned earlier.
I think that my 10% may be a little too transparent, and 100% hides the clouds, so 90% or perhaps a little less seems to be a good guideline (well, if ACES did it and they know the sim inside-out, who am I to argue?
).
Still not sure why the same model flying as AI should be treated differently to the one being flown by me.
And Manfred? I am sure Blinn opacity makes it into FS9 at least. I flew around a demo Twinstar that I'm using to make refinements to the AI model and copied over a new model with the opacity changed from 10% to 90%. Refreshed the model in-sim and the props went almost completely black and had to be knocked back into shape using the alpha channel as I mentioned earlier.
I think that my 10% may be a little too transparent, and 100% hides the clouds, so 90% or perhaps a little less seems to be a good guideline (well, if ACES did it and they know the sim inside-out, who am I to argue?
).Still not sure why the same model flying as AI should be treated differently to the one being flown by me.
D
Deleted member 1281
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That sentence doesn't make sense to me because "opaque" = "fully opaque" -- I suppose you mean a "not-100-percent opaque material" or a "semi-transparent" material?
Otherwise I can follow and find your findings are plausible - you have to set Blinn opacity to less than 100 and perhaps more than 50 ? and do the rest via the alpha.
As for AI vs non-AI I have come to accept that's just the way it is. But that need not be the last word on it and I am sure isn't.
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You're right, it doesn't make sense. Transparent lets light pass without distortion and translucent does the same generally with distortion (eg glass in bathroom windows), and after that it is a question of what degree of transparency or translucency we're thinking of... and after translucent, we get opaque!
I think a higher value for Blinn seems to get the cloud behaviour right and then, agreed, the alpha can push the transparency down towards the fully transparent end of the range. I've given up trying to make it perfect, since AI seems to exist in a different continuum to the UI plane(!).