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No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sims?

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No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sims?

Postby openflight » Tue Oct 06, 2015 11:14 am

I had to ask - was looking through a review of a Cessna Caravan for FSX and I realized the screenshots do not show shadows. Neither does our FG 3.0.

What is it with these sims? Is it much more difficult to implement shadows? Some models have a separare shadows.xml and .ac file - is this what is needed?

http://www.avsim.com/index.php/_/review ... xp3d-r1856
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby Thorsten » Tue Oct 06, 2015 1:04 pm

Rendering shadows is always tricky and either is a fake or costs lots of framerate by rendering the scene twice (with a shadow camera pass before the actual camera pass) - and even then you have limitations with semi-transparent objects, accuracy,...

I've actually done an experiment in real life and looked for a shadow during five different air travels - I saw one once. Since you hardly ever see it from a normal cockpit perspective, I personally think the pain to gain ratio for shadows is just very high and the framerate is better spent on making other aspects more realistic.
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby legoboyvdlp » Tue Oct 06, 2015 1:39 pm

I suppose you have not seen FG 3.6 or Rembrandt, openflight? :roll:
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby Hooray » Tue Oct 06, 2015 2:15 pm

We used to have shadows in the pre-OSG days (PLIB/SG), but things have not been updated/maintained in a while, so that overlapping efforts/approaches took priority (Rembrandt).

However, to be honest, I don't understand how someone can complain about the lack of GPU/CPU-heavy features in FG, while stating at the same time that his/her hardware is so old that it cannot realistically support most of these features, are you even seeing the contradiction here ?
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby Johan G » Tue Oct 06, 2015 10:07 pm

Hooray wrote in Tue Oct 06, 2015 2:15 pm:...I don't understand how someone can complain about the lack of GPU/CPU-heavy features in FG, while stating at the same time that his/her hardware is so old that it cannot realistically support most of these features, are you even seeing the contradiction here ?

What you don't know, you don't know. If you would be unaware of the performance hit from drawing the shadow, how would you see the contradiction? (Just a polygon and a texture, right? :wink: )
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby openflight » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:41 am

Thorsten - well that explains it. However I like to watch a replay of the flight from a chase plane, especially the landing, and the shadow really makes a difference there. Also, in FG 1 I notice that shadow of the plane on the scenery a thousand feet below, which really brought out the realism for me.

I though Microsoft flight sim would come up with some sort of a fudge at least. Some planes have shadows but not the airport equipment. Seen in a video.

No I have not seen 3.6, need to upgrade my OS or a do another installation of Ubuntu 15.04 or so to get this downloaded. Might as well. Looks good.

http://www.flightgear.org/info/a-previe ... tgear-3-6/

I like the way the paint comes off on landing in the damage model.:) . The roads have lines on them, great to land on in an emergency.

By the way I am getting 23 fps frame rates on my current HP -15 notebook with full graphics, so looks like I have moved from laggard to early adopter - almost.

"Farms" in the list below could mean "Server Farms" :). FG developers are the 'innovators' here.

"innovators – had larger farms, were more educated, more prosperous and more risk-oriented
early adopters – younger, more educated, tended to be community leaders, less prosperous
early majority – more conservative but open to new ideas, active in community and influence to neighbours
late majority – older, less educated, fairly conservative and less socially active
laggards – very conservative, had small farms and capital, oldest and least educated"



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technolog ... _lifecycle
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby Thorsten » Wed Oct 07, 2015 8:43 am

Also, in FG 1 I notice that shadow of the plane on the scenery a thousand feet below, which really brought out the realism for me.


You know real objects don't actually do that, right? Diffraction of light waves removes the shadows of objects at such large distances. So it's somewhat ironic that this would bring out realism for you when it's clearly not real.
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby wkitty42 » Wed Oct 07, 2015 12:09 pm

exactly... go stand outside on a sunny day... place your hand on the ground and then raise it... the higher you go, the larger and dimmer the shadow gets until it is no longer seen...
"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: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby Ouacaze » Wed Oct 07, 2015 4:26 pm

Hi everyone,
I know shadows can be an fps-expensive feature, so it has to be implemented in the lightest way as possible, but you can't say planes don't cast shadow on the ground.
I often see planes shadows on the road when I drive near the local airport.

Image
(source: http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/2 ... ane-Shadow)
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby Thorsten » Wed Oct 07, 2015 5:48 pm

but you can't say planes don't cast shadow on the ground.


Which is why I didn't say it - I said something more specific.
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby Hooray » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:06 pm

If you want blazingly-fast shadows despite having old hardware, I recommend this:
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby gsagostinho » Wed Oct 07, 2015 10:23 pm

@Hooray that actually looks like a lot of fun! :D
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby Thorsten » Thu Oct 08, 2015 6:25 am

Oh, those were the days! Yes, it was lots of fun!
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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby hamzaalloush » Thu Oct 08, 2015 4:50 pm

Ouacaze wrote in Wed Oct 07, 2015 4:26 pm:I often see planes shadows on the road when I drive near the local airport.


i also captured the shadow of an airliner on video while we landed one time, skip to 1:40.

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Re: No shadows in FSX or FG 3.0 what's with these modern sim

Postby Hooray » Fri Oct 09, 2015 8:29 pm

gsagostinho wrote in Wed Oct 07, 2015 10:23 pm:@Hooray that actually looks like a lot of fun! :D


You can still play those games by getting a C64 emulator an downloading the corresponding "ROM" file - in fact, this stuff is even available for Android phones.
Even better, you will find a bunch of websites with everything pre-installed using flash/Java to run the emulator and load the corresponding ROM/game using http - for example: http://www.vizzed.com/play/blue-max-c64 ... 21840-game
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
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