Author Topic: Ground... staining?  (Read 4825 times)

AKSledhead

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Ground... staining?
« on: December 11, 2017, 04:35:51 pm »
I can't seem to find any photos that show this same effect, so maybe it is something on my end - this look of wetness to the ramp, it will not disappear on clear days, remains through changing seasons, and is not a shadow effect... any ideas of how to remove it?

https://i.imgur.com/ylloLjr.jpg?1
« Last Edit: December 11, 2017, 05:54:00 pm by virtuali »

virtuali

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Re: Ground... staining?
« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2017, 05:55:34 pm »
That's not the wet effect (which WILL realistically take some time to go away, after rain), but it's rather an effect of ground weathering/aging, and it's now the scenery is made, nothing to fix.

AKSledhead

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Re: Ground... staining?
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2017, 07:44:09 pm »
Is it possible to reduce this effect client-side, it looks like the KMEM_SF**.dds files hold the key in the alpha layers... perhaps as an option we can choose to get rid of it completely?  I jumpseat in to Memphis quite often on FedEx aircraft and the taxiways and ramps are relatively clean.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2017, 07:50:52 pm by AKSledhead »

virtuali

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Re: Ground... staining?
« Reply #3 on: December 12, 2017, 08:21:47 am »
There's nothing you can do, unless you know how to edit textures. We'll have a look at it to tone it a bit down.

The issue is, since KMEM has very large open areas, if we did it *exactly* as it is in real life, since the sim graphic engine is not photo realistic, it will look "bland", "dull" and "freeware-like": these are the comments we usually see from users when a developer do something which is otherwise perfectly fine and similar to reality.

So, we had to exaggerate some features, to make up for the missing feature of the graphic engine, and this is a method each and every developer out there use: ambient occlusion is set much higher than in reality, stain/marks are made stronger, ground sign use unrealistic pastel colors and far too much transparency, but those are just optical tricks to make up the lack of a more complex lighting model from the sim, something comparable to the latest game engines, which use PBR (Physically Based Rendering). We'll eventually getting there, in a few years, but for the time being, we must live with the tricks.

AKSledhead

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Re: Ground... staining?
« Reply #4 on: December 12, 2017, 09:34:49 am »
I would totally as I am somewhat confident working with textures, but with only the flattened images that would be quite the challenge! 

I will just hope for a toned down version - at first I was confused because all of the pictures and videos I see of the airport do not show this weathering so it seemed like it was either my system or a recent update addition.

Thanks for the explanation!

AKSledhead

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Re: Ground... staining?
« Reply #5 on: March 04, 2018, 10:22:07 am »
Any update on this, previous versions seemed to be okay without the stained textures... I bought Louisville and it's great.