[WIP][1.9.x-1.12.x] Scatterer-atmospheric scattering (0.0838 - 14/08/2022) Scattering improvements, in-game atmo generation and multi-sun support

[blackrack]

Is this too obnoxious a sunglare?

 

 

[StarStryder]

40 minutes ago, blackrack said:

Is this too obnoxious a sunglare?

I would say so, but static images are the best to judge such things.  

[Joco223]

@blackrack Sunglare is a bit a too strong in the lower left part but it's pretty good

[Red Iron Crown]

I may be in the minority, but I can't stand lens flare. It's not a realistic effect, it's an artifact from camera lenses. Makes everything look like an action movie.

[blackrack]

 

19 minutes ago, Joco223 said:

@blackrack Sunglare is a bit a too strong in the lower left part but it's pretty good

1 hour ago, StarStryder said:

I would say so, but static images are the best to judge such things.  

11 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

I may be in the minority, but I can't stand lens flare. It's not a realistic effect, it's an artifact from camera lenses. Makes everything look like an action movie.

I personally like it when it's really subtle, so I'm trying to get it looking subtle now. And of course it will be togglable and configurable.

How does this look?

In space it might still be too strong.

@Proot get over here.

Edited February 5, 2016 by blackrack

[Joco223]

Maybe make it a bit less in space but at surface it's perfect

[taniwha]

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Makes everything look like an action movie.

A bad action movie, at that. Lens flares are a sign of shoddy camera work (in most cases, sometimes it can't be helped, but the camera man was probably grinding his teath).

[Death Engineering]

10 minutes ago, taniwha said:

A bad action movie, at that. Lens flares are a sign of shoddy camera work (in most cases, sometimes it can't be helped, but the camera man was probably grinding his teath).

Some directors add it in post-production.. 

http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/30/4788758/j-j-abrams-apologizes-for-his-overusing-lens-flares

 

[V8jester]

1 hour ago, blackrack said:

I personally like it when it's really subtle, so I'm trying to get it looking subtle now. And of course it will be togglable and configurable.

How does this look?

...

Out of curiosity... For those of us thy do kinda like the ridiculous unrealistic JJ Abrams style lens flares... Would we be able to utilize custom lens flares? Or more simply be able to make our own fairly easily?

But yes that does look cool! Didn't mean to dodge around ya and push my own question.

Edited February 5, 2016 by V8jester

[Proot]

1 hour ago, blackrack said:

@Proot get over here.

A lot of work lately. From tomorrow til the Monday I'll be 100% available four whatever you want/need.

[blackrack]

33 minutes ago, V8jester said:

Out of curiosity... For those of us thy do kinda like the ridiculous unrealistic JJ Abrams style lens flares... Would we be able to utilize custom lens flares? Or more simply be able to make our own fairly easily?

But yes that does look cool! Didn't mean to dodge around ya and push my own question.

Yes, I mean to make it configurable.

[V8jester]

2 hours ago, blackrack said:

Yes, I mean to make it configurable.

I must be blind. You did already say it would be configurable. Sorry Rack. Should have just let you do what you're good at. Thanks for all the hard work btw. We all very much appreciate everything.

[Errol]

5 hours ago, taniwha said:

A bad action movie, at that, Lens flares are a scharactersddy camera work (in most ca ses, sometimes it can't be helped, but the camera man was probably grinding his teath).

Actually lenses flares are a sign that the sun, or skme other bright light source, is in frame or shining directly into the lens. Different lenses have differently characteres to their flares, with cheaper lenses having larger more obvious flares. 

Edited February 5, 2016 by Errol

[cobbman11]

14 hours ago, blackrack said:

 

I personally like it when it's really subtle, so I'm trying to get it looking subtle now. And of course it will be togglable and configurable.

How does this look?

In space it might still be too strong.

@Proot get over here.

These look great! Personally, I can never have enough sun glare. :-p

[blackrack]

For people who want to disable the lens flare, what should I do? Give the option to leave everything as it is right now, with the scatterer simple sun texture in atmo and the stock one in space or maybe you want something else?

Edited February 6, 2016 by blackrack

[sebi.zzr]

17 minutes ago, blackrack said:

For people who want to disable the lens flare, what should I do? Give the option to leave everything as it is right now, with the scatterer simple sun texture in atmo and the stock one in space or maybe you want something else?

Can you use stock only?

[blackrack]

5 minutes ago, sebi.zzr said:

Can you use stock only?

Sure, but it won't look good in sunsets/sunrises, won't change color.

[sebi.zzr]

Ah,i see.Thank you for clarification.

[colmo]

19 hours ago, Errol said:

Actually lenses flares are a sign that the sun, or skme other bright light source, is in frame or shining directly into the lens. Different lenses have differently characteres to their flares, with cheaper lenses having larger more obvious flares. 

Some lenses are more prone than others - quality and complexity (more lens elements causing light to bounce around between them) play a part. I recall the Firefly series director (think it was Singer) actually sent back the lenses his crew were supplied because he wanted cheaper, more flare prone optics. It was a nod to the Western genre.

 

P.S. delighted this now works in Linux. Downside is I may now need to upgrade my GTX 660 card!

