Calculate rotational blur (propellers, turbine fans, wheels) in code rather than texture

Ideally the simulator should render the blurred versions of rotating propellers, turbine fans, and wheels itself, programmatically. Once, when the aircraft is loaded. (In case it takes significant time, which I doubt, the result could be cached of course.) Does not seem like rocket science, but maybe I am missing something?

I mean what is described in the Blur Meshes section in SDK Documentation ., and the Propeller Still / Slow / Blurred Mapping section in SDK Documentation .

That the developer of an add-on aircraft has to manually create the blurred versions of a propeller or wheel using Photoshop (or similar).

The SDK documentation says For the slow and blurred blades use planar unwrapping. The texture can be generated by screenshotting the still blades and radial blurring in Photoshop.

To me this sounds like a procedure that the software could do automatically the first time the version of an aircraft is loaded: Calculate what the blur of a rotating propeller should look like. That is what software is good at, replacing tedious repetitive fully scripted human work.

Yup you are missing something ā€¦ try wiindows update

Sorry, what do you mean?

What I say ā€¦ youā€™ll find Windows update in settings

Thereā€™s obviously something seriously wrong with either your windows and/or your MSFS setup.

or maybe itā€™s just old FSX aircraft

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(Copied this explanation to the initial post, too.)

Sorry, but I donā€™t see what Windows Update has to do with this. I am not talking about some end-user issue. I am not talking about some problem I would see with some specific aircraft, old or new. I am talking about a desired simplification of the aircraft add-on developer workflow.

I am talking about what is described in the Blur Meshes section in SDK Documentation ., and the Propeller Still / Slow / Blurred Mapping section in SDK Documentation .

That the developer of an add-on aircraft has to manually create the blurred versions of a propeller or wheel using Photoshop (or similar).

The SDK documentation says For the slow and blurred blades use planar unwrapping. The texture can be generated by screenshotting the still blades and radial blurring in Photoshop.

To me this sounds like a procedure that the software could do automatically the first time the version of an aircraft is loaded: Calculate what the blur of a rotating propeller should look like. That is what software is good at, replacing tedious repetitive fully scripted human work.

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Thatā€™s better ā€¦ now we actually know what youā€™re talking about.

Iā€™m not a coder but it seems to me the current methods work so why change? What would be handy for developers is a universal plugin for photoshop that can automate the process from a single image.

But instead of writing such a plug-in (that wouldnā€™t be of any use to those of us who donā€™t have the expensive Photoshop anyway), the same effort could be put into making the simulator do the work completely automatically. I mean, calculating a rotational blur in code is not really hard.

I canā€™t say I disagree but Iā€™m not Asobo / Microsoft, maybe you should ask them to look at it (but I doubt itā€™s a priority).

what youā€™re missing is this is not the MSFS business model, nor its mission. You might as well request a tool to ā€˜design a plane from building blocks to any way shape or form, by algorithmsā€™,

and, they will not.

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I guess you havenā€™t noticed then that there is a GUI ā€œDev Modeā€ in MSFS. There was no such thing in earlier incarnations of Flight Simulator. Clearly Microsoft does see it as its business to make life easier for add-on developers.

You mean, dedicate another CPU core to use all its transistors to accurately process and simulate the movement of the propeller and send each frame of the propeller positioning and the lighting effect to make a realistic blur effect to the GPU to render?

Instead of just grabbing a blur effect and render it by the GPU so that we can utilise the CPU transistors to simulate other important things?

You think that one core would need to be dedicated to that, continuously? For something that when done manually produces one statically textured object? Shaking my head. What part of the process The texture can be generated by screenshotting the still blades and radial blurring in Photoshop sounds like it would need to be done continuously? As you say yourself, just grabbing a blur effect, that blur effect could be created by the simulator, once, instead of by the developer.

This doesnā€™t make sense since every designer uses different blur effects.
Even in the default aircraft they differ a lot.

I thought your original post was about rendering the blur effect of the propeller in real time, all the timeā€¦ which means CPU will have to continously calculate and simulate the movements then hit it with ray tracing lighting, do some more calculations, the spits out what it should look like, send it to the GPU to render it. And this needs to be done for every frame. continuously simulating and calculating the effect.

But is there any good reason why they use different blur effects? Other than the fact that there is no standardised workflow. I donā€™t really see why this would be a matter of personal taste, any more than the shading algorithms used by the simulator to render the 3D model can be tweaked differently for each aircraft.

Oh, not at all. Will edit it to make it more clear.

Some designers prefer to have the propeller blades still visible, some only a faint border of the prop circle etc. etc.
Itā€™s similar with window reflections.

And this is just a matter of taste anyway, isnā€™t it? What the sim and developers are actually doing here is simulating how a spinning objects looks when recorded using a film or video camera, right? Somewhat fun actually, that we are so used to see the world from recordings that it feels more immersive if a simulation displays artefacts that come from the recording and display technology of the real object. Like lens flare;)