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[slibenli]

Just tried this on BAT 3.7.2

My game won't launch. All I get is a black screen with a stop working window.
How do I uninstall this please?

Thanks !

Just delete il2ge.dll and the folder il2ge.

Edit: if you post il2ge.log I might figure out why it doesn't work for you 

[slibenli]

One more update of the installer:
https://gitlab.com/vrresto/il2ge-experimental/-/jobs/344322849/artifacts/raw/il2ge-installer.exe

This installs everything (including il2ge.dll) into the subfolder il2ge.

[slibenli]

I updated/edited the original post a bit and moved all the important information to the beginning.

[HeGa]

Congratulations slibenli, this is an awesome mod. This can really breathe a new life into good old IL-2. It is surely very promising.

As far as I've tested, new lighting system and new effect renderer does not work as intended for now. Cirrus clouds are good but their resolution is low, is it possible to improve them? Does it fetch textures from IL-2 cloud files or are they a part of this mod? I've also tested bumpmapping, is it working in every map? Or custom bumpmaps for each map should be made exclusively for it to work?

I see that being an old engine, IL-2 uses stencil shadows but do you think that it is possible to implement shadow maps? I think the most required feature for immersion is self-shadowing for planes and cockpit, after your wonderful job here.

Keep up the good work!
Thank you!

[Stainless]

Thinking about it, may be easier to do SSAO

As long as you can get a copy of the depth buffer, SSAO can be done in a single 2D full screen quad making it easy to apply and easy to turn off for low end graphics cards.

It would handle the self shadowing in the cockpit fairly well but may not play well with the instruments at night.

[slibenli]

Congratulations slibenli, this is an awesome mod. This can really breathe a new life into good old IL-2. It is surely very promising.

As far as I've tested, new lighting system and new effect renderer does not work as intended for now. Cirrus clouds are good but their resolution is low, is it possible to improve them? Does it fetch textures from IL-2 cloud files or are they a part of this mod? I've also tested bumpmapping, is it working in every map? Or custom bumpmaps for each map should be made exclusively for it to work?

I guess I should completely disable the new effect renderer and lighting system for now.
In fact the new lighting system doesn't do anything at all yet - apart from possibly giving you a few extra FPS
Yes - I'm using the same cirrus textures as IL-2.
Bumpmapping looks a bit different than IL-2, because unlike it, I'm not casting shadows from the bumps onto the textures. The reason is that IL-2 bakes the bumpmap effects into the textures (I assume that happens once, when the map is loaded), while I'm applying the effect in realtime.

I see that being an old engine, IL-2 uses stencil shadows but do you think that it is possible to implement shadow maps? I think the most required feature for immersion is self-shadowing for planes and cockpit, after your wonderful job here.

Keep up the good work!
Thank you!

I've made the the first steps to support cockpit self-shadowing - not sure yet if anything will come out of it.

Thinking about it, may be easier to do SSAO

As long as you can get a copy of the depth buffer, SSAO can be done in a single 2D full screen quad making it easy to apply and easy to turn off for low end graphics cards.

It would handle the self shadowing in the cockpit fairly well but may not play well with the instruments at night.

My approach would involve doing an extra rendering pass of the cockpit from the sun's perspective.
I think you mean self-illuminating instruments. I'm already handling these in a shader more or less well (I need to apply some hacks to determine if a material is supposed to be self-illuminating).
https://gitlab.com/vrresto/il2ge/blob/master/object_shaders/VAObjectsL0_cockpit.frag#L54

[Stainless]

Man it's weird looking at OpenGL again

It's deader that Dodi.

And yes that is a totally evil hack, comparing the distance in colour space is bound to cause problems at some stage.

But hey if it works ........

[HeGa]

I guess I should completely disable the new effect renderer and lighting system for now.
In fact the new lighting system doesn't do anything at all yet - apart from possibly giving you a few extra FPS
Yes - I'm using the same cirrus textures as IL-2.
Bumpmapping looks a bit different than IL-2, because unlike it, I'm not casting shadows from the bumps onto the textures. The reason is that IL-2 bakes the bumpmap effects into the textures (I assume that happens once, when the map is loaded), while I'm applying the effect in realtime.

Yes you should disable them, it is confusing trying to see what they do  But you should fix endless world feature and enable that, it is essential!
I see, realtime bumpmapping can give extra realism as sun moves. Although, does sun move with time in IL-2? I've never paid attention to that 

I've made the the first steps to support cockpit self-shadowing - not sure yet if anything will come out of it.

This is very good news! I can't wait to see that, I hope it works!

By the way, I'm wondering if it is possible to use realtime bump mapping for planes and also cockpits? It would be very nice to see surface imperfections and rivets and details, etc.

[slibenli]

Man it's weird looking at OpenGL again

It's deader that Dodi.

And yes that is a totally evil hack, comparing the distance in colour space is bound to cause problems at some stage.

But hey if it works ........

Well, it only works for greenish instrument lighting

Yes you should disable them, it is confusing trying to see what they do  But you should fix endless world feature and enable that, it is essential!
I see, realtime bumpmapping can give extra realism as sun moves. Although, does sun move with time in IL-2? I've never paid attention to that 

Autogenerated terrain had some issues.
Endless world is not correct btw. - the generated terrain was about 2000x2000 km IIRC.
I would prefer a hybrid approach between auto-generation and manual map making, which would involve at least setting some parameters (e.g. what textures to use).
Any news on your heightmap creation tool Stainless?

By the way, I'm wondering if it is possible to use realtime bump mapping for planes and also cockpits? It would be very nice to see surface imperfections and rivets and details, etc.

Not at this stage - for this a new object renderer would need to be implemented.

[Stainless]

Any news on your heightmap creation tool Stainless?

Actually yes.

I am using a new system.

It starts with QGis, a free download. then connect to to ArcGisWorldMapServer (for free) and select the area of interest from anywhere in the world.



I then run the SRTM downloader plugin (again free) which will grab the height data from Nasa.



Then I run the QMetaTile plugin to get surface textures. It downloads satellite imagery for the selected region at a range of magnifications.

You end up with a bunch of directories , one per magnification level, with a bunch of textures in each.

At the moment I am trying to figure out the naming convention for these textures.

Once I have done that I can modify my existing tool to use this data.

The question is what do you need?

Do you want something that matches the existing map data format. So scan the data and generate a type map?  Or do you want what I am doing for myself, a heightmap and a texture set?

At the moment my code is very fragile and not very good. I just tried to generate an IL2 map from within my tool. It ended up 11112765 by 13224444 pixels and ran out of memory

[slibenli]

I'm looking for a solution to extend existing IL-2 maps.
Not so much for actually flying over the extended area - just to avoid that sudden end of the map.
For height data that should be relatively easy: the original height map and the extended one can be blended together at the borders.
Of course both maps need to use the same projection for this to work.
As for textures, I would like to use some kind of type map. Either the same format as IL-2 uses or something else.
I don't think satellite images would blend well with existing IL-2 maps.
Satellite images also have the problem of shadows/clouds/etc. being part of the texture - AFAIK there is no publicly available imagery that has been corrected for those issues.

[PO_MAK_249RIP]

On the normal downloads i get a folder called #SAS which i rename to #WAW to use in my CUP install - does the new autoinstaller do away with this requirement slibenli? Nice to see u back 😊