Hey Gang!I've been looking at the released screenshots of the upcoming FS2004 A Century of Flight release - hopefully this Summer. It looks to me like this is not going to be a major deal, except for the atmospherics part of the program. It seems like they may enhance some things here and there, fix some reported issues from FS2002 here and there, and totally re-vamp the atmospherics part of the program, which I think was definitely needed. All of this is nice and dandy, except for one thing - They have not gotten the rain tackled yet. I HATE the way that rain looks in FS2000 and FS2002 where the drops are hughe in size and when in outside view, or when viewing out the cockpit, the rain drops look big and waaaayyy too scattered/separated from each other.When you look at rain in real life from a distance, it looks like a cloud with columns falling to the ground. When flying through rain, there's millions of drops (same as flying through ice), and you don't see the hughe drops a la FS2002. I think that Flight Unlimited actually did a decent job at getting this piece tackled. i think that the water running through the windshield effect is OK but it can also be enhanced so the drops are not so big and as you gain speed, they actually almost dissappear.I don't know. I'm just putting some thoughts together here on this observation. Does anyone else concur or am I the only one that thinks this way about the rain?Sincerely,Dennis D. Mullert

Wouldn't jump the gun - it's still only in alpha, plenty of time for such changes to be implemented before release.Mind you, it would be nice if those water droplets could also be made opaque so they actually blocked all or part of your view through the windscreen.ChasW

Yes I Agree!Look at these links for reference of what rain should look like. Look at the difference in colors as the light and density of cluds change.http://www.angelfire.com/ok/gany/weather.htmlhttp://ozthunder.com/photo/tstorm.htmhttp://photo.weather.com/interact/photogal...1593/index.htmlHope this helps!Sincerely,Dennis D. Mullert

Totally agree :)As someone just pointed out, it's only an alpha version, but even so, we should make judgements on pictures provided by MS, so we can share our opinions just incase MS weren't planning to change things further on certain aspects - by doing this we all work as a team and they produce "hopefully" a sound product; assuming they are reading these comments...!Will :-wave

I'm with you Dennis and Will; you've both made excellent points.

Will they sort out the ATC, i can only fly in to so many mountins on approach to insbruk.

It surprises me you are here to tell the tale after flying into one mountain.

Ever thought about the limits of what you can get for $55 and run on a home PC?

No I have not. Tell me what you get?Best Wishes,Randy J. [email protected]" A little learning is a dangerous thing"AMD XP 2100 |MUNCHKIN 512 DDR RAM |ECS[/b ] K7S5A MB |[b]GF3 64 MEG |WIN XP PRO |MITSUBISHI DIAMOND PLUS 91 19"

"You mean like the limit of the near perfect rain effects in the $50 Flight Unlimited series over five years ago?Yes, I guess I have. Thats a very tired argument in my opinion: Its a copout used to explain away poor design in any software and nothing more most of the time. In fact, its stated like designers and publishers have $50 dollars total to design games with :-lol. Sure, $50 a pop it is: at hundreds of thousands (or even millions if its great enough) of units. That statement should really look like this:Ever thought about the limits of what you can get with the multi-$million budget gaming projects today, sold at $50 a piece in massive quantities?But I digress. :-)I too hope the current shots aren't representative of the final rain quality in FS9. The streaking quality of rain on the wind screen in FUII was a benchmark that no one has come close to yet - 5 years later. Its one of the main reasons I bought FUII so long ago.Take care,Elrond---Not enough bandwidth to display this signature! Don't reformat hard drive? (Y/N)

I always thought the streaking rain on fuII/III looked much like the rain does on my car moving at 30 miles an hour-but certainly not at all what rain looks like on a plane moving 150 knots. At the time (I have no longer) I even posted shots of real rain in the moving plane compared both to fuII/III and ms-neither had it right imho. :-)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

I get "very" tired of hearing about the merits of FUII/III, for comparison purposes.....The FU flight area was extremely limited, most panels and exteriors were not worth looking at. The clouds were downright ugly, as well as the pastel chalk looking landscapes when viewed from altitude. ATC ranged from okay to phoney................but the rain drops did look good! I suppose rain drops must have been lower on my priority list.To explain away poor design in software---------- what are we comparing to? FUIII, or FLYII perhaps? Overall, and for the price, I'd take FS2002 anyday, if I could only have one. L.Adamson

Ummm, Larry?Who's debating the merits of flight area, panels, exteriors, clouds, landscape and ATC (besides you)? You did read the topic of this thread, right?If I talked about political reasons for war in Iraq, I'd find it more than strange to hear someone chime in and say I was comparing the quality of food in the middle east.That's basically what you just did.I'll restate what I said: the rain effects (and nothing more) in FUII were near perfect and haven't been matched by any sim (flight or otherwise) to date... And I hope MS redesigns FS to come closer since we already know they're spending time doing it right now.Thats it: nothing more complex or simple than that. Its a programming and artist thing. If you want to widen the topic and discuss the myriad aspects of all sims FU vs FS vs Fly!, by all means - feel free. But thats exactly what you say you are tired of - yet you went and did it yourself! :-lolAnyways, I'm glad we agree on the aspect this thread is about (somewhat unusual for us to agree on anything :-)): FU's rain drops look good.Take care,Elrond---Not enough bandwidth to display this signature! Don't reformat hard drive? (Y/N)

Thats interesting Geof... Can you expand on that a bit? I have rarely been in the cockpit of any real aircraft - and never when it has been raining. The FU2 rain effects looked almost exactly like the rain on my cars windshield, so I figured it would be the same in an aircraft (beyond the extreme wind speeds of course).Does rain even form "drops" at that speed (once in the air of course)? How does it look when it hits the wind screen - does it simply streak or can you barely even make it out at that speed? Now you have me wondering what it really looks like.Thanks,Elrond---Not enough bandwidth to display this signature! Don't reformat hard drive? (Y/N)

My experience with rain is limited to New England and Cessna 402's. I am from Florida where the skies are know to just open up and really put meaning to the expression "its coming down in buckets" compared to New England where its just "spits". So what I can say is that with all the rain-x thats on the wind screen and the speed of a twin all you see is streaks coming from the bottom center of the wind screen radiating outwards like and explosion. You never see raing drops like seen in FS. However that is light rain as mentioned earlier. IMHO MS should use the drops that they have now but make them very small and 100 times as many and use that for when your on the ground. But once you hit 50 or so IAS all you see is streaks on the wind screen. I dont even want to see the rain outside once above 50IAS. The big thing would be to make these streaks not just be white like how they are outside in MS but like real water which bends light and inverts its. I think most simmers would go crazy flying in rain that looks like the startship enterprise traveling at warp speed for a long time.Whatever we get for rain it would be nice to see different effects for the different amounts of rain being reported (i.e. mist, light, rain, heavy).Kilstorm