Where ALS sucks (or not)

[valery]

Hi,
this morning, I was trying to make interior shadows for ALS. Why ALS do not compute this itself is still a mystery to me (though dev seems to have some reasons to ignore shadows with ALS, it's still a mystery why a GL renderer do not render shadows by himself).
Anyway, cubemaps done, effect.eff done, etc.. ok, let's try ... sucks: some objects display shadows, some others not. Trying many things, but in fact: trouble comes when you use two effects on the same object: only the first effect is rendered, the second one is completely bypassed.
So, you cannot have a shadow effect on your main panel, and a light effect at the same time: you must choose only one !

I really don't want to put my hands in the FG code, 1st I don't have time for this, 2cd I'm not sure to be able to understand all the mess w/o heps, 3rd the team is so ennoying and blablah'ing I don't want to start a "one year" long discussion for 10 lines of code. So, no shadows on my main panel, I prefer to keep my beautiful ligthning effect.

But perhaps there's a tradeoff, perhaps someone here knows how to solve this trouble, or perhaps I misunderstand something ...
Thanks,

[IAHM-COL]

I can confirm your assessments.

The most important one: in FG you cannot have more than one effect per object.

The effect with the name "combined" rendering is able to compute combined effects and apply per example lightmaps, normal maps and reflect shaders (we already used it on the bell fuselage)

I don't know if it can be used for combining more or different effects as needed like shadows and other als stuff. But it's an idea to explore.

The code is not source, but you find it in FG data effects directory.

[valery]

Thanks, I hoped a solution, perhaps with future FG ...
One other limitation I found this morning: you cannot differenciate a combined-effect from ALS and Rembrandt. eg. :

Code: Select all

   
<effect>
   <inherits-from>Effects/instruments-1-lights2</inherits-from>
       <condition>
            <property>sim/rendering/rembrandt/enabled</property>
       </condition>
   <object-name>PamelaBoobs</object-name>
</effect>


With the code above, ALS will still use the effect, the <condition> tag is completely ignored. Very weird too.

[IAHM-COL]

Can you apply a condition like that in any (other) FG effect?

(I had seen sometimes the use of conditionals to apply _or not_ an effect. I am just not sure where you apply or howto code such preprocessors)

****

Edit: LMAO!!

Code: Select all

   
<effect>

   <object-name>PamelaBoobs</object-name>
</effect>


How about instead something more "genetically" relevant (vs Plastic)

Code: Select all

   
<effect>

   <object-name>Dolly_sUdder</object-name>
</effect>


[valery]

It's a matter of taste ! I prefer her when she had blond hair, and more young, not with this wig (she's looking terrific here, ravages of time probably)

[valery]

I don't know if it can be used for combining more or different effects as needed like shadows and other als stuff. But it's an idea to explore.

I was thinking about this since your last message: one way to explore is to dev our own shader that will do the job. Docs/README.Effects has some nice informations, GLSL dev is a bit old for me, but it could be a chance to investigate this way in order to refresh my knowledges. Next todo ... but I must finalize my engines before anything else (I was making a pause until next week, some headaches you know ...)
CU

[KB7]

Code: Select all

   
<effect>

   <object-name>Dolly_sUdder</object-name>
</effect>


I read that as "Dolly Slider," and thought you were going to incorporate a slide control to move one's sheep around the cockpit.

That control, from one aircraft to another, would be very easy to clone.