Hi,Please see the attached screenie of my 737 flight in FS2004. Low and behold, the mountain valley 'fog soup' effect is still present in this new sim? I thought this was fixed from FS2002?I'm using a 64 mb GF4 Ti4200 video card with 100 percent 3D clouds in the weather settings menu. Is there no way to stop this goofy looking, scinillating fog soup in mountain valleys when using real weather? Thank you for any insight into this.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/42141.jpg

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Mike, This is my first try at a message on this board. I have noticed the same effect on FS04 many times. Sometimes taking out the bottom cloud layer seems to work. I have also noticed that in FS04 (unlike 02) the scenery seems to "crawl" especially at night. I have a question for you. How do you take a screen shot? Even though I have a few thousand hours of flight sim, I don't know how to do this.Richard

Hi,Take a screenshot by holding ALT and then pressing the PRINTSCREEN key, (ALT+PRINTSCREEN). This copies a screen image to your clipboard. Now use your favorite graphic imaging software to paste and save your screenshot.If the mountain valley 'fog soup' issue hasn't been resolved in FS2004, along with the really terrible FPS hit the FS2004 clouds take on my Althon 2200+ based system, I do believe I'm erasing this sim from my hard drive.FS2002 seems to be a classic to me at this point. Not perfect but so much smoother and more reliable that FS2004 with all of it's teething pains. I'm really disappointed with 2004 at this point.

There is no need to press the ALT button to make a screenshot. Pressing the printscreen button only is enough.Wolfgang

Using the "alt-printscrn" combo takes a screenshot of the active window only. Without alt it takes a shot of the entire desktop.

There is no way unfortunately, at least that I've found. I've posted on this a few times and tried everything. One choice you have is, after loadoing real weather get into the advanced weather tab and either move the top of the vis layer to higher than you will be flying, or eliminate the vis layer. It's an unfortunate place they left this issue. But in many ways visibility is much better, as far as layers and complexity than with FS2002. I hope they can figure out a way to soften up the intersection between the mountain surface and the edge of the vis layer because it does look goofy. My guess is that this is a side effect from . . .1. Increasing the amount of light reflection expressed within the video driver such that this improves contrast in clouds.2. Since they did #1 above, now the vis layer, which is handled like a cloud layer, ends up overreflecting light and you get this high reflection/contrast vis layer. The very same thing happens with the water reflections, and also even the outside of some aircraft, that just look too reflective and unnatural.I doubt they will fix this in this version. Even so, some of the scenery you get with this sim is amazing. But it sure ain't perfect!Noel

I think I'm going back to FS2002 for now. The new weather engine and some of the eye candy in FS2004 is nice but I have 2002 so finely tuned that it is a much more realistic experience overall that 2004. Thanks for your insight, glad I'm not the only one with this problem!

Listen Rugerdog I have found the solution to our '04 mountain fog problem! The fog is the top of the visibility function in weather. Go to user defined weather, click on customize, then advanced, then click the visibility tab. Then drag the altitude of the visibility box above the top of the highest peak you will be flying over. The mountain fog problem disapears! Or if you don't want to fly in limited visibility you can either set visibility at unlimited , or drag the top of the box below ground level and that solves it too. Try it. It works. A great place to mess with it is Sion Switzerland. A great flight is Sion to Nice and back. Lemme know if it works for [email protected]

Thanks for this advise, Bill. That's new for me. Since I only take screenshots in FS and allways fly in full screen mode, I have not realized the difference between "printscreeen" and "alt+printscreen". Wolfgang

Well, creating realistic fog seems to be a difficult task...If I was a programmer, I'd probably use several transparent layers atop each other so there'd be a transition. (Though I wonder, how is "volumetric fog" in 1st person shooters done?)However, they could have altered the texture: the attached pic shows low rain clouds if I'm correct, and it looks much better because the layer has some smooth transitions. I guess it's the same kind of graphical effect, but the eye is fooled by the transitions, and so it looks more natural (I hope this is a good explanation).I think there already was a post on changing the fog texture around here, maybe you can find it.

I remember having this effect a couple years ago in FS 20002. I might be wrong but it seems like if I turned my screen resolution (in the FS dislpay settings screen) from 32bits to 16bits of color then it went away. Give it a try.

>(Though I wonder, how is "volumetric fog" in 1st person>shooters done?)Real "volumetric" fog is only available in DX9 games, FS9 does not contain any DX9 graphic code.

Thanks for sharing your technique. I only use real (online) weather though and I'm not sure your workaround would be applicable to this kind of situation. I sure will give your idea a go though, thanks again!

Wow, why not rename the current fog texture with these low rain clouds? They DO look great from above . . .Noel