Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:45 am
I think it behooves me to defer to Beau regarding the questions above. For reference, I have found the problems noted below both in stock FSX wake effects as well as my custom ones.
Thanks much for this Beau; in the interest of economy I did not make it clear that it was the central portion of my wake effect that has been the main or most obvious difficulty. The bow and quarter wake portions in v2.4 seem to reasonably match the same effect in FSX, although in P3D v2.3 and I think earlier these extruded waves looked significantly more opaque in P3D than in FSX. The central wake is quite opaque anyway so it's harder to judge.
It's much harder to make comparisons with the bow and quarter wake portions of the effect because of their nature so I've focused on the central or stern wake that uses the fx_wake_1.bmp texture. Regarding the central wake effect, there are some screenshots in the following link with titles that I hope are explanatory. http://1drv.ms/1nMLoRP
In trying to eliminate extraneous detail and be able to make accurate comparisons I made a very simple test effect; it is simply a square tile. The size can be set to some known object; in this case I set it to the approximate beam of the boat because that was easy to do and I could take measurements off of a screenshot. In FSX, when the scale rate of this test effect is set to zero a linear strip is created. Not so in P3D v2.4 as I hope one of the clips illustrates. It's also possible to see exactly what happens as the scale rates are varied as well as the effect of fade in and fade out settings. I've copied the test effect below. I also added the test .fx file and the custom wake effect file used in the screenshots of the WSF ferry to the link above should that be useful.
I've wondered if this issue can be duplicated on another machine or if it's perhaps related to the video card. Mine is a Radon R9 270X
Thanks for looking at this issue Beau!
[Library Effect]
Lifetime=5
Version=2.00
Radius=-1
Priority=0
//p3d scale test
[Properties]
[Emitter.0]
Lifetime=0.00, 0.00
Delay=0.00, 0.00
Bounce=0.00
Rate=0.05, 0.05
X Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Drag=0.00, 0.00
X Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
X Rotation=0.00, 0.00
Y Rotation=0.00, 0.00
Z Rotation=0.00, 0.00
X Offset=0.00, 0.00
Y Offset=0.30, 0.30
Z Offset=0.00, 0.00
Pitch=0.00, 0.00
Bank=0.00, 0.00
Heading=0.00, 0.00
[Particle.0]
Lifetime=100.00, 100.00
Type=21
X Scale=30.00, 30.00
Y Scale=30.00, 30.00
Z Scale=0.00, 0.00
X Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Y Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Z Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Drag=0.00, 0.00
Color Rate=0.11, 0.11
X Offset=0.00, 0.00
Y Offset=0.00, 0.50
Z Offset=0.00, 0.00
Fade In=0.00, 0.00
Fade Out=0.99, 0.99
Ground Normal=1
Shade=1
Face=1, 0, 1
[ParticleAttributes.0]
Blend Mode=1
Texture=fx_mul_1.bmp
Bounce=0.00
Color Start=240, 240, 245, 255
Color End=245, 245, 245, 0
Jitter Distance=0.02
Jitter Time=1.00
uv1=0.00, 0.00
uv2=1.00, 1.00
X Scale Goal=300.00
Y Scale Goal=300.00
Z Scale Goal=0.00
Extrude Length=60.00 //30.00
Extrude Pitch Max=90.00
Extrude Heading Max=10.00
Thanks much for this Beau; in the interest of economy I did not make it clear that it was the central portion of my wake effect that has been the main or most obvious difficulty. The bow and quarter wake portions in v2.4 seem to reasonably match the same effect in FSX, although in P3D v2.3 and I think earlier these extruded waves looked significantly more opaque in P3D than in FSX. The central wake is quite opaque anyway so it's harder to judge.
It's much harder to make comparisons with the bow and quarter wake portions of the effect because of their nature so I've focused on the central or stern wake that uses the fx_wake_1.bmp texture. Regarding the central wake effect, there are some screenshots in the following link with titles that I hope are explanatory. http://1drv.ms/1nMLoRP
In trying to eliminate extraneous detail and be able to make accurate comparisons I made a very simple test effect; it is simply a square tile. The size can be set to some known object; in this case I set it to the approximate beam of the boat because that was easy to do and I could take measurements off of a screenshot. In FSX, when the scale rate of this test effect is set to zero a linear strip is created. Not so in P3D v2.4 as I hope one of the clips illustrates. It's also possible to see exactly what happens as the scale rates are varied as well as the effect of fade in and fade out settings. I've copied the test effect below. I also added the test .fx file and the custom wake effect file used in the screenshots of the WSF ferry to the link above should that be useful.
I've wondered if this issue can be duplicated on another machine or if it's perhaps related to the video card. Mine is a Radon R9 270X
Thanks for looking at this issue Beau!
[Library Effect]
Lifetime=5
Version=2.00
Radius=-1
Priority=0
//p3d scale test
[Properties]
[Emitter.0]
Lifetime=0.00, 0.00
Delay=0.00, 0.00
Bounce=0.00
Rate=0.05, 0.05
X Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Drag=0.00, 0.00
X Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
X Rotation=0.00, 0.00
Y Rotation=0.00, 0.00
Z Rotation=0.00, 0.00
X Offset=0.00, 0.00
Y Offset=0.30, 0.30
Z Offset=0.00, 0.00
Pitch=0.00, 0.00
Bank=0.00, 0.00
Heading=0.00, 0.00
[Particle.0]
Lifetime=100.00, 100.00
Type=21
X Scale=30.00, 30.00
Y Scale=30.00, 30.00
Z Scale=0.00, 0.00
X Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Y Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Z Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Drag=0.00, 0.00
Color Rate=0.11, 0.11
X Offset=0.00, 0.00
Y Offset=0.00, 0.50
Z Offset=0.00, 0.00
Fade In=0.00, 0.00
Fade Out=0.99, 0.99
Ground Normal=1
Shade=1
Face=1, 0, 1
[ParticleAttributes.0]
Blend Mode=1
Texture=fx_mul_1.bmp
Bounce=0.00
Color Start=240, 240, 245, 255
Color End=245, 245, 245, 0
Jitter Distance=0.02
Jitter Time=1.00
uv1=0.00, 0.00
uv2=1.00, 1.00
X Scale Goal=300.00
Y Scale Goal=300.00
Z Scale Goal=0.00
Extrude Length=60.00 //30.00
Extrude Pitch Max=90.00
Extrude Heading Max=10.00