MSFS20 Cross-plane shading

[Joker]

In that case the simple solution might be to place a triangle below the bottom of the tree (maybe 30 metres, maybe more). This makes the object larger as far as MSFS is concerned so it's less likely to automatically hide the object.

so you can also add the same triangle with the type of material "invisible". The invisible material is just for this purpose. Note the asobo lampposts. They are covered with boxes with an invisible type of material, just so that, with a small distance, the light does not disappear.
Why bury something? I don’t know how in MSFS 2020, but FSX really did not like polygons “buried” in the ground. There, the textures were blurred at the slightest distance if the polygons were below ground level.

 

[GaryGB]

so you can also add the same triangle with the type of material "invisible". The invisible material is just for this purpose. Note the asobo lampposts. They are covered with boxes with an invisible type of material, just so that, with a small distance, the light does not disappear.

Why bury something? I don’t know how in MSFS 2020, but FSX really did not like polygons “buried” in the ground. There, the textures were blurred at the slightest distance if the polygons were below ground level.

IIUC, there is a way to use a manually assigned high resolution texture for a MIPMAP linked to a LOD, so that a low resolution image is NOT used when the user A/C camera is at a greater distance.

Doing that may, of course, impact MSFS' run time system resource use and performance, however.

GaryGB

 

[Anthony31]

so you can also add the same triangle with the type of material "invisible". The invisible material is just for this purpose. Note the asobo lampposts. They are covered with boxes with an invisible type of material, just so that, with a small distance, the light does not disappear.
Why bury something? I don’t know how in MSFS 2020, but FSX really did not like polygons “buried” in the ground. There, the textures were blurred at the slightest distance if the polygons were below ground level.

Wasting a drawcall though. I think it's better from an efficiency perspective if you use a small triangle with a small texture mapping from your main texture rather than making another texture just to be transparent and wasting a drawcall on it.

Only way to know for certain though would be to do an FPS comparison test.

 

[Joker]

Wasting a drawcall though. I think it's better from an efficiency perspective if you use a small triangle with a small texture mapping from your main texture rather than making another texture just to be transparent and wasting a drawcall on it.

Only way to know for certain though would be to do an FPS comparison test.

Let me disagree with you. For an "invisible" type material, no texture is needed. It's just an invisible material added by the developers for just such purposes.
And.., material without texture at all, is always easier than material + texture, also with alpha.
And in order to notice the difference in the effect of this on the FPS, we would have to spawn several dozen of these models in the scene, and I think that we should not waste time on this)

 

[Joker]

IIUC, there is a way to use a manually assigned high resolution texture for a MIPMAP linked to a LOD, so that a low resolution image is NOT used when the user A/C camera is at a greater distance.

Doing that may, of course, impact MSFS' run time system resource use and performance, however.

GaryGB

I think we're talking about different things here...
But, nevertheless .., If you convert mipmaps manually, then I can see the branches of my trees, being even at a distance of 10-15 km from them. And if you entrust this option to the MSFS converter, then they begin to "dissolve", literally at 40-50 meters.
If some model, due to its small size, disappears from our field of vision when moving away from it, earlier than we would like, then a small triangle about 50-70 meters high can be added to this model, and this triangle can be assigned a material of the type " invisible".
Of course, to all LOD.
And, by the way, it is not at all necessary to hide it underground.

 

[GaryGB]

Probably. I've had a look at the Fresnel Ramp material in Blender with the Asobo exporter. It doesn't seem to be any different from a Standard MSFS material at least from the setup of the material. So I don't even know if it will work. This is out of my area of experience so I'm really just speculating. What I'd do is create a single planed tree and put them in a circle all pointed inward and then sit in the middle of that circle and adjust the time of day. This is effectively what I think the MSFS trees are doing with their fresnel ramps. Just pointing a single plane towards the user. If the circle of trees worked then you'd at least know that the shading worked then you've just need to figure out the fresnel ramp.

I found it interesting to correlate this possibility with what Autodesk has to say here:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/supp...022F69B8-B1A3-46A3-9917-0D9CBDBB6733-htm.html

"The Ramp Shader is a material (shader) that you can use for extra control over the way color changes with light and the view angle. You can simulate a variety of exotic materials and tweak traditional shading in subtle ways.


All the color-related attributes in the Ramp Shader are controlled by ramps (gradients). Graphs let you avoid complex shading networks by making certain looks, like toon shading, easier to achieve.


You can set the many attributes of the Ramp Shader to control the appearance of objects.


Each color entry in a ramp has a circular color handle above the ramp, and a square color icon below the ramp. The active color has a white border around its color handle and icon.


See Set attributes using ramps for more information on how to customize your ramp by adding additional color entries.


Tip: To make a shader that avoids linear artifacts on the edge where a surface turns away from the light try the following:

Diffuse = 0

Translucence = 1

Color: two entries, black at 0.5 and surface color at 1.0

With Interpolation > Linear, this should be the same as a normal lambertian falloff. Using Interpolation > Smooth makes the linear shading artifacts disappear."


" Transparency attributes

Controls how transparent or opaque the material is, as well as the transparency color. Black, the default, is completely opaque and white is completely transparent. You can set it to any level in between. If there is more than one index in the ramp then the transparency value varies with the facing angle.

For descriptions of the attributes, which are the same as the Color attributes, see Color ."


PS: One might wonder if there may be a topical correlation of this thread with what is discussed ...here:

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/custom-vegetation-draw-distance.456116/post-912044

GaryGB

 

[Joker]

PS: One might wonder if there may be a topical correlation of this thread with what is discussed ...here:

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/custom-vegetation-draw-distance.456116/post-912044

GaryGB

if, at different viewing angles, the coordinates of the UV mapping could jump similarly to the gradients of the Fresnel Ramp, then this would be another small step towards solving the mystery

P.S. I wonder what that means?

