Release: Advanced Renderer v. 1.1 beta 1

[Schmackbolzen]

Yes, if a constant value is not enough, then you need to craft special roughness/metalness maps. Otherwise just create a new entry in materials.json or use an existing one which is working for that.

Since a lot people asked about that (especially custom planet textures) I added some text about it to my release post.

@NeoTendar: Thanks! Yeah you can leave them empty if you do not need any text.

[A Former User]

So only metal textures having overbloom effect?

[Schmackbolzen]

For PBR rendering this also depends on your light source. With old lighting, the light intensity was in range from 0-1. With PBR you can have 0-infinite (or rather max float, due to hardware limitations). This is why I added tonemapping. It makes it look more like film (yes, analog film) would behave. I will try to explain this later in more detail in my documentation.

In short if you don’t want to have it so bright:

• Change roughness of material
• Reduce light color intensity of light source or reduce its range

Note that the viewing angle also plays a role.

[A Former User]

I use vanilla FL - not modded. Yes. Old lightning works well.
Why not to release these short answers directly for vanilla?

Tried other settings: much better

[Schmackbolzen]

The default settings in materials.json are more a rough orientation. They are used in our mod, where I have proper roughness and normal maps.
Note that I released the beta also so that people can understand better how PBR works. You will have to adapt your mod if you want to use it.
Also what you disabled there is the tonemapping, which just caps the maximum light value to 1. It is not a fix.
There will be another factor you can change soon: It is the exposure value, which already is used and currently set to a fixed value. I did not add this on purpose yet, because I am afraid people will use it wrong.
The idea is that you can change it in the config, or that I allow a value to be set per system. I also will experiment with automatic exposure control later.

[A Former User]

Used recommendations!
All Materials.json settings just not more than 0.2

Materials.json
Config.json

As you can see - no more overexposure (over local contrast).
P.S. Btw i have used graphically patched freelancer.exe before - sooooorry

[A Former User]

About photography - there is fun feature at Reshade = LUT.
You may use LUTs from Photoshop, Lightroom, etc
Might do add something similar to tonemapping option?

[A Former User]

Final variant for Vanilla Freelancer:

"Roughness" : 0.6
"Metalness" : 0.2

config.cfg
materials.json

Now there is no local overexposure at all.

[A Former User]

Light sources and headlight are not working at my mod.
And i have only Directional lightsources.

With: https://i.imgur.com/JnVNG1J.png
Without: https://i.imgur.com/VX1MzAd.png

[IrateRedKite]

@HeIIoween Looks like point light sources aren’t actually in just yet! I suspect they’re on the to-do list, these are also something I am eagerly awaiting

[Schmackbolzen]

To make this more clear I added it to the known issues list.
I disabled the point lights because vanilla FL uses them in many systems for fake planet ambient light reflections, which look weird without shadows. Also if those lights have shadows enabled they are too close to objects and the shadows break.

I will add a developer menu soon where you will be able to enable them. But if you don’t change the system inis lighting will be weird then at those places.

I never tested spot lights, so I will have to enable them and see if it works. They will for now not have shadows, though. If they work I will enable them by default.

I will add some other useful stuff to this menu, like reloading all textures (only in FLARDATA\textures), reloading the materials.json, reloading shaders and I also think about adding adoxa’s hook for reloading the system in case it also reloads the models (not tested yet). This should really help for live testing stuff.

Also as I already wrote in discord chat to @HeIIoween, you should not reduce metalness too much if the material is metal. I just write it here again so that people do not get bad advice. You can see here, what happens if you do that (it behaves more like e.g. plastic or ceramic).

I also added some more PBR links to the documentation (more to come).

[A Former User]

@IrateRedKite @Schmackbolzen i have got at 1st 1st post about Directional light. Thanks about PBR and links

Problem, that i do not know what type of light gives this explosion - is it spot, point or directional or some sort of inference of light?

effect_explosions.ini

[Effect]
nickname = explosion_br_elite
effect_type = EFT_EXPLOSION_SHIP
vis_effect = gf_explosion_br_ship02
snd_effect = med_explosion1
lgt_effect = elite_flash_to_red ; <-- enables light source (type?)
lgt_range_scale = 30 ; scale of light
lgt_radius = 30 ; radius

lightanim.ini

[LightAnim]
name = elite_flash_to_red
frame = 0, 0, 0, 0, 0.1
frame = 0.3, 0, 0, 0, 0.1
frame = 0.5, 255, 225, 128, 0.7
frame = 0.8, 255, 200, 128, 0.9
frame = 2, 55, 0, 0, 0.1
;; note - even 2 frames are enough to enable light

[Schmackbolzen]

I had the explosion lights working before. The thing is FL likes to fake lighting stuff with vertex colors - so I do not want to answer that right now without further testing.

Edit: I tested it and explosion lights work again after enabling point lights. So I suggest you just test the next version I will release (should be in the next weeks).

[Schmackbolzen]

I updated the documentation thread with instructions how to fix problems with DPI scaling.
Also I forgot to mention which format the normal/rougness/metalness maps use. This is also in the documentation now.

[Schmackbolzen]

I finished beta 2.1: Download beta 2.1

The focus was mainly rendering bugs / improvements.
Changes are:

• Fixed rendering bugs with old lighting (affects also starspheres etc.)
• Made old lighting very similar to FL lighting (including cubemaps)
• Had a nice idea for nebula ambient lighting. It now is complete PBR lighting
• Added option to enable point lights for new lighting. Make sure to remove e.g fake planet reflection point lights from FL system inis before enabling it (will look weird, since planets are like suns then). To enable it, set EnablePointLights=1 in config.cfg.

[Timmy51m]

Well this is a surprise, still slaving away after all these years Schmack. Well done.

[Schmackbolzen]

Thanks Will continue and currently working on the next features (this time the focus is helping modders).

[Timmy51m]

@Schmackbolzen Always just nice now and then to see what names are still around doing stuff, happy to see you’re one of them. Take care man, look forward to checking this out sometime.

[Schmackbolzen]

I finished beta 2.2: Download beta 2.2

Example video: FLAR beta 2.2.mp4

The focus was mainly helping modders and smaller improvements.

Changes are:

• Added additional developer options window which allows you to reload textures within “FLARDATA\Textures” folder, reload shader, reload “materials.json” file, edit materials live and save the changes (see video for details)
• Screenshots are now saved as PNG
• Existing keyboard hook will now be recognized and handled accordingly (meaning no crash anymore)
• Offset hack for low resolution texture problem on some PCs is now applied on startup
• Minor shader cleanup

Note: Texture preview for non power of two texture sizes does currently not work, as the GUI I use does not support it (will fix it later)

To use the new developer options window you have to add the additional key bind “USER_RADAR” the same way as I described for the settings window in my first post.

@Timmy51m Thanks Let me know what you think once you checked it out!

[domo]

Great. I hope this fixes the lighting / shadow bug on faces (Windows 10/11) since it’s per pixel not per vertex anymore. I just wonder, if there is a texture pack for all the PBR textures (normal, roughness, etc). Otherwsie it looks flat and weird sometimes.