SkyGfx: PS2, Xbox and Mobile graphics for PC

[Minhkute360]

About sunglare effect I mean exactly using the texture "coronastar" in particle.txd (for e.g) to do get it rendered on vehicle body and being rendered as ENV Map (dynamically rotated/changed position by camera movement), also in more professional way: the texture (coronastar) is "deformed" & opacity changed depending on its current position on car body (i.e by camera view) - i.e the "form" of car model will definite the above changes of the texture. (For e.g the texture will be "stretched" when being rendered in places that near the "edge" of the car body (edges on bumper,trunk,roof...).

 

(Sorry for rough description, because I couldn't post any pic here for some reason, searching on google image not get me some. Hope u can understand)

[The Hero]

No sorry, i don't understand what you mean at all.

 

So i've been looking into the lighting flash. To me it looks like a bug in the PS2 version that only the sky flashes. I'm not quite sure yet why it works differently on PS2 but I suspect that lights are just generally handled differently there. This could also explain why i've had problems with ambient colors in other places. Should investigate this further but I don't know if I can do anything for the next release.

Edited July 2, 2017 by The Hero

[Crspy]

 

Maybe some other effects from III/Vice City? Like vehicle headlight/taillight/siren flare effect?

Or thats too complicated/not worth it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please no, very sure that they will look awful on SA.

 

 

Well , someone kind of made it for SA as a cleo script ( and replacing some textures ) but yeah it looks kinda aweful

have a look:

 

 

 

 

[eagle152]

I know about that. But in Vice City it looked different.

[The Hero]

Lock-on.

The Lock-on on PC is small and has no alpha:

 

 

On PS2, it was bigger and with alpha:

 

 

Fixed transparency. Size just depends on resolution, it's not scaled.

[Rachel Amber]

Maybe some other effects from III/Vice City? Like vehicle headlight/taillight/siren flare effect?

Or thats too complicated/not worth it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please no, very sure that they will look awful on SA.

 

 

But it would look cool IN GTA VCS PC

[Ash_735]

[scotticus1]

Hi guys. I'm new to this forum and GTA modding as a whole. I came across this bizarre blue-rotating-cube glitch last night. I looked all over the place but couldn't find anything identical to it. I'm using the 2dfx and skygfx graphics mods. When I remove skygfx.asi from the scripts folder the issue clears up. I was wondering if any of you had seen this before and/or had any info on it. Thank you in advance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXzi41FaCu0&feature=youtu.be

[Minhkute360]

No sorry, i don't understand what you mean at all.

 

 

I mean this (finally found correct explanation): https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?297844-Sun-glare-from-reflective-metal-objects

[The Hero]

Ok, so like a bright specular light and a bloom filter. I won't do it for the next version but I'm open to the idea of implementing radiosity as a proper bloom filter, I think that's kinda what it's meant to be.

 

scotticus1: Looks like the thing that happens when you use SAMP graphics restore.

 

As soon as ASH is done with the car reflections I'll release the next version (possibly on friday). Until then, state your wishes.

Yesterday I also finally did the PS2 rain grain. I just had to replace the function I had already written, the strength calculation was the same between PC and PS2 after all...but of course I had to confirm this. I also changed the random number generator that's used to generate the grain to be like the one used on the PS2 and stole some VU interpreter code from pcsx2 for that

 

EDIT: Another thing I may want to do is a make a video that explains and shows all settings. On the one hand I feel like making a video is a bit stupid as opposed to writing sh*t down. On the other hand I feel like it would maybe help some people understand better what the settings even do. Thoughts?

Edited July 3, 2017 by The Hero

[inadequate]

A video would be cool. You will show all of the amazing skygfx features to the people and totally worth it.

__

 

Also, I have another PS2 difference (at least it seems), I noticed it a few days ago. The dirt amount when you're driving through the countryside or a dirt road, it seems to be more on the PS2 than the PC version. Try going to Catalina's safehouse on the PS2 version and you will notice the same thing as me, I think. I don't know if the PS2 resolution is making the dirt smoke effect higher though.

