Big improvements in skies, clouds, water reflection. The latter reminds of Fy!2. I wonder whether the water hue changes with the color of the sky and presence of clouds or just with the hour of the day (see last row). I hope CoF will get us rid of the Busby Berkeley dawn and dusk sky purple of its predecessor anywway... As FS is not a didactic/training tool for me but a way of experiencing flying, veracity of simulation (incl. ATC) and geographical and weather accuracy (we are closer to a "sidolian" accuracy) have to go hand in hand. The global experience seems to have advanced another step in the right direction with the new sim.However there're things which we will have to continue to live with. The radius of weather area cylinder is unfortunately still smaller than visibility (see 2nd pic in row 4). Is it so straining on the computing power to extent it ? The new vintage seems also a little underlit like 2K2 is (see again pic 2 in row 4, ground terrain luminosity is not up to the water reflection). Looking forward to it !

I always enjoy reading through everyone's comments concerning the next upcoming release of FS and I have to say that this time around its far more enjoyable to read than in past years. Essentially, each release of Flight Simulator could be considered a patch to the previous version, that certainly could be said of FS2002 over FS2000 at the very least....hehehe!If you read through all the press-releases (official) and carefully view the AVIs and screenshots, you can piece together a pretty good general mosaic of what to expect in the next version. Based on this, I submit the following as to be a short list of improvements that will be there:1. Improved clouds: truly volumetric, increased number of types, realistically dynamic, improved lighting & shadowing of clouds.2. Improved weather: upgraded online weather downloading (updates every 15 minutes) that now includes winds aloft, plus, in a method similar to selecting a pre-loaded flight, you will now be able to select from a list of various pre-programmed weather patterns (MS calls it "Weather Themes"). No hurricanes or tornados yet though (maybe with FS2006). They've also stated that when you select either Rain or Snow and you ask for heavy or simular settings, you now get truly HEAVY precipitation!3. Greatly enhanced ATC: You will be able to file an IFR plan while in-flight, you can change destinations in-flight, multiple runways will be used for landings and AI aircraft, FS2002 ATC will contain the intelligence to refuse your filing a VFR flight plan under IFR conditions. Non-precision approaches as well as full procedure approaches will now be available. You will now be able to request an altitude change (IFR flights) to get out of turbulence or other weather problems. Taxiway signs at all towered airports. 4. All aircraft to have Virtual Cockpits: and they all are clickable5. Dynamic ground objects: MS has made note of this in their feature list, but I noticed in one of the AVI videos (where the Jenny is flown through an open barn) that chickens scatter in all directions.......hmmmm.....that's interesting!6. New Ground Textures: I've noticed in several of the Screenshots that they've (MSFS design team) changed the rock textures from that previous red-clay appearance to a granite-gray look.I'm like Michael J, in that I suspect that the line is still present across the horizon when you have limited visibility set (less than "Unlimited").Bear!

Bear,Want to get rid of the line now? Activesky wxre does it. Based on what you said in #2, looks like next winter should be fun flying into the northeast during a snowstorm.

Eh? Wha? Where is this avi of the Jenny?

DUH!!Found it,Ignore that

Eric, The entire weather engine is better than fs2002, no matter wich addons you have for fs2002. Increased amount of clouds, better snow and rain, they are in the video..And like always, open structure for improvement :-)ThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

Bumping this message in hopes the MAAM thread will move into the archives or onto the Hangar Chat forum where it belongs! Better yet, let the parties involved sort it out themselves IN PRIVATE. Now there's an idea!

Hi Paul,They have added MIP mapping quality slider in fs2004Graphics option in fs2004:Hardware Rendering Option-Rendering to texture-Transform and Lightning-Anti Aliazing-Filtering, (Bilinear, Trilinear)-MIP mapping quality slider-Hardware rendering lights slider-Global max texture size sliderThere is aircraft, scenery annd weather setting display also.Download this at flightsim.com graphics screenshots in fs2004 from E3 fs2004e3.zipThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs