G1000 screens lack contrast

[diamonddriller]

The base (background) color of the screens looks gray (quite a light gray), rather than black.  Consequently, the displays lack contrast.  I refreshed my memory of the real screens (haven't flown for a bit - as many of us haven't, sadly) in photos (and with Google and YouTube!), and the real G1000 looks a lot crisper - more like the pop-outs!

I tried the menu key on the FFD, where you can adjust brightness RW, but this isn't simulated.

 

[Cameron]

This is X-Plane's lighting from the sun at play.

[OuterMarker]

24 minutes ago, Cameron said:

This is X-Plane's lighting from the sun at play.

The display on the left belongs to the default C172 G1000 which is clearly readable at all times, this really needs to be looked into.

[Cameron]

Not every object (cockpit) and how X-Plane renders light is created equal. This has actually long been one of my X-Plane pet peeves. Cockpit sunlight angles just aren't great in general.

[diamonddriller]

I understand, Cameron, and you are absolutely correct about X-Plane 11's lighting..........    However, OuterMarker (earlier post) seems to agree that this could be improved.

For what it's worth, here's Carenado's Stationair taken on the same runway, and they seem to have beaten this problem, somehow.

The default Cessna's G1000 is not much better than the SR22, and the sun (or just light - even with cloudy conditions) seems to fade the screen whatever direction one is pointing to, with the exception of perhaps 40 degrees of direction.  Also, the filthy screens of the  default Cessna aren't much help.

It's a bit of a problem, RW, now and again, but this does look a bit worse (i.e. the Cirrus) than perhaps it needs to. After all, it is a sim

Thanks for looking at these posts so quickly.

[Cameron]

48 minutes ago, diamonddriller said:

For what it's worth, here's Carenado's Stationair taken on the same runway, and they seem to have beaten this problem, somehow.

To be clear, I'm not making excuses, I'm giving explanations.

 

X-Plane looks at the geometry of an object (fuselage, cockpit, windows) and determines how to bring light in. This is not something WE control.

 

A stationair has high wings. I would expect things to be shaded a bit better, as sun angles can't get through the high wing to the window as easily, so I suppose that makes sense. Additionally, I do believe that G1000 is part of their custom, old XP10 coding, which was not optimized for X-Plane's rendering engine in v11.

Nature of the beast. We can take a look, but on this one we can't make promises. X-Plane can be a little too smart.

[diamonddriller]

Yes, I take the point with the Stationair and  Carenado,  but the G1000 operation is XP11's.  Also, the high wing v. low wing point is true.

However, again, same runway, same time, same weather:  here's the Mooney I recently bought from you v. the SR22.   Quite a difference, I'm sure you will agree.

I love your comment on X-Plane being a little too smart.  You would get more of an ear with Austin and Ben than I would,  if you showed them this lighting problem.

BTW,  none of this detracts from a fantastic plane, which is well worth the money I have paid for it.  This, and other minor criticisms from others,  are just that - minor!

Those of us who have invested in this thank Coop and you for all the work you are doing.

 

 

[Cameron]

I don't disagree. I also don't think the continual attempt to make comparisons is worthy. We're talking about a sim that in some instances will bleed light through areas with no seams in the mesh.

Like I said, we'll look, but I'm not making promises.

[Coop]

While this is partly X-Plane, its also partly purposely applied (though we will be toning down this effect a bit). In real life, the G1000s get serious glare when the sun hits it at certain angles, what you are seeing is the washed out screens from the sunlight.

[diamonddriller]

Hi Coop.

Sorry, but this is in no way realistic.  I took the plane up in a thunderstorm, under solid cumulus. No sun anywhere.  I even flew a 360, with very little difference.  Still had the low contrast poorly legible screens.  Then, I put it on the runway at night.  Still had gray backgrounds to the display, and it looked poor.

