PTA Presets

PTA Presets : Boeing T-45, ORBX NCA
Adam’s PTA presets: natural and balanced palettes and lighting effects.

IMPORTANT: I’ve now upgraded to P3Dv5 HF2 but, sadly, did not have room on my system to retain my old P3Dv4.5. This means I can no longer develop or test new PTA or Tomatoshade presets, as neither have been updated for P3Dv5. Anyone that has updated to P3Dv4.5 Hotfix3 should try using the latest/last presets available here and use them as a starting point. P3D lighting/shading doesn’t change that much between versions, so you should be roughly in the same ball park.

  • All times of the day.
  • All P3D seasons*.
  • All sky/cloud textures (regardless of texture-generation application).

* Using different presets to match the palettes for each P3D season would require frequent sim restarts and rebuilds of the shaders cache – especially if you jump from one hemisphere to another in the same session. Using a single year-round preset is much more practical.

These presets require HDR mode in P3D to be enabled: make sure you set the correct values for each preset. Though HDR values can be tweaked “live” in P3D (to suit user preferences or weather conditions), bear in mind that even small changes in settings can have a significant impact on the final output.

If you find you need to make more drastic (or permanent) adjustments to the preset, see Customising below.

PTA is available from: www.simtweaks.com.

Sky/cloud Textures

Sky textures have a HUGE impact on the overall palette in P3D (on sky, terrain and even aircraft) so, if you are using live weather + texture generation (AS or ASN etc.), you may occasionally get some unpredictable results. For this reason, I prefer a fixed day texture set for the full 10-day cycle. I use OPUS Live Weather to vary the weather system only (ie. cloud coverage, visibility etc. – no changes to textures), giving me plenty of variation without disturbing the overall colour balance.

Preset Installation

This presumes you already have a fully working version of PTA on your system. If starting totally from scratch, please check out Matt’s site (and the Avsim forums) for fresh install instructions.

  1. Download the preset zip archive and extract it to somewhere convenient.
  2. Copy the *.ini file into your PTA folder.
  3. Start PTA: navigate to and open the new preset.
  4. Click on “Apply Preset”. This will apply the preset and clear your shaders cache.
  5. Launch P3D – and check that your HDR settings are set to the recommended values for the new preset.

It may take a while for the textures/shaders to rebuild the first time you run P3D after a preset change – this is normal.

Customising presets: quick tips

All systems are different, so if you feel you need to make further adjustments, here are some places to look:

  • Too blue overall?
    Enable the Scene tone adjustment post-processing filter then adjust the blue value – OR – lower the blue value (balance) in Vibrance.
  • Water too blue?
    Tweak the Water Saturation value (to around 0.78 or below). Turning down the blue in the Haze effect and Rayleigh filters may also help.
  • Water: repeating textures?
    These will depend on the current water textures in use. Try experimenting with the two Waves size parameters.
  • Too dark in fully overcast conditions?
    Temporarily raise the HDR Brightness value (in P3D) or (in PTA) slightly raise the values of Objects lighting/Ambient sunlight ratio and Terrain lighting/Ambient sunlight ratio.