176 replies to this topic

[3199E5kennetharry]

Just had a quick round first thing that struck me was the colours  fantastic, the play was nice no troubles, i found all the back ground looked real thought I was there.

[KenR]

Pano and sky look great in game, really adds to course realism. Would like to see this become a feature in all new courses, along with 3d grass. Sort of gives the community PG 1.5.

[Skunky]

course plays and looks great, i have always had my dynamic skys on
with them off now this one is a real winner can't wait to see what you come up with next.
great work there keep it coming. as for it being released on PGLS i sent Mark the link as i always do
when a course is put up here on the PP forums to help keep things fresh and caught up with there on the PGLS site.
sorry if that is not ok, but if a course is released here why is it not ok to keep the sites that keep this game alive up to date too?
 
thanks much for all the great courses you put out
to keep us going.

dave i get it,but this course is still beta,pin positions need to be looked at,im still tweaking the pano,and a few other things,please tell mark to label this beta.

[✠ davef ✠]

dave i get it,but this course is still beta,pin positions need to be looked at,im still tweaking the pano,and a few other things,please tell mark to label this beta.

will do

[axe360]

.

[shimonko]

Looks really nice, Skunky.

Just regarding your concern with resolutions and file sizes - HDR images contain a far greater range of brightness values than the standard 256 levels of brightness a standard 8 bits per channel (24 bit per pixel) RGB image can represent (i.e. higher dynamic range). This is fantastic when the HDR image is used for scene lighting as more realistic lighting across the scene can be calculated, but JNPG won't be hooking it up to its lighting solution.
 

We'll just be seeing the HDR image as a background, on a low dynamic range monitor - meaning the 32 bits per channel of lighting information they have get wasted. This won't pointlessly increase your build size as the TrueColor import setting will convert them to 8 bits per channel anyway.  So 245 MB will be more like a quarter of that. You could convert in Photoshop first to a standard 24 bpp RGB JPG if you didn't want a huge file sitting in your project being a pain for backup purposes.

 

It's the panoramic format that you are really after here that HDRI skies just happen to use.

 

If you're concerned about the blurriness (and I think looks ok), you can convert a really high resolution spherical or equirectangular HDRI image into a cubic map for Unity's 6-sided skybox where each of the 6 sides has a 8192x8192 resolution. Bigger build size again, but could be worth it. I don't follow the forum here much, but from this thread, it sounds like DropZone or Birdie would know about performance implications here.

[Skunky]

good information shimonko,i thought about that very thing,6 sided skybox with the higher rez.might try it just to see what if any it helps.ive allready added hdri to 2 other courses and it really adds another dimension to the gameplay,and if someone dosent like the effect ,just turn on dynamic sky.no harm to include it.
heres a pano i thru into shadow creek even though its not a desert themed pano it works well,havent found a desert hdri yet.

[shimonko]

Agree, it looks fantastic - like 3d grass, overlay & terrain mesh blending -  another dimension. I can't imagine what PG courses will look like in a few years.

It's one negative of being a simulator player - projectors/screens currently just can't match the beauty you see on a monitor and I get sad every time I see JNPG this way.

[Dropzone73]

Big mountains in a skybox look superb in a screenshot but the downside is that the mountain is a part of the sky. You can easily see that the sky isn't behind the mountain, but part of it. So it's also a 2D effect which isn't so nice in a 3D game.

 

So I'd prefare skyboxes without high mountains or hills or any near objects in them. Far away mountains, forests etc. are fine.

[Skunky]

Big mountains in a skybox look superb in a screenshot but the downside is that the mountain is a part of the sky. You can easily see that the sky isn't behind the mountain, but part of it. So it's also a 2D effect which isn't so nice in a 3D game.
 
So I'd prefare skyboxes without high mountains or hills or any near objects in them. Far away mountains, forests etc. are fine.

yes, when you use close up, the 2d sticks out like a sore thumb. best to use only far in the distance hdri's or skys only hdri's

[KenR]

2d or not, the Pano introduces a new dimension (no pun intended) to PG. It adds more realism and an increased natural look to the course. Also, there are some designers who will not add proper perimeter work to their designs because they fear adding 3d objects (trees, bushes, etc.) impacts frame rates too much, and they don't like using 2d sprites apparently. In my view this seriously impacts the quality of those courses, so much so that personally I won't d/l or keep those courses in my library. Perhaps adding a Pano to their design would solve this issue and increase the quality of their work.

At any rate I like the look the Pano brings to the course and hope to see more designers consider using them.

[Buck]

there are some designers who will not add proper perimeter work to their designs because they fear adding 3d objects (trees, bushes, etc.) impacts frame rates too much, and they don't like using 2d sprites apparently. In my view this seriously impacts the quality of those courses, so much so that personally I won't d/l or keep those courses in my library. 

 

I totally agree Ken.

There are some courses that look really bad outside the boundaries of the course itself, which is seen all the time if you use the Follow cam

[Stingreye]

I totally agree Ken.
There are some courses that look really bad outside the boundaries of the course itself, which is seen all the time if you use the Follow cam

Then you have Justin’s courses that not only have details outside, even the brands on the semi trucks in the yard are correct!!

[luetze]

The return of the Pano! Fantastic work, Skunky Looks much more Links style. Always missed them in JNPG.

[Skunky]

starting to make some headway on these panos,i have found you want to use the largest one you can find,this one is 16k,around 387 megs,when you change it to jpeg and import it ,you can resize to 8192x8192 as the final result,it will increase your course size by 125megs,but does not affect FPS.its not perfect but its really an improvement if you like playing with dynamic sky off.found the perfect one for augusta.you dont see alot of it while playing the course,but there are a few tee shots that are just amazing to look at.

[Birdie]

Really a nice one! Mine is a 15k and i think also about 350mb but after import i think it's about 40-45mb. I didn't notice a difference between compressed and truecolor and tried all kinds of different settings so i keep it compressed. But if it doesn't affect fps and if size doesn't matter...

[bortimus]

Really liking how much that adds to the overall feel of the course. Nice!

[jt83]

...personally I won't d/l or keep those courses in my library.

 

A bit harsh considering there aren't that many top gun designers who make the entire plot realistic.

[Volker]

Fantastic to see this. Great work and enthusiasm, Skunky.

I hope there soon will be a course with pano available that is no "Trump-Course", so that I can also play it

[Skunky]

A bit harsh considering there aren't that many top gun designers who make the entire plot realistic.

i sure dont make the entire plot realistic,outside of the course boundries im pretty dang sloppy,really dont see why you would finish out something you will never see   in normal play ,and add unnessery FPS.its hard enough to keep FPS down as it is.if FPS  wasent an issue i would finish it out everytime.if you fly around the out side of my courses you will be very dissapointed.