 

Reference picture:

 

 

 

 

[TJGM]

 

Maybe some other effects from III/Vice City? Like vehicle headlight/taillight/siren flare effect?

Or thats too complicated/not worth it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please no, very sure that they will look awful on SA.

 

It really wouldn't. The option for it would be nice, with some texture tweaking on your own side, this could look really nice.

[scotticus1]

Hey you were absolutely right The Hero. Thank you very much.

[gts.]

I hope that you can implement the PS2's moonphases in the upcoming release. SP's ones are NTA's code, they doesn't work in windowed mode and they doesn't look like the PS2 ones. They look like the moon was cut while PS2 ones are "smoother", has some kind of "fade" effect.

Edited July 3, 2017 by gts.

[iiCriminnaaL]

 

 

Maybe some other effects from III/Vice City? Like vehicle headlight/taillight/siren flare effect?

Or thats too complicated/not worth it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please no, very sure that they will look awful on SA.

 

 

Well , someone kind of made it for SA as a cleo script ( and replacing some textures ) but yeah it looks kinda aweful

have a look:

 

 

 

 

 

That's because he made it for all of the game lights. In VC, it's only in the red light in the back of the vehicles, and maybe in the headlights. In addition, his mod wasn't that close to VC's effects, a bit close, but not exactly.

 

Really hope that SkyGFX's next version includes such an option, VC's headlights and red taillight effects, but not the rest of the game's lights as well. Maybe VC's glare and lens flare's textures should be added in another option, so people can decide if they want VC's lens glares but with SA's glare textures, with VC's, or totally disable them both.

 

Also, in GTA III (maybe VC too, not sure) there's some kind of effect (mostly glare effect) caused by the emergency and police car sirens, it was cut later in San Andreas. Will be great to have it in SkyGFX too.

 

EDIT: Alongside the missing lens flare/glare of the red taillights of GTA SA's vehicles, the red light's reflection is broken too, you can't see its effect on the road or wherever, unlike the headlights, their effect can be seen.

 

Was going to forget something! I don't know if SkyGFX is related to such an effect, but I guess yes; new version should include an option that activates the effect of blood drops on screen, and water drops on screen when raining or riding a boat, just like in GTA VC.

Edited July 3, 2017 by Kane49

[Claude_Lib]

So I've been looking into the lighting flash. To me it looks like a bug in the PS2 version that only the sky flashes.

It might be a bug, but IMHO it actually looks better, because on PC when lightning strikes, the ground turns almost completely white, while cars look like black silhouettes, and it looks just plain awful.

 

 

Also, in GTA III (maybe VC too, not sure) there's some kind of effect or (mostly glare effect) caused by the emergency and police car sirens, it was cut later in San Andreas. Will be good to be added in SkyGFX too.

You mean hexagons going through the center of the screen? Yeah, would be nice, I think.

[The Hero]

Honestly I like the PC lightning flash better, but it looks like I have to check out the PS2 lighting again anyway. I've had so many problems with the PC lighting already and I think the reason is simply that some PS2 code (lighting callback?) doesn't use the actual RW lights that are managed by the game but the timecycle values directly. This would mean that stuff like lightning flash colors, bright 3d marker colors or vision fx colors (which are used in the PC version) are actually ignored and that every lighting CB handles that stuff itself. And presumably they forgot to handle lightning flashes in that code. I think I have two ini settings to cope with these lighting problems, but it looks like i just have to ignore the RW lighting and do it myself to get accurate PS2 behaviour.

[El Dorado]

whice is nice to see this mod being worked on again, not sure I like the vehicle sun glare effect

 

is it going to be "tweakable"?

 

like, glare size, brightness intensity, rendering distance, etc

[The Hero]

No, i literally just inserted a function call in CAutomobile's prerender function. You can still turn it off if you don't like it (even toggle at runtime), but I'm not messing with that thing. I only did it because it was easy.

