blue horizon with overcast problem SOLVED

[Guest]

First of all...this is essentially a reply to the thread titled "Overcast near the Horizon." I've done a little more research on my own, and I didn't want this to get buried in the 26-so-far posts in that thread, because I think I have some important answers.Here's some background I've determined about the rendering, some of which has been suggested before as well:1) FS renders the ground and the clouds out to (or maybe past) the point you set as your visibility (which can be limited in settings-->graphics, in weather, by using FSUIPC, or many other ways). It renders them as two flat planes, parallel to each other. It then fills in the gap between them with fog or haze.2) Fog is white. Haze is blue. FS assumes that all visibilities of 5 miles or more are limited by haze, while visibilities of 3 miles or less are limited by fog (not sure in between, since I wasn't able to set anything in between using the FS weather dialog). Thus, if you have 20-mile visibility, overcast sky, you will have blue haze between the sky and the ground at 20 miles away from you.Ok, now we know that the problem is the color of the fog/haze, so how do we fix it? Of course, ideally, we ask MS to change the code in the next version of FS so that the fog under an overcast is white...this would go along with eliminating aircraft and building shadows and orange light at sunrise and sunset on overcast days...but what do we mere FS2002-using mortals do until then?1) Kurt and others suggested in the other thread setting a cirrus layer from the ground to the base of your clouds. This is the big part of the solution. It will always give you the white horizon you want, but it comes with a few problems related to visibility.The problem this creates is that changing your visibility settings while within this cirrus layer has no effect in the sim. If you set a 1/8 cirrus layer, ground to base of overcast, with 20-mile visibility, and then later reduce your visibility to 3/8 mile, your vis will stay at 20 miles. Something about the way FS generates the cloud layers; clouds and visibility aren't completely separate. However, the cirrus layer does look different depending on what the visibility was at the time the layer was created. So...2) If you want to set a specific visibility while using the cirrus layer trick to get a white horizon, you must remove the cirrus layer, set the new visibility, and then re-create the cirrus layer. Note that if the visibility you are setting is 3 miles or less, the cirrus layer is not necessary, as the fog will appear white and not blue.I hope this is helpful to everyone...feel free to pick it apart, suggest improvements, tell me to use Fly or X-Plane and stop wasting my time with MS, whatever. I'm planning to do two things with this information:1) Email tell_fs@microsoft.com to make sure they're aware of the issues (blue haze under overcast, inability to adjust visibility within a cloud layer), so at least we hopefully won't see the same problems in future versions.2) Email Pete Dowson to see if he can work any of this into FSUIPC. It would be great if, when downloading real-world weather or using third-party software to control the weather, we could have FSUIPC automatically set the appropriate visibility and then, if cloud cover is broken or overcast, generate the cirrus layer to make the haze white instead of blue.That's it...and now, although I usually wish people clear skies, today I'm going to wish you allBeautifully overcast skies,Matt

[nudata 10]

Question - is there a specific texture that we can change or is the horizon just a sky texture reused?Dick

[Guest]

There's another solution: project elements on programmed spheres instead of planes. I visited a site on 3D research where people were doing that. It's more complicated, but also more realistic 'cause the earth/atmosphere is spherical... The same strategic choice is in the background: innovate or improve.