I won't post any photos of the above, but I have been flying G1000 RW for years, and they don't look like that.  Sure, at certain times, if the sun can get right on the screens, they are a bit harder to see well (occasionally very hard), but the Cirrus has a more pronounced roof than, say, a Diamond,  and reasonable shading for the screens.  They have super contrast now - better than the early versions.  Most of the time, even in a very sunny environment, they are great.

You can see this, without getting in a real plane. YouTube from Nico, and loads of others show pin sharp, high contrast screens with black backgrounds, even at high altitude, above the clouds with a load of sun.

What owner would pay $3/4 million and upwards for poorly legible instruments?  The FAA, CAA, EASA and all would never have passed what is pictured above as acceptable, and Garmin (and Avidyne, etc.) wouldn't have otherwise beaten the six-packs into submission  

I would prefer the displays in the sim to look great all the time, and accept the fact that it is a sim., and just forget that, on occasion, the sun can make the display a bit less than ideal....... I'd rather not be squinting at my monitor, and then just keep using the pop-ups anyway.

You and others may disagree with me on the above.  Fair enough   I still think that this plane is sensational, and please don't you or Cameron think me rude!

[sdflyer]

I agree G1000 reflection is not realistic

[urbanspecies]

I also mentioned the screens in another post that in VR mode the display screens look like they have a thin layer of tracing paper over them (colors are washed out hard to read).

Looks like something to do with the color gamma setting I think.

[Attitude]

This is the pixel effect. It has strange behavior on certain builds. HDR must be on for this to not look too weird. If you do not like it no worries. Find your SR22 folders, head into objects/effects and open up G1000_PX.obj in a text editor. You can then remove the specific lines and adjust the second value of the hide animation to 1. See pics below. First pic is how it looks now, second is how it should look for you. 

I will make this something you can toggle on/off in a future update. 
 

[Attitude]

Mind you none of the above mentioned aircraft simulate the g1000 pixels, just saying. SO reference wont be correct. A real G1000 will be a better point of reference. 

[diamonddriller]

@Attitude  

Fantastic. This will be a job for tomorrow!   Thanks a million.  

[diamonddriller]

Well, I edited the files in both versions.  It made very little difference, I'm sad to say.   If there was a change it was pretty much unnoticeable -  and that was a surprise.  The PFD, with synthetic vision, looked reasonable, but there are no blacks on the backgrounds, and contrast was still poor. I even tried it with HDR enabled.  I just re-installed the plane from scratch (so as to get the original supplied .obj files), and will wait till this is resolved.  Please make it look like the pop-ups.

Also, for some reason, the heading knob, course knob, altitude knob, etc. won't work on the pedestal, but everything works from the pop-ups, and the changes are then reflected correctly in the plane's screens!  I get the curly arrows and hands on the pedestal, but they are non-functional.   I can get the AP to work from the pedestal.   I've had a few CTDs now on my Mac so maybe  I'll wait till 1.01.  I even tried reverting to the stable Gizmo.  When I get it going, it's lovely - looks and sounds great, and flies nicely.

Also, others report the rudder pedals don't move - but you know that.

I've been running this in 11.41.  Am I supposed to be doing it in metal in the 11.50 beta for it all to work and look right?  The beta can be fine, but can also be not so fine 

Edited July 27, 2020 by diamonddriller

[OuterMarker]

4 minutes ago, diamonddriller said:

Well, I edited the files in both versions.  It made no difference whatsoever, I'm sad to say.   Or, if there was a change it was pretty much unnoticeable -  and that was a surprise.  Do I have to have HDR enabled for the G1000 to have a black background?  The PFD, with synthetic vision, looked reasonable, but there are no blacks on the backgrounds, and contrast was still poor.  I just re-installed the plane from scratch (so as to get the original supplied .obj files), and will wait till this is resolved.  Please make it look like the pop-ups.

Also, for some reason, the heading knob, course knob, etc. won't work on the pedestal, but everything works from the pop-ups, and the changes are then reflected correctly in the plane's screens!   I can get the AP to work from the pedestal.   I've had a few CTDs now on my Mac so maybe  I'll wait till 1.01.  I even tried reverting to the stable Gizmo.  When I get it going, it's lovely - looks and sounds great, and flies nicely.

