[RELEASED] for UE4: Complete Sky and Weather System

can be fixed by Setting ‘Cloud Threshold Distance’ to a value greater than 1, 0.1 should do.

Unfortunately not right now since the fix is quite involved, we’ll be getting round to solving it soon however it may be a github version only fix until we can get it on the main UE4 branch

Unfortunately we don’t have a specific guide for optimisation right now, however the most common methods for reducing the performance impact are to reduce the ‘Maximum Cloud Resolution’, ’ Cloud Distance’ and ‘Default Num Steps’, Increase the ‘Render Grid Km’ and the Amortisation settings, however Amortisation can result in visual artefacts if you move too fast throught the scene.

As a side note, I’ve been looking into DX12 issues and have been unable to replicate the issues people have been finding in the latest version, so if people can test that out and also say if there are any other plugins installed that may be interfering.

Hello, I’ve been giving you feedback many times, but I still haven’t got a reply or a few questions to solve.

  1. Regarding version 4.2, I did not use version because I made a control blueprint for . When I first used the blueprint to control , everything was normal, but when I opened the second level, the whole project collapsed and the level could not be opened again. Until the latest version 4.2, the problem of the blueprint conflict leading to collapse remained unsolved.

  2. Regarding DX12 or RayTrace, in Engine version 4.22, no matter it is 4.2 or 4.1.a, it can not run stably in DX12 mode. Maybe when you test with a simple scenario, is stable and won’t crash. But when the scenario is slightly more complex, it will prompt the graphics driver to crash and exit almost every short period of time, that is to say, is almost unavailable in DX12 Engine version 4.22 or above, until the latest version of August 22, August 29, is still unresolved.

Good afternoon Leo,

Apologies that your issues have remained unanswered. I have logged these and one of the team to take a look at them as soon as possible. In the meantime, if you are not already connected with us via our slack community then please send us an email to and we will send you an invite over straight away. you will find support from our team and from other developers.

https://join.slack.com/t//shared_invite/enQtNzQwMDMyNzQ3MTIzLWY5NmZmOTQ4NWYyYjk5MGRjNmQ0ZDUzMDQyODE1MWNlMzJmNDlkZTMyMzI4NGQzN2UyZTQwZWExNmMwMDc0Zjk

Hi all, you can use link to join our Slack page. will be the best place to get answers to any of your questions. We do our best to keep an eye on the , but having everyone in our Slack allows us to see and reply to issues much faster.

Cheers,

@Wayne_simul I sent an email to on August 26th, I need support, but I didn’t get a reply.

How can i stop from setting the directional light to a value of 23 ? is way too bright. Do you have any reference examples/projects on how to setup lighting properly when using ? I’m using 4.2 on UE4.22.2

Hi Burnz,

Have you taken a look at our blog recently? One of our developers is doing bi-weekly tutorials on a range of topics. Head over to our website and take a look!

In the meantime join our slack community to get support with your directional light (You can find the link in post below). You can also suggest any tutorials that you would like to see in the future if you cant find what you’re looking for.

Wayne

Hi,

We are currently working on your as it is something that needs work at our end. I have replied to your email with some further information.

Wayne.

Hey, is there an ETA of the plugin for 4.23?

Thanks!

Bump for 4.23 version

# The is solved by changing to a newer video card. Detailes in .

Okay, I’m pretty disappointed of what’s happening.

Guys from Simul always ask you to go to their Slack channel where you can get feedback faster but apparently they’re just trying to remove all the discussion about their issues from the public place. Because in Slack you can ask question and wait years until they decide to descend to you. In fairness, @James_Simul is the only guy there who is trying to help, he’s very patient and I’m greatful to him. But even in case of him it takes several times to draw attention to your problem. If has not enough time for maybe you guys do something with it? Hire some more dudes? Ask your existing employees to help people with thier issues? What’s your problem? It looks like you guys’re ingoring everyone on purpuse. Like you don’t really care. Don’t you?

Basically, I was using 4.18 with and everything seemed to work fine. Now I updated to 4.21 (also I tried 4.22) and I’m getting massive performance hit by the ::PostOpaque function. And I’m not the first unique person in the world who encoundered (see below).

Steps to reproduce.

  • open blank project in 4.21 or 4.22 (with the latest version installed - 3 October)

  • initialize using editor menu

  • click ‘render water’ on the sequence actor

  • add water actor, make it boundless (at step I’m getting 50 fps)

  • press F11 to go to full-screen mode (now fps drops to 6 fps)

  • press F11 to go out of the full screen (from I get 8-10 fps forever no matter what I do)

  • type ‘profile gpu’ in console to catch one frame and see what takes so much time

is the screenshot.

No you can toggle ‘render’ on and off on the sequencer, water, the gets back as soon as it starts rendering. Removing water actor doesn’t make any changes. Removing TrueSkyLight and postprocess doesn’t affect . Even removing the sequencer actor makes no difference because the actual sky keeps rendering!

exact problem was mentioned twice in thread:

  • by @ in post from 06-05-2019
  • by @ChanKyoung.Hwang in post from 06-26-2019

Three months have passed, where have you been? Hello? How about explaining what ::PostOpaque does, why is it killing performance, and eventually fixing that?

