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2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

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2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby asr » Tue May 01, 2018 5:27 pm

Hi all,

I updated to 2018.1.1 a few days ago, quickly I noticed something odd about it:

I always keep 3D clouds off because they kill my framerate. In this new version, the 3D clouds are always there, whether the 3D clouds option is checked or not in the Rendering Options menu.

Please note that when toggling the 3D clouds option, the 3D clouds disappear for a while (whether the option is left on or off). Afther a short time a whole bunch of clouds are floating around my plane again.

Any fix?
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Re: 2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby Thorsten » Tue May 01, 2018 6:30 pm

If you're using Advanced Weather, I believe that requires 3d clouds on and sets this automatically. Since you can now use it automatically from the launcher, you might not be aware of what system you're running, so check weather and environment settings in launcher *and* in-sim to see what is going on.

(3d clouds were a strain for graphics cards of 10 years ago - even a halfway a modern mid-range graphics card should no longer have any issues rendering them, so you might simply invest the 100 $ and save yourself the trouble... 2d clouds are a legacy feature which nobody has worked on for ages)
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Re: 2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby wkitty42 » Tue May 01, 2018 6:36 pm

Thorsten wrote in Tue May 01, 2018 6:30 pm:If you're using Advanced Weather, I believe that requires 3d clouds on and sets this automatically.

if this is true, i've never seen the GUI indicate such by altering the checkbox... i generally keep 3D clouds off but always use AW... my launcher's additional options box has a lot of properties that it sets... --disable-clouds3d is SOP...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: 2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby asr » Tue May 01, 2018 6:58 pm

For personal reasons, I fly on a 2013 MBP Retina, so I cannot invest any amount of dollars in a new graphic card.

It was working fine, including advanced weather, in the last version. Also I don't use a launcher, I run ./fgfs from the terminal
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Re: 2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby Thorsten » Tue May 01, 2018 7:04 pm

if this is true, i've never seen the GUI indicate such by altering the checkbox...


I'm not sure about the internal wiring, Stuart did this, but AW uses fgcommand("add-cloud") which just creates a single 3d cloud in the scene - probably without bothering to check whether you have 3d clouds enabled or not. That's different from how BW generates clouds.

It was working fine, including advanced weather, in the last version.


I consider that unlikely, since AW does not support 2d clouds at all and never has (they were outdated even back when I started writing it). Chances are you never started AW in the first place (until 2018.1 you had to start it every time yourself when you wanted to use it) and are now using it for the first time (since it's now autostarted if selected once).
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Re: 2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby wkitty42 » Tue May 01, 2018 9:19 pm

Thorsten wrote in Tue May 01, 2018 7:04 pm:
if this is true, i've never seen the GUI indicate such by altering the checkbox...

I'm not sure about the internal wiring, Stuart did this, but AW uses fgcommand("add-cloud") which just creates a single 3d cloud in the scene - probably without bothering to check whether you have 3d clouds enabled or not. That's different from how BW generates clouds.

ahhhh... maybe that's why i've never been very sure if i've seen 3D clouds or not... i've seen fluffy things that i've flown through which seem to have layers (like walls) in them that i fly through... would these also be the clouds that rotate(d?) when flying long distances (eg: KATL to EGLL)??

FWIW: i would expect the "add-cloud" routine or which ever one it is that does the actual generating of the 3d clouds to check to see if it is enabled before it generates the clouds... if it is off, the routine could return false and the routine trying to add those clouds could be aborted...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: 2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby Thorsten » Wed May 02, 2018 6:07 am

FWIW: i would expect the "add-cloud" routine or which ever one it is that does the actual generating of the 3d clouds to check to see if it is enabled before it generates the clouds...


Assuming we do this, it'd generate all sorts of bug reports along 'Clouds are broken, I see no clouds any more' because if you de-activate 3d clouds you /probably/ expect to see 2d clouds, but AW doesn't support that behavior at all (legacy feature etc.).

So your GUI somehow needs to communicate that you only have a choice of cloud type if you select BW but that you can't run AW and de-activate 3d clouds at the same time,... which... frankly, is a lot of work for something that used to be a legacy feature 10 years ago.

It seems waaay easier to just kick the 3d cloud option from the GUI and switch it on by default and let the handful of users who really need it off do it via commandline.
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Re: 2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby asr » Thu May 03, 2018 4:12 pm

Thanks for your answers

You're right @Thorsten, I disabled AW and now I have the 2D clouds.

There is something I didn't mention because I didn't thought it was related at first, but when switching to 2018 I noticed a change in the weather, especially now I suffer frequent turbulence which I didn't have in a long time. I always had AW enabled, but now I'm inclined to think it wasn't working (maybe because I had 3D-clouds disabled?) and when switching to the new version some of that mess cleared up.
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Re: 2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby Thorsten » Thu May 03, 2018 5:57 pm

I always had AW enabled, but now I'm inclined to think it wasn't working (maybe because I had 3D-clouds disabled?)


As I said - prior to 2018.1 enabling AW enabled it by loading the corresponding code but did not automatically start it - you had to do this yourself. Since 2018.1, enabling AW also automatically starts it.

So you're running it for the first time.
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Re: 2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby wkitty42 » Fri May 04, 2018 2:42 am

Thorsten wrote in Wed May 02, 2018 6:07 am:
FWIW: i would expect the "add-cloud" routine or which ever one it is that does the actual generating of the 3d clouds to check to see if it is enabled before it generates the clouds...


Assuming we do this, it'd generate all sorts of bug reports along 'Clouds are broken, I see no clouds any more' because if you de-activate 3d clouds you /probably/ expect to see 2d clouds, but AW doesn't support that behavior at all (legacy feature etc.).

possibly but i can't say that i would expect to see 2D clouds... again, though, it is a matter of knowing what the 3D clouds even look like... the 2D ones are easy as they're just a flat panel at some altitude that has no depth when you pass through it...

Thorsten wrote in Wed May 02, 2018 6:07 am:It seems waaay easier to just kick the 3d cloud option from the GUI and switch it on by default and let the handful of users who really need it off do it via commandline.

i can accept that since it now appears that the clouds i've been seeing have actually been 3D clouds even when they have been deselected in the dialog and in the properties passed...

FWIW: just to answer the question why i had 3D clouds turned off, some time back, i was trying to track something that was eating my frame rate... someone, i forget who, suggested that i turn off 3D clouds... nothing was said about AW, though... so i turned 3D clouds off and didn't see any change... since i didn't see any change, i didn't think to turn them back on...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: 2018.1.1 3D Clouds always on

Postby jcomm » Thu May 31, 2018 6:10 pm

Just a BIG THUMBS UP regarding this new "AW" implementation, and my acknowledgement for the long awaited / desired turbulence effects !!!

They feel JUST GREAT !
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