Also, others report the rudder pedals don't move - but you know that.

I've been running this in 11.41.  Am I supposed to be doing it in metal in the 11.50 beta for it all to work and look right?  The beta can be fine, but can also be not so fine 

I have to agree, the screens look like frosted glass almost...it would be highly appreciated if there was a way to disable the custom backlighting altogether and revert to a more default way of simulating the displays.

[Attitude]

We wont be getting rid of the effect as on certain builds it doesnt look like this. I have however made it something that can be removed if your system does not allow for it. 

I found this same issue with the Pocket Rocket screen smudges. For those with HDR not enabled they couldn't see the screens. HDR is a must for this effect to work properly. 

[Coop]

We are adding an automatic disabling system, so if HDR is not on, or VR is enabled, it will turn off. There will also be a setting in the setting file to stop the effect if it still doesn't look right with the add-ons you have installed. 

[OuterMarker]

18 hours ago, Attitude said:

This is the pixel effect. It has strange behavior on certain builds. HDR must be on for this to not look too weird. If you do not like it no worries. Find your SR22 folders, head into objects/effects and open up G1000_PX.obj in a text editor. You can then remove the specific lines and adjust the second value of the hide animation to 1. See pics below. First pic is how it looks now, second is how it should look for you. 

I will make this something you can toggle on/off in a future update. 
 

Can you confirm this actually works? I've just double checked and it looks pretty much identical, maybe that's why there was no improvement on our end. I do run XP with HDR on and VR off btw.

[diamonddriller]

@OuterMarker   Exactly.  It didn't really make much difference, which is why I was disappointed. The background is still gray, and it shouldn't be.   I'll probably end up using resized pop-ups for some of the time ;-)

However, I just read , in another thread, that this plane will only work properly in 11.50!  That's a beta!  I couldn't see anything in the manual that said that, but it is indeed on the product page - which I barely looked at when I bought the plane. 

So, I'll move it into my beta setup and try again.........  I don't expect much difference in the screens, but maybe other things that weren't working may do so now.

Also, sorry to Cameron and Coop, but in my defence, I would have put the requirements at the beginning of the manual.  In all my years with X-Plane, this is the first complete product that I have ever bought that was designed exclusively for a beta installation of the sim.   However, I acknowledge that it's sensible to have a new product that can take advantage of the latest coding,  particularly as 11.50 must surely be pretty close to release as the definitive version.

Edited July 27, 2020 by diamonddriller

[diamonddriller]

A little disappointed that v1.01 does not appear to show any improvement in the G1000 contrast.  I thought we were to have a toggle in settings.  I tried looking at the G1000 screens at dawn, midday and night, and they look exactly the same.  This is not a sun or glare issue.   

Sorry, but the background should be black, unless the whole screen has the sun straight on it.

Anyway, thanks for all the other corrections.   Especially grateful for no CTDs 

[Coop]

1 minute ago, diamonddriller said:

A little disappointed that v1.01 does not appear to show any improvement in the G1000 contrast.  I thought we were to have a toggle in settings.  I tried looking at the G1000 screens at dawn, midday and night, and they look exactly the same.  This is not a sun or glare issue.   

Sorry, but the background should be black, unless the whole screen has the sun straight on it.

Anyway, thanks for all the other corrections.   Especially grateful for no CTDs 

It can be manually disabled by setting "disable_pixel_effect" to 1 in the settings.cfg file located in SR22/plugins/sr_systems/settings/

[diamonddriller]

Thanks Coop.  I'll give it a try later.  

[OuterMarker]

I'm sorry this keeps coming up but as I said last week,  "disable_pixel_effect=0" and "disable_pixel_effect=1" still look identical.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here, could you maybe show us how it is supossed to look like with "disable_pixel_effect=1"?

Edited August 6, 2020 by OuterMarker