because the ACE team simply forgot to put the folder in fsx. they had to be implemented with the sp3 but then the ace studio was shut down from microsoft

Even Ifly did it with their 737 in FS2004. That looked nice,why isn't that possible in FSX?

FSX has a hard limit set on the total number of animations. PMDG hit this limit with the 737 NGX, so they elected to not include the rain effects in favor of other more important animations.

How realistic is raindrops anyway?

We are tantalizingly close to the animation limit in FSX but we chose not to include the animated rain drops because it is not native in FSX anymore. For whatever reasons, MS left it out when they developed FSX. In FS2004, it was native to the simulation, all you had to do was make a texture and assign a special materials property, FS2004 took care of the rest. Not so much in FSX, you can still make it but you will need to make a custom animated part, create XML tagging and have it flip a number of polygons with different texture depicting different drops. Remember those flip books that you flipped the pages quickly to see animation? Well its the same principle and FSX does not like doing that. It gets FPS intensive and would create all sorts of problems with the NGX. The NGX has several non-custom features such as the HUGs display and the volumetric landing lights. We had to do some real out of the box solutions to get the HUGs and landing lights to cooperate. So adding the animated rain drops would mean dropping the lights or the HUGs, the decision was a logical one. Honestly, I don't miss it at all, I prefer the HUGs and the cool landing lights/strobe reflection. Cheers,

crikey, hell be asking about why no weather radar next, hehe

Even Ifly did it with their 737 in FS2004. That looked nice,why isn't that possible in FSX?

FS2004 supports animated textures in the VC. FSX does not. There's no "forgotten folder" or anything like that - it's something ACES did by design - why I do not know. Raindrops in FS9 are a simple matter of flipping a switch on the properties of the windshield when designing it. In FSX it requires you to actually physically model all the raindrops and animate them across the windshield. We've had problems with that overloading the FSX animation system in the J41 and we already basically hit the animation limit with the NGX's normal features. We felt the working HGS, the 3D landing lights etc were more important than a purely cosmetic effect. EDIT - JB beat me to it.

Actually it has to do with the model, it's not an .FX file like other FSX effects.

Yup. You're right. My bad.JB and Ryan explained it clearly.

Thanks for all the feedback guy's. I think my question is answered. They just couldn't apply anymore animations as there is a limit. As for the question about how realistic are the rain drops, well i'd have to say that feature is very realistic. If it rains there are droplets on your windscreen so its a great addition to the flight experience but like I said I would not choose to have this feature over other great features PMDG have included in the NGX. Hopefully Microsot Flight will enable developer's to include all the things we whinge about lol but thats another topic. :)

How realistic is raindrops anyway?

not realistic...

I think my cockpit is leaking !!!

But can you see rain drops on the windscreen in flight? I can assume you can see them when taxing out to the runway, as you can when driving a car. But a car moves very slow compared to a 737. That is why I asked if it was realistic? If it isn't then I wouldn't want it even if it could be done, like the weather radar (don't even start...).

Does P3D v 2.2 have the rain drops working on aircraft windshields ??

Does P3D v 2.2 have the rain drops working on aircraft windshields ??

Congratulations on resurrecting a three year old thread. There's been a lot of this happening just recently. Is it a competition to see who can drag up the oldest topic?

Does P3D v 2.2 have the rain drops working on aircraft windshields ??

 

 

It's exactly the same as FSX.  

Congratulations on resurrecting a three year old thread. There's been a lot of this happening just recently. Is it a competition to see who can drag up the oldest topic?

Reasonable I would have thought.....