Alright, now you gonna ask me: dude, what GPU have you got? Maybe it’s ancient and it just can not handle our super-duper stuff? Yes, it is super-duper ancient, it’s GTX 670 with 2GB VRAM (DX 11). But what’s the difference? It can render half screen on 50 fps and can only render 6 fps at fullscreen? And only 10 fps at half screen when you go out of full screen? And what about those two dudes who got the same problem? Do they have the same GPU? I doubt it.

You guys apparently have some kind of a bug out there. I would be extremely happy if you started to take attention to posts in thread and messages on the Slack channel. Otherwise I’m gonna quit using your software and every day I’m getting closer to decision. I spent 5 days trying to fix the problem or at least to get to the bottom of it, I wasted a lot of time but I got no result at all.

[USER=“15495”] [/USER] @michael_simul @Wayne_simul

Sorry for the overly emotional post, I’m just annoyed by your indifferent attitude and by lack of any results.

UPD: The is not happening when you go to full screen first and then add water (getting around 40-50 fps). But fps drops again if you resize the window (go out of the full screen and then go back to the full screen)

UPD2: I got feedback on the in Slack. They admitted that there is a performance problem with ‘::PostOpaque’ and they’re working on fixing it. Timing is not known.

UPD3: The is solved by changing to a newer video card. Detailes in .

It looks like there’s still no plugin installer for UE4.23. Are there any updates on that front? Thanks!

Yes there is.

Regard that I have played today some with and trueWater. I must say I’m stunned. I particularly love the weather system.
I have some questions. I would love to know if some things are possible without going in depth into it - a yes/no answer would be enough, although having an answer like “look into < passphrase to check it out” would be even greater.
so…

  1. Can I get a reading on the humidity/wetness on an area? in other words can I make landscape and rocks etc wet when its raining? Or accumulate snow where its snowing?
  2. Can I change weather locally without influencing the entire simulation that is global. Let’s say I want to be able to influence the weather for some multiplayer players in a certain area, but I dont want it to affect players whom are 5 km away. They don’t need to precisely see what going on that 5 km away, but I cant have an instant cutoff from one weather to another. It cant just swap to cloudy weather in an instance. Is it doable?
  3. where can I find documentation on water and how I can use it?
  4. Can I customize water material?

I am mostly interested in the possibility of using as season simulation.

Yesterday, was updated in version 4.23 and version 4.1a. I have to say it’s still disappointing. In DX12 mode, still crashes indefinitely even when I turn off all ray tracing . In a simple scenario, the crash interval is shorter, but in a slightly more complex scenario, the scene is almost opened and crashes occur in seconds, prompting a video card driver crash or a DX12 related file crash.

System: WIN10 1809

Hardware: i7 8700k + RTX 2080 Ti + 64 G memory

It’s been more than half a year since version 4,22 was released. We still don’t have a that can run stably in DX12 mode. It’s really disappointing. Even individual developers in the market are not so inefficient.

I Have problem with shadow, i set in direct light M_LightFunction, use cascade shadow, but still have sharp shadows from sun in all causes, when cloudiness or fog i have strong sharp shadows. Second question, before sunrise and sunset i have strong flash in zenith and horizon with default sun and moon setting , how i can turnoff it? i attach video to show problem.

  1. You can get current sky values at a position through Code or Blueprints

  2. You can have weather such as rain to be regional, and that region can move with the wind. Currently, you can only change the weather for the entire sky. You can’t have it cloudy in one area and not in another ( is however a that has been worked on).

  3. Like all our documentation, it is lacking but is being currently rewritten. You can take a look at the blog (https://simul.co/real-time-rendering-news/) I write, but I know will not be as helpful as you would like.

  4. We do not use a material for the water, the colours are calculated through our variables. If you describe what you would like to do with the water I can give you a better answer.

We are having issues with DX12, apologies for and we are aiming to resolve them as quickly as possible.

For the flash, a known bug we are currently fixing. can be temporarily fixed by setting brightness power (In the Sky Layer Settings) to 1. will however make your scene very dark at night.

I see the with the shadows, and I will take a look.

  1. Great. I will check it out.
  2. Can I run the same cloud sequence but drive the amount of clouds or weather conditions locally, and interpolate the values if a player comes closer to a source of weather effect changing origin. So if a control weather spell is cast in a location it will change weather for local players around it gradually. I know I cant add at runtime a “Storm” to the sequence… But I can control the rain amount from 0-1 value at runtime?
  3. Enough to experiment. The bayonacy works great. More realistic than expected.
  4. How to make a proper shoreline on beach or lake-shore ? I see there is a rendertarget input but I haven’t found a rendertarget capture class for water?

One additional question. The full expensive licence for non-indie studios comes with setup support or some professional training or Q&A sessions over skype?

The ‘::PostOpaque’ performance (details in post) is solved by changing the GTX 670 (2Gb) to GTX 1080 (8Gb) Gaming X. I was told by the Simul guys that the happens in older graphic cards. There’s something they just don’t support but the actual reason what is causing the is indefined and propably will never be determined, follows from their words.

The is not happening on 1080’s. 1060’s and also they tested it on GTX 980. So, there is some step between 670 (and below) and 980 (and above) where the starts happening.