Ok, I did a search and did not find any relevant information about a simple question I have always had. Can anyone tell me why clouds spin as the aircraft passes over the top of them. I may have read a post about his a long time ago but I have no idea where it is buried. Thanks for your help.

I presume it is something similar to the behaviour of 'sprites', in that they will always attempt to keep their 'fat side' oriented toward you so that they look fully three dimensional, a bit like when you get two dimensional representations of people at some airport sceneries, but they always seem to face you to preserve the illusion of them being fully dimensioned. Passing over the top of the clouds when that is their behaviour, would make them spin.Al

Because in FSX, the world really does revolve around you.

Because in FSX, the world really does revolve around you.

LOL! Good one :(

Using Detailed clouds rather than Simple clouds should fix this to an extent. Simple clouds are basically 2D. If they did not spin, you'd see their edges. Faux pas!What bugs me is why clouds never zip past the windows when you fly through them. An aircraft is travelling say 300 knots, the cloud is more or less stationary. Once you get to the boundary of the cloud, the nearest wisps should zoom by the window. I've seen it many times on real-world passenger flights. Even the Alphasim SR-71 Blackbird won't give you the sense of speed you need through FSX clouds, and that's blasting through them at Mach 3.2.POSSIBLE SPOILER: Of course, the answer lies in the scale of the game. We (and the virtual instruments) choose to believe that the aircraft has a particular size and velocity, but it's all part of the gaming illusion. Probably, the FSX world, if it were laid flat and printed out might cover a few hundred square feet, with the aircraft and buildings sized accordingly. Put another way, if the carpet in my house was the FSX world, I would be piloting a baby tsetse fly, and the Empire State Building would be that bit of cookie crumb on the floor by my desk that I am looking at right now, the one that must have been from that cookie that my brother-in-law categorically denies he ate, that last and now absent cookie from the jar in the kitchen. Jeff ShylukSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM

I guess it may be remnants from old FS codes when we used to have 2d clouds only. They had to spin to show their 2d space. That's too bad, because we don't need that spinning anymore with 3d clouds. We gain some, we loose some. Approach radars at airports used to spin "scan", but in FSX they are fixed. Someone lost that line of code.Pierre

Okay, done some more checking, and apparently they are spun around by the tiny fairies that live inside your motherboard. They are the ones whose job it is to carry the electrons along the wires, and sometimes they brush up against your RAM when flittering past it. The clouds are in your RAM, and when the fairies brush past it, they occasionally knock the clouds and make them spin around. That's according to wikipedia, which as we know is always completely the best source for information. Isn't it?Actually, I might be lying about the wikipedia bit, but I still think this is a plausible explanation.Al

Okay, done some more checking, and apparently they are spun around by the tiny fairies that live inside your motherboard. They are the ones whose job it is to carry the electrons along the wires, and sometimes they brush up against your RAM when flittering past it. The clouds are in your RAM, and when the fairies brush past it, they occasionally knock the clouds and make them spin around. That's according to wikipedia, which as we know is always completely the best source for information. Isn't it?Actually, I might be lying about the wikipedia bit, but I still think this is a plausible explanation.Al

Thanks four your research, I am much more technically enlightened, but man those fairies must be small. I knew they were making chips smaller and smaller but fairies? :(

And Jeff's brother-in-law shared that last cookie with me. It was a great cookie, too.But I wasn't suppose to tell anybody........ :(But it's nice to know I'm not the only one who stares at chocolate chip smudges on my carpet near my computer, and wonder how they got there.

Okay, done some more checking, and apparently they are spun around by the tiny fairies that live inside your motherboard. They are the ones whose job it is to carry the electrons along the wires, and sometimes they brush up against your RAM when flittering past it. The clouds are in your RAM, and when the fairies brush past it, they occasionally knock the clouds and make them spin around. That's according to wikipedia, which as we know is always completely the best source for information. Isn't it?Actually, I might be lying about the wikipedia bit, but I still think this is a plausible explanation.Al

Al- I'm not so sure about the fairies theory. My theory is that the spin is how clouds release their moisture as rain- you know, same as in an automatic washer in "Spin Dry" cycle.Alex Reid

Again, a very plausible explanation, especially if you have a water-cooled PC.Al

Again, a very plausible explanation, especially if you have a water-cooled PC.Al

And a Budweiser-cooled pilot..... :( Rick