82 replies to this topic

[LeadBalloon]

Hard, white, and dangerous to know.

[Peter Wilding]

Those shots are stunning Mark. Shots 1 and 4 for me are the best.

[-Toshiba-]

OMG, Can't wait to try it.

[gwolb]

Sounds like it may be out this Friday, YIPPY!

[Chris Norris]

Indeed Friday    And it's a mammoth update.. with much more to follow in the coming weeks. Truthfully, we will release this in stages. The main highlights of the friday update are to introduce SHD clouds to FSX for the first time, and this isn't a small amount.. it's truly an enormous amount of work. Also much new functionality and improvements with FEX itself, dynamic theme creation and control is much greater and easier than before.

Following updates including Airport Environments, new water stuff   , new weather stuff and more, will gradually be released.

[gwolb]

Cool, cant wait for Friday, great job! looks amazing, and from some of the pics of the airport textures will be just as good.  THanks for all of the hard work!!!

[Valcor]

Congrats on upcoming release, looks great.  

The Whisper Whisper and Softly Does It themes looks really nice.

[Chris Norris]

Hi folks,

Peter and I are pleased to announce that our FEX SHD update will be going to the servers tomorrow in time to download over the weekend.

The update is a very substantial one as previously suggested and weighs in at around 1GB in size (compressed). This will install directly into your existing copy of FEX and in fact relies on an existing installation to function.

Contained within the update is approximately 6GB's of new graphical artwork and content, so please ensure you have available space on your hard-drive if you want the update. This represents the culmination of a massive amount of work carried out since we launched FEX, although there is yet more coming.

Here are the key points of this update:

1. All new SHD Cloud content, this is all available up to a resolution of 4096x4096 although like all FEX material can be sized to your preference. The SHD stuff basically will look a lot better than the original FEX material at any size.

2. Many changes to the FEX UI, particularly on the designers. This improves work flow and makes it much easier to create new cloud themes. This feature is a huge part of FEX and we hope that we have made it intuitive to use as well as fun to use.

3. Performance enhancements. The entire gui performance is much improved, with less flickering when changing views and better memory performance. More complex and lengthy tasks have been moved onto additional program threads to improve the feel of the application.

4. Bug fixes. Several bugs have been fixed since launch within this update. Too boring to explain the list here .

5. Live error reporting. FEX now features error reporting directly to the developers, i.e: me. The reason for this is if you get a crash or an unexpected problem then it enables me to quickly identify the reason. This will greatly assist in support issues and for releasing quick fixes where needed. Like many large applications, whilst I believe it to be stable there is always the possibility for bugs.

6. User information recovery. FEX now features a Forgot Password function within the application which can email you with your credentials.

7. Screenshot functionality. In each designer you can now manually attach screenshots to themes, it will automatically resize and compress the file for you allowing you to export the screenshots readily presented to post to the web or share with friends. This new feature gives the ability to get shots like the best screen shot takers out there without having to edit in packages like Photoshop. It allows the user to add some sharpening and to boost contrast as well as framing the shot nicely in a border with personal details and scene information as required.

8. Improved algorithms will now allow a more advanced and progressive control over the types of clouds the user requires. This allows a denser and more richly textured cloudscape. Clouds can now be fuller and more puffy on both Cumulus and Stratus clouds.

9. New artwork textures for the SHD textures allows a more creative input from the user to create special looks from light and airy to deep and moody storm clouds. We also have an option for a “Bright White" or “Blue White".

10. EXTREME clouds option provides the option of getting very dramatic extreme looking clouds for those that like a more exciting look.

11. Additional softness is now available to get a more delicate looking cloud.

Now there is more..

In the past months we have created much new stuff yet to go into FEX including Suns & Moons along with a Designer mode for both. Airport Environments, again with a fully controllable Designer. New water stuff including a full shader designer mode as well as in-sim-lighting enhancements. As well of course as the weather component.

Now these things require a bit more of a wait to polish off and deliver into FEX. However the good news is a change of approach on how we deliver this. We have taken the decision based on our BETA testers feedback that we should deliver what we have now and then update frequently in the coming weeks to introduce the new functionality piece by piece. This enables you to use the material and to see it grow dramatically and be polished along the route. This will also be true for the weather component, i.e: rather than giving you a completely finished product it will be available as a beta implementation at the earliest opportunity and available to ALL FEX customers. The advantage will be to all that early feedback can help to improve these features as they are developed.

Being entirely honest tomorrow we wanted to deliver more than we were able to squeeze into the build, however we felt that now is the right time to deliver with a further update coming in the next couple of weeks to bring a whole new tab to the Cloud part of FEX. Also automatic generation of screenshots will be ready.

Please consider that this update at this time is to be considered a public release candidate. It therefore is an optional update and due to the scale of the update with the sheer amount of code and artwork that has changed I fully expect a few minor bugs and I respectfully ask you to also, although it on the most part has been with our BETA team for weeks with no significant problems. I will fix any issues that do come to the surface as soon as possible naturally.

For those that don't have FEX yet, please remember that we have a full 30 day money back offer to try FEX out before you decide to keep it or not. And tomorrow maybe a good time to check it out.  

Regards,

Chris

[rsvette1234]

Awesome awesome stuff, thanks for all the incredible hard work.  

Regards, Rich

[Gizmo]

Fantastic news im really glad you guys decided to take the bit by bit approach & I really look forward to trying out all your hard work,the shots posted here and at the FEX community boards all look amazing from one end of the spectrum to the other..i just hope the update servers can take the strain!

One quick question if i may(i did post this over at the FEX support board but it didn't get answered) & that is have you guys been able to work in(or will you be)any enchancement for the water textures under DX10 mode..from my own testing and water normal map making i know that Aces added 3 extra texture layers to the DX10 high shader but unforunatly they decided to just copy and paste there low res blocky mess of a water normal map to 2 of those layers,and without replacements they kinda mess up the high res FEX replacements

Cheers
Giz

[Chris Norris]

Hi Giz :-)

Thanks for the comments, and sorry I missed your simforums question!

In respect of DX10, our shader designer replaces the DX10 shader with a much much more realistic look to the water, it surpasses the DX9 shader in both performance and appearance, the shader works hand in hand with both the normal maps and also the underlying water texture. This is basically almost ready, I had hoped to get it into this build for tomorrow but it just wasn't quite there.. basically it will follow in a further update as soon as possible.

I suspect the default implementation of water was not quite ready when Microsoft went gold with SP2 and acceleration hence the 3 textures just being direct copies of each other.

I will get you some screenshots later of it in action.

Warm regards,

Chris

[Gizmo]

Hi Chirs

Many thanks for your detailed reply

Its very interesting that you'll be replacing the full water shader,Ive seen how much diffrents a few tweaks to the water shader can make to FSX both from Ivagars Dx9 water tweak posted here way back and from the work that the FSWC guys have been doing

My own replacements have mainly been around replacing the water normals to try & get a wider ocean swell effect
here's a shot of what im upto atm




I look forward to you shots of your new water shader sounds very cool indeed

Im sure Aces would have liked to do more with FSX DX10 & i did feel a little let down by it & there lack of surpport for it since but thats been beat to death in a 1000 post since,im just glad guys like you and peter have the talent,skill & imagination to continue to improve FSX for us,infact the way this new update is going to make FSX look i find it hard to imagine that Aces can surpass or even draw level with it in FSXI !

P.S. don't fancy having a go at hacking in Crepuscular rays for us do you now that would really rock

Cheers
Giz

[Faucett]

Fantastic, fantastic - I cannot wait to download this weekend.  Thanks for all the hard work you guys put into this - it must be a labor of love!

Silly question - this update will be fine with FS SP1 and XP, yes?

[Chris Norris]

Gizmo:

Nice look there, it is actually very realistic that the swell visible from the air often is running in a different direction to the waves on the surface, I frequently fly from the UK to France and Belguim and see this regularly, your normals capture this effect very well.

Faucett:

Thank you, it's support that keeps us going (well that and the world's supply of strong coffee). You will pleased to know it will continue to work with SP1 and XP just as FEX did at release. Obviously in respect of shaders the DX10 shader is simply not installed if your running SP1 so no detremental effects. There are many people running on SP1 still to my understanding therefore we will continue to support SP1 alongside SP2.

[Faucett]

^Awesome - thanks!

[Peter Wilding]

Some great shots from Maurice

[gwolb]

Nice, but release the update already! I can go home and d/l at lunch in 4 hours and have by the time I get home, so get to it!

[Chris Norris]

Compiling the build now, the installer takes a huge amount of time to compress stuff so I think another hour till that is ready then the upload. The upload could take approximately 4 hours however  

Will keep posted on progress.  

[Gizmo]

Thanks for the heads up Chris i guess we'll be burning the midnight oil with the download hehe
& thanks for the kind words on my water normals glad you like it

I don't fly myself unless(wish i had the £'s for it though)im a passanger on a 747 jetting off on holiday somewhere
so my observations of ocean swells come from youtube and the BBC's blueplanet

Cheers
Gizmo

Edited by Gizmo, 20 June 2008 - 11:54 AM.

[gwolb]

yea, thanks for the update, not trying to be a pain.  that will still put it at about 2 hours before I get home from work, and I can still download tonight.  Should make for a good weekend.