Edited July 3, 2017 by The Hero

[LaDiDa]

@Kane49: In SA the red taillights have working "reflections" for me, so it's probably an issue on your side

 

@TheHero: is there any significant difference between PC and PS2 raingrain filter, I always kinda disliked it on high resolutions, but I can understand the effect for the low res PS2's run at?

 

Also, is the alpha implementation done in the ''mobile port'' of SA an option in the next version or do you still want to do a more ''proper fix'' (or just let the damn thing slide for now)?

[The Hero]

The grain is done a bit differently. First it's a 64x64 texture instead of 256x256 and the pixel values are calculated a bit differently as well. The alpha thing can't be fixed. I do not consider what they did in the mobile version a good solution and am not very motivated to implement it.

[Igor Bogdanoff]

How about stories one, hm128 worked on. It has few issues, but if they were fixed it would look best.

[The Hero]

Link?

[Igor Bogdanoff]

Sadly im not on pc, but its used here http://gtaforums.com/topic/887066-gta-liberty-city-stories-2-vice-city-pc/OP or hm128 should be able to give u source

[inadequate]

Wrong thread Tomasak, it is here.

[gts.]

And this one: http://gtaforums.com/topic/704426-grand-theft-auto-stories/page-101?do=findComment&comment=1069462547

[The Hero]

Oh that. I think he wrote what he did in this thread as well. He just increased the alpha test value. This results in other bugs though, you can't fix it that easily.

[Igor Bogdanoff]

Yes i know, mainly models with transparency gets bugged. @gts @inadequate its about linking to surya + as mentioned i am not on pc and forums on mobile sucks

[The Hero]

My suspicion turned out to be right. I've reversed some PS2 code now (after losing a lot of work on my idb due to my stupidity) and it's quite clear that the building pipelines don't use the RW lights but something directly out of the timecycle. This explains why I had problems with some models in the converted PS2 map (interior of four dragons casino e.g.), the 3d markers (which use the building pipeline on PS2), and why lightning flashes don't affect buildings. The only thing that I don't understand is how vision fx colors can still work.

 

I hope this means I can implement the PS2 pipelines even more accurately. Originally I figured out a lot just by observation, 3 years later I'm finally reading the code that uploads the data.

Edited July 3, 2017 by The Hero

[iiCriminnaaL]

 

 

 

Maybe some other effects from III/Vice City? Like vehicle headlight/taillight/siren flare effect?

Or thats too complicated/not worth it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please no, very sure that they will look awful on SA.

 

Well , someone kind of made it for SA as a cleo script ( and replacing some textures ) but yeah it looks kinda aweful

have a look:

 

 

 

 

 

That's because he made it for all of the game lights. In VC, it's only in the red light in the back of the vehicles, and maybe in the headlights. In addition, his mod wasn't that close to VC's effects, a bit close, but not exactly.

 

Really hope that SkyGFX's next version includes such an option, VC's headlights and red taillight effects, but not the rest of the game's lights as well. Maybe VC's glare and lens flare's textures should be added in another option, so people can decide if they want VC's lens glares but with SA's glare textures, with VC's, or totally disable them both.

 

Also, in GTA III (maybe VC too, not sure) there's some kind of effect (mostly glare effect) caused by the emergency and police car sirens, it was cut later in San Andreas. Will be great to have it in SkyGFX too.

 

EDIT: Alongside the missing lens flare/glare of the red taillights of GTA SA's vehicles, the red light's reflection is broken too, you can't see its effect on the road or wherever, unlike the headlights, their effect can be seen.

 

Was going to forget something! I don't know if SkyGFX is related to such an effect, but I guess yes; new version should include an option that activates the effect of blood drops on screen, and water drops on screen when raining or riding a boat, just like in GTA VC.

In addition, can VCS marker colors be added? VCSMarkerColors=0/1

 

Currently, the only mod in whole GTA SA that includes VCS' marker colors is GTA VCSPCE's modification for SA.

 

Marker colors are: pink for mission markers (that kind of marker), and bright/light blue for triangle/diamond/door (whatever you can call it) markers.

Edited July 3, 2017 by Kane49