What causes clouds to do this around mountains in FS200

[Guest]

Hello,I have a Geoforce 2 MX400 vid card and always experience cloud scinillating around the edges of mountains. I've tried every graphic setting in FS2002, along with every driver set for the card from the oldest to the newest. I can't get anything to work. The edges of the cloud layer appear extremely aliased and will dart around erratically, making the visual experience terrible. Please see the attached screenshot.Yes, I do have anti-aliasing set in FS2002 :)Nothing is working for me, does anyone know of a solution at all? Thank you.

[Guest gasebah]

From my experience there is only little you can do about it.1. Crank up resolution and AA as high as possible as long as the fps hit is bearable. Do this from the Nvidia drivers menu.2. Fly low. Since I have developped my love for GA and low flightlevels I almost don't see that kind of thing anymore.Almost no help, I know.Alex

[Guest HeavyFan]

hey there! I have the Exact same Problem with these clouds around Mountains in FS! With the Exact same card! I also have a 32MB GE Force2 MX400 AGP card! A card which i soon hope to replace with a new Ge Force4 Ti4600 soon! and i also tried all kinds of diffrent drivers but nothing works! Like the clouds are trying to eat the mountain tops! LOL, ??????? MIKE-:)

[Guest gasebah]

Well all I can tell you is that the GF4600Ti will not solve the problem as I have this cards. I guess it has something to do with how Nvidia cards do this stuff. I am not a techie so I leave the explanation to someone else. However as said above you can mend it a bit by cranking up AA which you sure can do a bit with the GF4Ti.Alex

[JimmiG 244]

This is simply how the FS2002 3d engine does it. It looks the same on all cards, ATI, Nvidia, whatever.

[Guest]

It is possible to solve this effect on some systems by manually changing the cloud height/depth in the Weather menu. Just a small change of around 50-100 feet will sometimes work.ChasW

[Guest cwright]

I think this is simply due to the way FS2002 works, so there's probably no real solution. I agree with you, it can be very, very ugly. When this happens I will always adjust the cloud height to stop it. I certainly hope it's fixed in FS2004. There is hope. The clouds in CFS3 are pretty good. One improvement is that clouds remain 3D at much greater distances. Apart from generally looking better, it means the probability of flat clouds intersecting mountains is much reduced. Best regards, Chris

[Guest]

Thanks for all the observations. I am like you guys though, I really don't see a solution. It makes me feel a little better knowing that others are having the same problem though. I was getting ready to make a hood ornament out of my GF2MX card, lol. But if other cards are producing the same results I guess there is little anyone can do to resolve this.

[Guest]

I see that when I run in 16bit color depth instead of 32bit.That may be something else to check.Clyde

[Guest JonP01]

I agree with most of the others. That is just the way it is in my experience. I've run FS2002 on a large variety of configurations using Voodoo 5500, Geforce 3 and Geforce 4 cards - and it is always the same, regardless of any settings. Again, the only solution I have found is to remove the cloud layer or raise it. The only difference I have noted between 16 bit and 32 bit colour settings is that there is more texture "serration" using 16 bit. But apart from that, the screenshot looks the same as what I see when running 32 bit, which is how I usually run the sim.I'd actually thought about asking Pete Dowson whether it would be possible to enahnce FSUIPC to "raise" these cloud layers in the same way that utility corrects "sub-terrainian" winds. But I think to do this would be more difficult.I guess the root of the problem is that the FS2002 weather stations might be at a much lower altitude than surrounding terrain in many instances. So the weather station might report clouds at 3,000 ft MSL, but that isn't much help if you are flying over a mountain range that is 4,000 Ft MSL.Hopefully it will be fixed in the next version. And yes, it really is very very ugly.

[gosta 0]

Actually, the reason for this phenomenon is quite simple: The scenery is 3D, the clouds are 2D. So there's nothing you can do with graphics card settings etc. However, you could try making 3-dimensional clouds, but the fps hit would be enormous...Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

[Tabs 2,790]

This happens to me as well with my GF3...That makes perfect sense gosta - you've got a 2D sprite hitting a 3D polygon...

[Guest Stamatis]

So the weather station might report clouds at 3,000 ft MSL,but that isn't much help if you are flying over a mountain range that is 4,000 Ft MSL.Just for the record, height of clouds are reported AGL, not MSL.Not that it changes the problem though...Stamatis

[Guest]

I've never thought about the fact that 2D clouds are interacting with 3D elevated mesh terrain. Might be on to something there. I have tried opening a top down outside view window and then resizing it to a very small box to keep FPS from being affected. This is a known trick to force clouds to be rendered in full 2D at a greater distance. If you look at the screenshot at the start of this thread you'll notice my downsized top down view window in the mid-left of the screenshot. This will cause cumulus type cloud formations to be drawn at a greater distance than normal (rather than being rendered flat from a distance) but it's apparently not a workaround for the clouds around the mountains issue.I think the only thing anyone can do is operate a graphics card that can render driver-based FSAA without dragging FPS way the heck down. My GF2 MX 400 card grinds to a halt when trying FSAA, however. Owners of fast GF3 and GF4 cards can probably use FSAA or Quincux to lessen the aliasing/scinillation effect though.