Comments on: Pie in the Sky: Future Rendering Tricks

By: Hotdog

Hotdog — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:20:40 +0000

It is great to hear that we will get all the candy some day - and understandably there is a tradeoff and balance to be achieved on immediate possibilities.

Dan's comment on dynamic shadows is a very good one, and may add loads of detail without (hopefully) too much developer inputs, especially in the 3d cockpits.

I had a look again last night at some screenshots of mine from v5.40, and many moons and changes have come since then!

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:28:16 +0000

What about "real" dynamic shadows that actually cast shadows onto itself, like a fuse casting its shadow onto a wing, engine etc. (or any other scenery element for that matter, like buildings)?

Regarding the next-gen texturing on runways you mention, I will re-voice my plea for yellow runway markings (as seen in Norway and possibly elsewhere) to finally be made available to authors in an extension to the apt dat spec...

Normal maps for polygon and line artwork would definitely be a welcomed feature!

By: Nils

Nils — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:25:04 +0000

To me it seems that the normal maps primarily affect specular highlight. They therefor work great on shiny polished fuselages, but I wonder if they can be used on ground or facades without making the whole x-plane world look totally plastic. The exception might be water and waves - it'd be interesting to see what it would look like with normal map distorted specular highlights on some rough sea.

Another use of PPL that I'd like to see you explore further is the volumous fog. Today, fog will fade any background towards the horizon colour, while in real life, bright objects like clouds will take on a copper tone while dark ones will fade to blue.