Board index FlightGear Development Effects and shaders

Stars and Milky Way visiblity

An exciting "new" option in FlightGear, that includes reflections, lightmaps, the particle system etc.. A lot is yet to be discovered/implemented!

Re: Stars and Milky Way visiblity

Postby vnts » Tue Dec 07, 2021 7:52 am

:mrgreen: :mrgreen: Nice to see it in action

Thorsten wrote in Mon Dec 06, 2021 8:03 am:It'd be nice if you plan a provision for the aircraft to report the current ambient light level in cockpit. Our favourite use case for spaceflight actually has a lighting model and can give you the number how much the illumination level inside the cockpit is - based on summing direct sun light through windows, Earth light through windows, plasma glow through windows as well as the various in-cockpit lights and the instrument background lighting.


I think Thorsten was referring to the /environment/star-magnitude-cutoff (?) [1] .

benih wrote in Mon Dec 06, 2021 8:21 am:but to be compatible to most aircraft this should also take the Standard properties into account automatically:

https://wiki.flightgear.org/Aircraft_properties_reference#Controls wrote:/controls/lighting/panel-norm
/controls/lighting/instruments-norm
/controls/lighting/dome-norm

or aren't these standard?


Those are 0-1 (normalised)? The actual brightness depends on how bright the light sources are, and how the light ends up being bounced around the cockpit. As Thorsten said it depends on external illumination sources too - like the plasma/eathlight - or external aircraft lights which may bounce light into the cockpit - including off haze, but if there's haze stars won't be visible.

For the star magnitude control, the aircraft creator is responsible for an approximate guess at interior illuminations levels- to add up the contributions from different sources. Alternatively it's possible to get testing feedback on the brightest stars visible on a dark clear night - with the same cockpit, or a similarly lit/shaped cockpit. Otherwise it's hard to predict how different sources of lights will bounce around the cockpit and add to the ambient light levels - e.g. a small light could be largely hidden away and face a dark surface on the opposite side which doesn't allow light to bounce off it and light the rest of the cockpit. At least the case for all light sources off (where possible) would be completely accurate.

merspieler wrote in Fri Dec 03, 2021 9:45 pm:I've tried to calibrate my screen using your linked site but then my dark colors get washed out...


LCD monitors are like that. There's variations among them from panel to panel. Trying to fix imperfections leads to a tradeoff somewhere else. For this use-case, it's mostly the darker bands that could be adjusted, rather than calibrating for general picture quality.

here are monitors for photo editing etc that are more accurate, and some newer monitors are factory calibrated to some degree. The calibration is at one low/mid range brightness I think, and monitors won't be as accurate outside it IIRC. Some monitors aimed at content creation have 12 bits/ 10 bits /8 bits+2 FRC bits rather than the common 6 bits + 2 FRC - but PC/online content will be viewed on common LCD panels so content has to be designed for those anyway.

The vast majority of people won't really have tried to calibrate, or really know about it .

Since this feature adds information to the darkest levels, it's sort of always an edge case. Whereever there is some shade crushing in the black region there will be issues - so a (limited) UI control for a boost could be justified for stars/galaxy/aurorae - in the planned UI revamp. This will look wrong on calibrated monitors when ever screenshots/videos are posted, but maybe that's a price worth paying to a limited extent.

A lot of contributors and power users would also run FG windowed as it's more convenient for tinkering (I tend to do that) - and people also just have the taskbar visible so they can switch tasks. So maybe a tick box to adjust for windowed mode would also work. But that's for a future point after the planned UI.

Kind regards
vnts
 
Posts: 409
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 1:29 am

Previous

Return to Effects and shaders

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests