Hi.And thanks to all ActiveSky Team for such great support.I have a simple question for latest release.What is recommended to use: AS Visibility smoothing or FSUIPC???Thanks againEdin

Hi Edin,They are integrated and one in the same... AS automatically controls FSUIPC's vis option appropriately to give proper gradual clearing effect above 10k (assuming vis smoothing in AS is checked). Hope that helps!

Thanks Damian.I have performed test flight and it looks much better.Thanks again.Edin

I've actually gone back to 115. The visibilty smoothin implementation is quite clever (as one would expect from these guys). Unfortunately, I was a vix layer fan having found the "Bluesphere" textures which are truly excellent for life like haze layers at ground level.Unfortunately the implementation of the viz smoothing in AS2004 gets rid of Haze layers completely, as AS2004 itself reports a singl visibilty from 0ft to 101,716ft. The haze layer would therefore only be visible once you ascended through 101,716ft.Its now a bit unrealistic - you fly over Milan at 12,000ft on a hazy day when surface vis is say 3 miles and you can see the ground as clear as a bell.AS2004 was also much cleverer than any other program in having a decent stab at where the viz layer's ceiling should be relative to cloud base.The only problem that needed to be resolved from my point of view, was to keep the viz layer celing at whatever AS2004 used to set, and then graduate the visibility fromt the top of this layer, from the visbility distance in this layer, up to deafult FS9 viz at a certain altitude.This is what FSUIPC graduated viz purports to do - undortunately, while it graduates the viz from the top of the set viz layer (if you put 0 in the box instead of an altitude), it doesn't use the visibility setting in the layer as the start of the graduation - its uses FS9 default max viz, or a viz distance you set in FSUIPC according to what type of weather is currently being reported.This caused some probs as you will climb from 0 to 6,000ft say in clear weather but vis of 5 miles. When you hit 6,000ft (top of viz layer set in FS by AS2004), viz will suddenley jump up to 30 miles (with the haze layer from Blue SPhere now visible below you), and then be graduated up to (in my case) 60 miles at 30,000ft by FSUIPC. If only we could get a way to avoid that transition at the top of the viz layer, and keep the viz layer textures visible once you are above it.Anything can be done Damian? (or Pete Dowson even)PS you can do this manually by setting the enforced visibility settings in FSUIPC to the visibility in your surface visbility layer, but its a bit of a fag having to set it manually according to the viz at every take-off and landing airport

Hi There,Great info ...The problem is that currently there is NO WAY to actually depict the FS9 haze layer itself and get rid of the instant clearing when above it. See, once you're out of the vis layer, you're going to unlimited (max) vis. No way around this. You can't get smooth transitions AND see the haze. If you manually set your max vis to that of the surface observation, you're going to have hazy skies all the way up to the flight levels... not realistic.What we have done in B130 is simulate lower visibiities (less than 3 miles) via the FOG GENERATION option, which generates a small cloud layer at approx vis transition ceiling (say 2000ft AGL) so that you can't see the ground clearly.Unfortunately, at 3+ miles, while you could considere this "haze" and wouldn't expect to see the ground clearly from above, there is no "fog layer generation" going on. You wouldn't want a cloud layer when there was none reported and the vis is VFR.In addition to this, when FS9 is depicting a haze layer, it will unrealistically follow directly below your aircraft (about 15nm radius) while it can be totally clear beyond this. This is an effect that many users have expressed their displeasure with in the past... Even if we were able to find a way to keep the haze layer and graduate your vis from surface obs to max vis while climbing (very possible), you would still get the problematic low-range following effect.With all that, we elected to come up with the solution you see in B130+. No FS9 haze layers. The actual vis layer is extended all the way up so that you cannot climb out of it. The vis is manipulated via FSUIPC smoothing below 10KAGL and by As2004 internal smoothing (for gradual clearing) above 10KAGL. When below 3miles a pseudo haze/fog layer is simulated via cloud layer (if fog layer generation turned on).What can be done to improve things? FS needs to be updated to support multiple visibility layers, and the haze layer "follow" problem needs to be addressed. Perhaps in the next FS (2006?). In the mean time, I would consider adding a new visibility handling option which manipulates the FS max vis rendering option to graduate vis from 10KAGL (which would be the top of the vis layer). This way you get the haze rendered and get a proper non-instant transition from surface to aloft vis. But you'll still have the probematic low-range following haze. Before starting work on something like that, I'd love to get some input from several users. It would be a fairly significant undertaking with no guarantee that it would work as desired, so the demand for this would need to be sufficient! Please share your input!Thanks all!

Remembering some years ago when flying real aircraft, the forward viz would pop at some AGL level. This was set as I recall by the haze layer ceiling controlled by the dew point. Looking forward, you could see a relatively sharp edge (minimal vertical smoothing) at the edge of the saturated atmosphere. This showed up even worse when in stagnant environment conditions (inversions) contributing to pollution alerts.The height of this as I recall varied from a few thousand feet to about 8,000 feet AGL.The other consideration, which really makes things complex, is the sun position and angle of view. As you look straight down, haze would have minimal effect, but as your gaze approaches the angle of illumination, the droplet reflection can be worse. I would think that if there is an effect following the vicinity of the plane, angular visibility would be better within that zone than outside it. Visbility looking forward at altitude would not have that limitation.You are definitely correct in that this is a very complex model to emulate. In terms of graphics modeling, which you do not have access to via the FS engine, all I can think of would be a DirectX3D 3D fog channel. I note some video cards have a fog generation feature but I'm not sure exactly what this is.When manipulating the forward view distance in FS, does that actually limit it laterally or in all directions?I think the only way to solve this is, pending surface conditions, take the viewport angle (down or "other") and include that in modifying the view distance. Does this make any sense?In the meantime, since you have access to the surface temp and dewpoint, perhaps when the OAT drops below that by a certain margin, forward viz clears (assuming there is not enough moisture to generate rain).

I live and fly in Colorado (RW and FS) and it seems the vis problem is exagerated here as most of our airports are >5000 in altitude. The haze level is apparent near the ground but as soon as you climb a few thousand feet - boom, it's crystal clear. AW doesn't seem to be helping this. Any suggestions? THxDavid

>Thanks Damian.>I have performed test flight and it looks much better.>Thanks again.>>EdinOk so you checked as vis smoothing on.Have you also turned on the fsuipc vis limits, graduated visibility, override upper altitude and smooth pressure change?RLuca

Hi David..Using B131? It shouldn't ever go instant clear since B130... Let me know..

Hi Luca,All those options should be off, they are automatically handled by AS...Hope that helps...

DamianThanks for you response.Agreed - the "following" haze is poorly done by MS, but only looks really silly once you are well above it - won't be fixed unless MS do it in FS2006I'm sure that Pete Dowson could get the visibility to graduated from the viz distance contained in the surface layer up to max vis by changing the variable FSUIPC picks up as the base of the graduated vis to this distance, rather than the lower of FS default vis, or the relevant restricted viz set in FSUIPC's viz page.I haven't yet seen the fog rendering in 131, so will have to load it up again and head to Malpensa!RegardsRob

Damian,Could you possibly add the option to keep it hazy all the way up to altitude? To my eyes at least, this looks more realistic than having unlimited visibily and thus fully saturated ground texture color etc at altitude. I flew on 4 flights two weeks ago and on each one I really noticed that the real world never looks like FS's unlimited vis thing - the colors always look more dull and the detail washed out. (the way FS looks when there's haze) Maybe a "minimum haze level" setting would do the trick?Thanks for all your's and Pete's hard work in fixing this - it's definitely my number one visual annoyance with this sim.Oh, one other thing I noticed tonight also related to visbility - we had some nice TS roll through Tucson back at around 4:30 and I fired up the sim to see how it rendered it. I had the wind and rain and some sorta TS looking clouds going on, but it definitely wasn't conveying that "you're in the middle of a thunderstorm" type look. I think the main thing is that the TS clouds weren't big enough (what I saw out my window in real life was a huge thing taking up a quarter of the sky as it came down from the mountains into the city) and the visbility was too much. Maybe some sort of limit on vis when TSRA is present in the metar would fix this? I was also seeing rain coming from blue sky quite a bit because the actual storm clouds were so small.

Hi Ryan,You can keep it hazy by enforcing maximum visibility in AS2004. Try lower settings such as 30-50. Remember that the new vis handling increases vis UP to the max enforced AS value (if enabled). If vis limit not enabled, then it goes to the maximum sight distance in FS.Concerning Tstorms in Tuscon... We have tried many things to increase the size depiction of the thunderstorm clouds. Unfortunately FS9 has lots of control over this and doesn't seem to get it quite right sometimes. But as of B132 you should get the best representation possible given the limitations.We have some new technology we're working on for the next AS version which will improve these areas greatly :)-Damian

Hi Ryan, an update....I found a problem with tstorm thickness at higher elevations, and have fixed. Thanks again for the report!-Damian

Great! I'll try out the hard visibility limit tonight...