Edited February 6, 2016 by colmo

[benjee10]

On 5 February 2016 at 2:52 PM, taniwha said:

Lens flares are a sign of shoddy camera work

Yeah, that's just totally wrong. They're used for stylistic effect. Unless you're on a super low budget and have no time left and are just waving your camera around everywhere, ALL lens flares in movies have been specifically chosen by the director or the cinematographer. You can use them to create very different tones to a shot; maybe you want it to look very hot and emphasise the presence of the sun, or to give a sense of power to an authority figure by associating them with certain lights, or maybe you just to get a cool shot. You can buy lenses and filters purely to maximise the amount of lens flare that you get and give the image a certain textural 'feel.' Literally every lens (including the ones in your eye) will give a lens flare to some degree or another, because that's just how lenses work. When working on Gravity, Framestore spent a lot of time working out how lens flares would look in space with the different lenses they were emulating in the VFX, and the results are pretty beautiful and add a lot to the shots (think of the intermittently disappearing sun flare as Sandra Bullock's tether ripples in front of it) 

The bottom line is that lens flares are realistic and will always occur to some degree or another. It's just a question of what type of lens blackrack wants to emulate; cinematic/anamorphic, super 8mm, lens of a human eye, something in between etc. etc. Might even be interesting to go with a look inspired by the Apollo Hasselblad cameras:

[blackrack]

46 minutes ago, colmo said:

Some lenses are more prone than others - quality and complexity (more lens elements causing light to bounce around between them) play a part. I recall the Firefly series director (think it was Singer) actually sent back the lenses his crew were supplied because he wanted cheaper, more flare prone optics. It was a nod to the Western genre.

 

P.S. delighted this now works in Linux. Downside is I may now need to upgrade my GTX 660 card!

My old 560 Ti ran it very very well, so your GTX 660 should also be enough. Unless maybe if paired with EVE or at higher resolutions.

 

45 minutes ago, benjee10 said:

Yeah, that's just totally wrong. They're used for stylistic effect. Unless you're on a super low budget and have no time left and are just waving your camera around everywhere, ALL lens flares in movies have been specifically chosen by the director or the cinematographer. You can use them to create very different tones to a shot; maybe you want it to look very hot and emphasise the presence of the sun, or to give a sense of power to an authority figure by associating them with certain lights, or maybe you just to get a cool shot. You can buy lenses and filters purely to maximise the amount of lens flare that you get and give the image a certain textural 'feel.' Literally every lens (including the ones in your eye) will give a lens flare to some degree or another, because that's just how lenses work. When working on Gravity, Framestore spent a lot of time working out how lens flares would look in space with the different lenses they were emulating in the VFX, and the results are pretty beautiful and add a lot to the shots (think of the intermittently disappearing sun flare as Sandra Bullock's tether ripples in front of it) 

The bottom line is that lens flares are realistic and will always occur to some degree or another. It's just a question of what type of lens blackrack wants to emulate; cinematic/anamorphic, super 8mm, lens of a human eye, something in between etc. etc. Might even be interesting to go with a look inspired by the Apollo Hasselblad cameras:

Well, tbh my inspiration for this is space engine, not full anamorphic/cinematic but stylized.

I think I'm going to settle for this look:

Edited February 6, 2016 by blackrack

[Deizelpunk]

On ‎12‎/‎6‎/‎2015 at 4:39 PM, gkorgood said:

hey @blackrack, this is a project I started a few weeks ago, and when you asked for carriers the other day I decided to finish it!

It's based on an internet legend of a russian ekranoplan/aircraft carrier, which was really a bunch of images of an f14 that someone split in half, scaled up, and stuck a flight deck in the middle before stitching the tomcat back together. Mine doesn't have a runway to land F-14's on, but I was able to land an F-35B on it!

Damn! Can we get a craft file!?

[blackrack]

So I've ran into a big issue, I'm using raycasting to determine when to draw the sunglare and when to hide it, and it seems to work very well however the mountains in the distance don't seem to have any collliders (understandable for performance), which results in this:

 

It's only later when the sun is hidden behind the nearby grass that it works:

The stock sunglare deals with this by simply not dealing with it and always rendering behind everything: (disabled sky so you can see the flare better)

 

That is wrong imo and makes shots like these a lot less interesting as the glare and the flares will appear to be behind the craft and won't really give the effect of looking into a strong light source:

 

I could probably fix this by taking a look at the depth buffer but I would rather not for performance. Additionally since the flare is being rendered to the near camera, it can't access the native depth buffer of the far camera. This is not a problem in dx11 and opengl as I'm already using a custom depth buffer but in dx9 it would mean also having to use the custom depth buffer which is a bit slower than native.

Any ideas?

[Errol]

Does the stock sky do anything different when the sun goes behind a mountain that you can track, even if the stock sky isn't displayed, and use it as a flag for when to show flares?

[blackrack]

1 minute ago, Errol said:

Does the stock sky do anything different when the sun goes behind a mountain that you can track, even if the stock sky isn't displayed, and use it as a flag for when to show flares?

It doesn't, the stock sunglare is rendered behing objects by default, it doesn't actually check if it's behind mountains or not, only checks for nearby objects and celestial objects, definitely works with raycasting also.