DX 11 Volumetric Clouds Demo
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  1. #1

    DX 11 Volumetric Clouds Demo

    So... This is absolutely work in progress full of glitches, incomplete and unoptimized, but I want to share it.

    https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvmtwF9vPtwVgbogLoFWr9zLLTr8xQ

    (about 8MB, unusually big because it includes volumetric cloud "texture")

    Unzip to CFS3 folder, run cfs3config, don't forget to set the display resolution. And maybe it will work.
    Requires at least Win7 SP1 with Platform Update, but should work better on Windows 10. And absolutely needs a powerful GPU.

    Cloud placement is based on CFS3 weather system so you can try different weathers. However it seems after a few mission restarts the code may glitch and not render all clouds, and you will need to restart the game. The drawback of CFS3 clouds and consequently my ones is that they don't move. Not sure if I can do anything about it.

    Anyway I'm not asking to look for bugs, there are too many of them, but I'm still curious to see your opinions
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails clouds-dawn.jpg  

  2. #2
    SOH-CM-2023 mongoose's Avatar
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    I can't launch the CFS3,cfg as it's asking for DirectX 8

    It's the dll which seems to be the issue.

    OS: Win10 Professional 64 bit
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    E Drive ITB Samsung HD103SJ 32M 7K OEM
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    OS: Win10 Professional 64 bit
    CPU: Intel i7 – 2600K @3.40GHz 3.70GHz
    RAM 16Gb DDD3 (2 X 8Gb)
    MB: Asus M4N68T-MV2
    Vid Cards: 2 x Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1 GB GDDR5 VGA/DL-DVI-I/SL-DVI-D/HDMI/Display Port PCI-Express Video Card 100315L
    C Drive: Crucial CT128M4SSD2 128 GB Internal Solid State Drive


    D Drive ITB Samsung HD103SJ 32M 7K OEM
    E Drive: 2 x Seagate BarracudaGreen 2TB Hds in RAID
    Power: PSU Seasonic X750 Gold 750W
    Monitor: 46” Samsung 630 LED LCD
    Last edited by mongoose; June 9th, 2019 at 15:45.

    Cato said "Carthaginem esse delendam"
    I say "Carthago iam diu deleta,sed enim Bellum Alium adhuc aedificandum est"

  3. #3
    SOH-CM-2023 mongoose's Avatar
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    I already had what this Dutch guy suggests. So I already have Direct Plav check marked!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOmyxrCTYKg

    Cato said "Carthaginem esse delendam"
    I say "Carthago iam diu deleta,sed enim Bellum Alium adhuc aedificandum est"

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by mongoose View Post
    I can't launch the CFS3,cfg as it's asking for DirectX 8

    It's the dll which seems to be the issue.
    Sometimes it happens with this dll for some reason, I can't figure out why yet. I just try to launch it again and and after a few tries it usually works.

    Actually, if config absolutely refuses to work you can try the dll from DX9 shaders with FakeDriverVersion=1 in the ini (which I think you already have, as it removes the need to run config on GPU driver update) to run cfs3config, set the resolution and then just swap to the dll and run the game.

    The config is only important to set the exact display resolution, for some reason using "default resolution" doesn't work in DX11.

    GTX 970 should be good enough, although it depends on resolution.

    Daiwilletti, thanks. Hope it works

  5. #5
    SOH-CM-2023 mongoose's Avatar
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    Well I've tried with 2 different ETO installs and CTD each time. As soon as I put back the original dll, no problem, but I assume I need the new one for the clouds.

    Cato said "Carthaginem esse delendam"
    I say "Carthago iam diu deleta,sed enim Bellum Alium adhuc aedificandum est"

  6. #6
    On my GTX980 system at 3440 x 1440 my FPS dropped from my normal 70-90 to 10-30 using these. The lowest FPS was when I was very close to the volumetric clouds. The FPS went back up once inside the cloud and everything went evenly grey.

    The clouds looked quite different than your example picture. They were quite psychedelic, with flickering bands of swirling, glowing highlights. I suspect this had something to do with the cloud image / alpha layer formats.

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  7. #7
    mongoose, then perhaps something in my DX11 code is not compatible with your installs. Anyway, you don't miss much, this demo is not very playable and doesn't worth trying to figure out why it crashes.


    MajorMagee,
    Yes, the FPS are the worst near the clouds and really sensitive to screen resolution. FullHD with GTX970 is playable, but drops to 20 near clouds. It is possible to optimize, but before that I need to get rid of flickering as you noticed.

    Clouds are rendered using ray tracing so there's no textures in the usual sense. This demo uses clouds placement and sizes provided by the game, but doesn't use cloud textures.
    The problem with ray tracing is that it has to take large steps to be able to cover the huge view distance. In this demo clouds are rendered up to 64km away, which BTW is a step up from the stock CFS3 which only had 32km max distance for clouds. The steps are increased for distant clouds, but even near the camera they are several meters.
    Now imagine the step is 10m and you have a small cloud puff 120m away, so it is perfectly aligned and rendered at 12 iteration. But for the next frame the aircraft moved 5m forward, now the "cloud" is 115m away and the ray tracing will just step over it it and will not render anything.
    There are solutions for this, similar to texture mipmaps: if taking 10m steps the smallest cloud puff should be made 10m as well, so it is never overshoot, but these solutions are difficult to implement.

    Swirls are exaggerated in this demo, didn't have time to make them better, but without them clouds generally look worse.

    Brightness is off as well. I'm trying to use HDR rendering for DX11 but I also didn't have time to balance the brightness of different parts of the scene.

    Anyway, DX11 is not a priority to me, I just like to get back to it occasionally to try something. Technically DX11 version is many times better piece of code than what I wrote for DX9, but even though DX9 version is held together by a mile of duct tape, it just works and looks nice. Good news is that I plan to add a couple of cool things to DX9 soon.

  8. #8
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    Thank you, Ankor! Have downloaded, when report back once I get a chance to install it. My take a day or two.

    D

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