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Exactly what I think! I have always stare at the cloud when I fly in FSX and thinking what they looks like instead of looking at my cockpit most of the time.

Are these images posted anywhere else? I'm on a Mac here and being told the Silverlight plugin won't run on my 64-bit machine... thanks,Andrew

Working on my iMac here...

Excellent ! Thanks Anthony, that was very much needed in this thread Couldn't care less if it just an "SP3" Why don't we stop complaining till we actually know what we are talking about and just enjoy the show?

+10000000 thank you so much

If real-time shadows are cast on buildings as per this screenshot and across the cockpit as we've seen in the videos does this mean that the technology to achieve cloud shadows is already built into the engine and we should therefore expect them?

Good to see more of Flight and to read ( or watch ) the various theories / viewpoints entertained as well . Nice pictures, looking at them reminds me of the missing element , humanity is absent , a new form of autogen object or ground traffic on a scenery slider for people , not flexible mesh but done like trees on transparent textures to populate the beaches and cities , getting sets to cross streets and mill around airport doorways is currently possible, there are a few available as library objects , how hard could it be to add this to the feature set ?

So long as the clouds are 3D objects, then yes, that would be the case, but the question is, are the clouds 3D objects with the same parameters as buildings and other objects, or are they 2D objects with some fancy trickery? There are some flight sims out there that do have cloud shadows, but whether Flight will join them in that is still open to question. Al

Still no true overcast. Go figure.

So long as the clouds are 3D objects, then yes, that would be the case, but the question is, are the clouds 3D objects with the same parameters as buildings and other objects, or are they 2D objects with some fancy trickery? There are some flight sims out there that do have cloud shadows, but whether Flight will join them in that is still open to question. Al

I see. You're saying the clouds are still 2D sprites and are therefore incapable of dropping a shadow. I get it thank you, it didn't click until now.

Still no true overcast. Go figure.

Yep, at the horizon there is the famous 360 degree blue line of clarity

I see. You're saying the clouds are still 2D sprites and are therefore incapable of dropping a shadow. I get it thank you, it didn't click until now.

Like everyone else (apart from the developers) I don't know if that's the case, since we don't know exactly what MS Flight has in terms of bits and bobs, but if they were not 3D objects it would be a tough task to have them dynamically cast shadows. I guess you could still do it with some clever programming to simply create shadows based on where the things were, rather than it being completely dynamic from the light source and object occluding it, but I suspect that isn't how anyone would choose to go about things. Al

Here's hoping they engage some clever programming, cheers Al

Like everyone else (apart from the developers) I don't know if that's the case, since we don't know exactly what MS Flight has in terms of bits and bobs, but if they were not 3D objects it would be a tough task to have them dynamically cast shadows. I guess you could still do it with some clever programming to simply create shadows based on where the things were, rather than it being completely dynamic from the light source and object occluding it, but I suspect that isn't how anyone would choose to go about things. Al

Rise of Flight has cloud shadows. I wonder if it has 3d clouds?

Yup, all three gliding flight sims, Glider Simulator, Silent Wings, and Condor, have cloud shadows too, so it can certainly be done with a variety of methods and engines, however, all of those render weather in a very different way, especially Silent Wings and Condor, where it relates to the terrain in how they are generated, with Silent Wings reading thermal exposure on the land in a very realistic way, and Condor having a 'thermal map' as part of the scenery creation process. But then again, cloud shadows and accurate cloud behaviour are pretty vital for when you are flying a glider, so it's kind of understandable that they'd be a high priority for those sims and with no need to leave CPU cycles for complex avionics or engines, there is room to do it. Likewise, clouds were a pretty important tactical element of WW1 aerial combat, so they're a big deal in that combat sim too for more than just eye candy. Al

This is a game and what matters is the visual impression. I imagine that there are many ways to achieve an acceptable represention of cloud shadows. For instance, the accuracy of the position of the edges isn't particularly important because no one can tell where they should be in any case. I think it would be possible to generate a visually acceptable "mask" of cloud shadow based on very limited 2-D information about cloud coverage with some randomisation.

This is a game and what matters is the visual impression. I imagine that there are many ways to achieve an acceptable represention of cloud shadows. For instance, the accuracy of the position of the edges isn't particularly important because no one can tell where they should be in any case. I think it would be possible to generate a visually acceptable "mask" of cloud shadow based on very limited 2-D information about cloud coverage with some randomisation.

Could not have said it better and I totally agree. And if MS does not develop cloud shadows, hopefully the code is developed in a way that a third party can satisfy the need.

Yup, that's certainly one solution, and all it would need is a layer and an alpha channel that could wrap on a layer over the mesh (I suspect having it transition between tiles might be tricky to pull off well though, so you might need a texture format that supported animation or some such), although to make it worthwhile having, it would be nice if both the clouds and the shadows drifted along. You'd have to be a really picky sod to complain about shadows not matching perfectly with clouds if such a system was employed, after all, I just want the cloud shadows for judging wind direction and speed, so that'd do me. Al