UPLOADED: Ankor's Shaders Update 22 October 2019!

[gecko]

Get it while it's hot! Ankor has put a ton of work into some really impressive updates to His shaders. There are several new graphical improvements, including improved cloud rendering, and live reflections inside the cockpit, meaning you will now see the real world, including parts of your own aircraft and cockpit, and scenery items outside, reflected in cockpit glass and other reflective parts.

Some of the biggest changes though are support for some really big new features for developers to incorporate into their aircraft. These include pilot controllable landing lights, and additional controls for the gunsight reticle. There is now a way to make any existing aircraft's cockpit clickable. As part of this feature, external scripts can be written to create new custom player commands which will now be recognized by CFS3 and enable much more realistic and detailed modeling of aircraft systems. The upcoming Spitfire Mk.II release will showcase what can be done with these new features and has been developed with a great deal of support by Ankor. It is therefor strongly recommended that you install this update before installing the Spitfire, once it is released, in order to take full advantage of these features.

Get the new update here once the admins see to it:
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...2_oct_2019.zip

Many thanks to Ankor for yet another incredible update to his already incredible work!

[Frosty]

Many thanks!!

I am curious to see how to implement all these new goodies!

[MajorMagee]

So, a fair number of our legacy aircraft used an additional semi-transparent object layered inside the cockpit glass to simulate reflections. These are static (rather than dynamic with lighting and head position changes) and are typically pretty obvious. In the past I've had to remove the reference to those textures in in order to activate dynamic reflectivity on the glass. How does AnKor's new code deal with that? Does it automatically recognize them and delete the legacy effect, or will there potentially be a clash between them? Where the extra texture represents a layer of dirt, oil, scratches, blood, etc. it probably still makes sense, so I would guess he left the static interior cockpit reflections intact.

[AnKor]

So, a fair number of our legacy aircraft used an additional semi-transparent object layered inside the cockpit glass to simulate reflections. ... I would guess he left the static interior cockpit reflections intact.

Correct, my code does NOT remove them.

For the new dynamic reflection to be visible an object must be quite reflective. It was originally implemented to prevent gauges with shiny glass from reflecting terrain that shouldn't be visible through the cockpit. The reflection is not 100% accurate, but good enough unless you are specifically looking for inconsistencies.
Unfortunately any aircrafts behind you are not reflected and this feature cannot be used for useful mirrors.

There's also a subtle but very useful side effect of these reflections. Even if a surface is not shiny it still reflects at certain angles (Fresnel effect). Previously it could cause bright outlines around objects deep inside the cockpit as they were reflecting the environment. Now it should look more natural (but again, not perfect) because reflections are based on the cockpit interior instead.

[mongoose]

@ MajorMagee

Are the suggested cfg settings the same as you have used before as I use your previous in my cfg file?

[FireStorm II]

Thanks again!
Copy #36

[MajorMagee]

@ MajorMagee

Are the suggested cfg settings the same as you have used before as I use your previous in my cfg file?

I don't know, as I was not part of putting the package together this time. I would assume that most things have remained as they were in the past. As always, AnKor has provided us with a huge amount of control over the game's display parameters so there are a lot of individual customizations possible.

[gecko]

Many thanks!!

I am curious to see how to implement all these new goodies!

Prepare to enter a very deep rabbit hole!