Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jg1234]

Hi all,

Might be a dumb question, but does enabling Reshade/SweetFX with IL2 1946 clean up/fix/enhance the issues with trees not rendering in the distance until you get closer and the layered type feel of certain trees etc.. on maps?

Not complaining, just was thinking that I might not be missing much without Reshade if they don't enhance the only two issues I really have or would like to fix. Running on perfect setting the Il2 1946 sim is still fine for me in many ways.

Some screens of the things I am referencing. Thanks in advance for any thought! - jg1234

[FL2070]

No. Reshade applies generic, non-game specific visual effects that affect the game's colors and shading. Fixing any visual bugs with IL-2 is out of its scope. If you want something to change IL-2's graphics at its core: try graphics extender.

[jg1234]

Thanks FL2070 for the quick response.

That makes sense. I was sort of thinking that might be the case.

I'll do some research on graphics extender.

Cheers - jg1234

[WxTech]

Years ago I did some experimenting on dealing with the pop-up trees. I didn't much enjoy them suddenly winking into and out of existence so obviously, where one moment there's nothing and then the next an big, obvious tree. I found that by altering the appearance of the alpha channel for the texture which makes up the leafy part so that is is less 'solid', and instead is more 'broken' into discrete bits, this resulted in the tree becoming more sparse with increasing distance. This makes for a more gradual transition between no tree and its appearance just inside the draw distance threshold. To put it another way, farther trees are now made less 'full' and big/obvious, which makes them kind of 'fade' into and out of visibility. Which makes them rather more 'blend' into the landscape in an overall manner.

[jg1234]

Thanks very much WxTech,

I remember reading some of your posts back then. Truthfully, all of that behind the scenes stuff is beyond my knowledge set, although I don't mind dabbling sometimes. 

I might try to look into playing with the graphics extender release from Sept 2023, although at first glance I'm not sure how it all works.

-jg1234

[WxTech]

I just thought to include an example. This is one of the textures I use. Note the upper right and lower left parts are broken into discrete bits. The graphics engine for the game does stuff to texture rendering based on the distribution of the opaque and transparent parts of a texture in conjunction with the drawing scale on screen. Normally the broken up parts I have here will have a more 'solid' appearance as for the upper left part (which is used to create the shadow).

[WxTech]

Here's an example of such a tree texture in use in the game. The main image is a 1:1 screen capture of my 2560x1440 display, although cropped a bit so as to keep the file size not too large. The inset is an enlargement, scaled up 200% without any smoothing so as to retain as closely as possible the underlying appearance at the pixel level as drawn. Note how in the middle distance already the tress are exhibiting a 'broken up' appearance, making them sparser than they otherwise would be. In the far distance many trees are just small specks, even more reduced in bulk. The overall effect is of a diminishment of the trees with increasing distance, making their appearance/disappearance considerably less abrupt.

[click for larger!]

[jg1234]

Wow. That’s really nice. Thanks for the screenshot. Is this something that is available in a download or mod somehow?

[WxTech]

Here's the thread I started a decade ago.

https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,43102.0.html

In the top post is a link that, if memory serves, supplies the alpha channel you can apply to any of the number of tree versions you desire. You would need to get the textures, which can be obtained by running the Selector in dump mode. Then using a graphics app which can handle alpha channels, like Photoshop or GIMP, you can create a replacement.

Here's a list of all the unique tree textures as contained in the BAT maps whose load.ini files are contained in the many map folders in the following location in my BAT 4.0 game. The preceding number for some is the number of map load.ini files containing that particular tree. The most commonly used one, with 115 entries, is AlteredBush8a.tga, followed closely by AlteredBush9a.tga at 104.

BATMODS\DEF-SKIES_#WAW3\#WAW3\MAPMODS\MAPS\

Code: [Select]

2 ag\India\Ifni_DesertTree.tga
ag\Suomussalmi_Aut\dlv_sk_AlteredBush8a.tga 
ag\Suomussalmi_Aut\Ifni_DesertTree.tga
ag\Suomussalmi\dlv_sk_AlteredBush8a.tga
Ash_Bof\SrbijaDrvo.tga
Avala\serbia\SrbijaDrvo.tga
BA_CoralSea\whc_Jungle.tga
BA_Marshalls\whc_Jungle.tga
BA_Palau\whc_Jungle.tga
East\stalingrad_winter\AlteredBush8aw.tga
2 land\Oks\OksAlteredBush8a.tga 
land\summer\Berlin_autumn\OksAlteredBush8a.tga
Marshalls\Tooth_AlteredBush8a.tga
Mixx_Pac\AVALA.tga
4 NGNB\NGNB_Bush.tga
Nordbayern\Trees\dlv_sk_AlteredBush8aTL.tga
NTL_\Trees\NTL_Darwin_Small\NTL_Darwin_1942_43_AlteredBush6a.tga
Pacific\Burma\burm_AlteredBush8a.tga
2 Pacific\Singapore\PAlteredBush9a.tga
Tooth_Pacific_Textures\Marshalls\Tooth_AlteredBush8a.tga
tree\summer\JungleTree\elsaltree.tga
115 Trees\AlteredBush8a.tga
50 Trees\AlteredBush8aw.tga
104 Trees\AlteredBush9a.tga 
Trees\autumn\dlv_autumn_AlteredBush8a.tga
2 Trees\AutumnBush_LA.tga
Trees\Autumnbush.tga
Trees\BlossomTree.tga
Trees\cz1_AlteredBush8a.tga
Trees\cz2_AlteredBush8a.tga
10 Trees\DesertTree.tga 
Trees\dlv_aut_AlteredBush8a.tga 
2 Trees\dlv_MTO_AlteredBush8a.tga
2 Trees\dlv_sk_AlteredBush8a.tga
Trees\dlv_summer1_AlteredBush8a.tga 
Trees\Early-Mid_Autumn\AutumnBushEA.tga
5 Trees\G_AlteredBush8a.tga
3 Trees\G-AlteredBush8a.tga
20 Trees\Gaut-AlteredBush8a.tga
Trees\Gaut-AlteredBush8a25.tga
3 Trees\GP_AlteredBush8a.tga
4 Trees\GS-AlteredBush8a.tga
13 Trees\GW_AlteredBush8aw.tga 
Trees\Ifni_DesertTree.tga 
2 Trees\JIR-AlteredBush8a.tga
44 Trees\MTO_AlteredBush8a.tga
6 Trees\NamTree.tga
Trees\NTL_Darwin_1942_43\NTL_Darwin_1942_43_AlteredBush6a.tga
3 Trees\P_AlteredBush8a.tga
Trees\PalmTree.tga
Trees\PalmTree1.tga
Trees\Rabaul_AlteredBush8a.tga
Trees\Rabaul_AlteredBush8ac.tga
48 Trees\sk_AlteredBush8a.tga
15 Trees\sk_AlteredBush8aw.tga
Trees\Skipper\AlteredBush8a.tga
Trees\SL_1_AlteredBush8a.tga
Trees\SL_2_AlteredBush8a.tga
2 Trees\SL_AlteredBush8a.tga
9 Trees\SLOT_AlteredBush8am.tga
Trees\SrbijaDrvo.tga
12 Trees\whc_Jungle.tga


[jg1234]

Thank you very much WxTech. Maybe I’ll take a look at playing around with that. Appreciate all your efforts.