Spoiler: Set atributes using ramp

 

[GaryGB]

IIUC, the destination of FS' 3D models with Material Attributes / Properties is Windows' rendering via Direct-X versions 9.x / 10 / 11 / 12, although the proprietary 'names' used by developers for implementation of a relatively limited set of Direct-X options may vary.

AFAIK, most of us are only beginning to scratch the "surface" of what FS Material Attributes / Properties are available / how they work.


IIRC, ACES first provided us with a dynamic preview of how Direct-X may render various Material Attributes / Properties for FSX:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/microsoft-esp/cc526971(v=msdn.10)


Later, L-M offered their SDK dynamic preview on implementing Material Attributes / Properties for P3D

Modeling Materials

(Web page 2D graphical preview renderer takes time to load)

Modeling Materials

( Fresnel Ramps )



Misho Katulic has been studying how to implement these rendering options for 3D models and gauges in latter FS releases:

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/t...cipe-for-cockpit-interior.440382/#post-775004


NOTE: Our distinguished FS Developer Emeritus Milton Shupe (aka "Uncle Milty") < sorry... just a bit of fun, and with great admiration > ...offered some interesting suggestions in the above thread.

Fr. Bill Leaming (aka "n4gix") also offered an interesting explanation of related options / results in that same thread.


Some more of Misho's inquiries on the topic immediately above:

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/gdi-gauge-drawing-gradated-alpha-transparency.445223/

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/fresnel-ramp-with-alpha-affects-diffuse.446589/


MSFS SDK offers a new implementation of Material Attributes / Properties:

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/ht...Max_Plugin/Materials.htm?rhhlterm=FresnelFade

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/Asset_Creation/3DS_Max_Plugin/Materials.htm


I suspect Arno has a good grasp of how most FS Material Attributes / Properties work, but his time to explain them may be limited.

I am not certain which FS2Kx / P3D / MSFS Material Attributes / Properties are now able to be displayed by MCX' 3D preview.


Blender's workspace 3D preview may also be limited in extent / accuracy of what it displays ...compared to MSFS at run time.


Generally speaking, Autodesk's documentation for 3D modeling Direct-X implementation has become surprisingly comprehensible in recent years, and IMHO, merits some exploration across its various products, especially 3DSMAX.

https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2023/ENU/?query=Fresnel Ramp

https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSM...understanding_physically_based_rendering_html


BTW:

if, at different viewing angles, the coordinates of the UV mapping could jump similarly to the gradients of the Fresnel Ramp, then this would be another small step towards solving the mystery

P.S. I wonder what that means?

Spoiler: Set atributes using ramp

View attachment 86278

See:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2023/ENU/?guid=GUID-08436626-73A4-4246-BD26-1F151C141B0E



PS: Unreal Engine (the declared L-M infrastructure intended for 'future' releases of Prepar3D) offers this take on Fresnel Ramp:

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/RenderingAndGraphics/Materials/HowTo/Fresnel/

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/...es-unreal-engine-for-aerospace-simulation-r-d

GaryGB

< 'Duke of URL' ...but not the author of "ChatGPT" >

 

[Joker]

Gary..)
I'm a little ashamed to admit what my inner voice whispered to me when I went through all these links and my brain began to melt a little ... I apologize for the revelations)
And my inner voice whispered to me:
-It's better to model low poly trees by hand than to leave work and dive into learning all these 3D tricks. Moreover, all these features are currently not available in Flightsim materials.

 

[GaryGB]

Gary..)
I'm a little ashamed to admit what my inner voice whispered to me when I went through all these links and my brain began to melt a little ... I apologize for the revelations)
And my inner voice whispered to me:
-It's better to model low poly trees by hand than to leave work and dive into learning all these 3D tricks. Moreover, all these features are currently not available in Flightsim materials.

MSFS SDK offers a new implementation of Material Attributes / Properties:

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/ht...Max_Plugin/Materials.htm?rhhlterm=FresnelFade

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/Asset_Creation/3DS_Max_Plugin/Materials.htm

I believe Asobo has their work cut out for them in better explaining the obscurities of Fresnel Fade in the MSFS SDK Docs.


I also anticipate that eventually we may all be able to better understand how MS-Asobo and/or BlackShark A.I. implemented Fresnel Fade as a Material Attribute / Property for MSFS 3D objects (especially trees) ...once we all have unrestricted access to them.


The trees made available via MSFS SDK Objects pick list do not appear to be what we see at run time as "Autogen annotations".

Has anyone accessed any trees available via MSFS' Objects pick list ...that are identical to any "Autogen annotations" seen at run time ?

If so, we should be able to load them into Arno's MCX and examine the Material Attributes / Properties for mapped "textures".

GaryGB

 

[Joker]

Has anyone accessed any trees available via MSFS' Objects pick list ...that are identical to any "Autogen annotations" seen at run time ?

GaryGB

On one of the forums, I managed to read that asobo trees are located somewhere on their servers. And we only have access to change their properties in ***.xml files, which we will then compile following the example of SimpleBiomes SDK.
It's a bit counter-intuitive for me as there is a pretty clear guide to custom biomes and textures.

SimpleBiomes

docs.flightsimulator.com

The Material Inspector

docs.flightsimulator.com

Although, to be honest, I also could not achieve anything through the instructions of the SDK. At best, in my MSFS only bare translucent polygons appeared, and I could not apply my custom texture to them. The fact that everything was in perfect order with the texture - I have absolutely no doubt, because it was the default texture of asobo trees, which I only renamed, previously, as a test, repainting only the color of the trees in red
And... yes! These "lonely" polygons always turned their faces on me. And they were translucent, and looked exactly like the Fresnel Fade material.