I suspect cloud shadows have been 'working' in-house for a long time.I’d also guess they’ve never been FPS friendly enough to release. There are always a few references to '3D clouds' in these posts. That's deceptive – the clouds are already a 3D particle systems. Even the best pre-rendered movie clouds use the principles of FS particles. The only difference is the number and size of particles. Smoke/cloud particles effects use 2D sprites that animate to face the camera. The best ones are small, numerous, and largely symmetrical. The FPS friendly ones are large and few. Particles are deceptively intensive to draw so limiting the numbers is really important for FPS. Shadows are also expensive to draw, and very often the shadows are cast off of hidden low-poly proxy models. This is already a feature in FSX...we have the option to make objects that have no purpose but to cast a shadow. For particles games can be designed to procedural generate shadow models too. It could be a sphere (a point and a radius)...which can make a reasonable fuzzy shadow economically. That might even be distorted with a fractal for a cloud look. This would be far more efficient than casting the silhouette of the cloud texture. All of that is more or less do-able in a video game, so I don't think simulating cloud shadows itself is a technical problem. The problem is FS's interactive clouds suffer from a few things that 98% of game clouds don't. They take up massive amounts of screen real-estate. The number of simulating particles is massive because of the extremely long draw distance (a distance hundreds of times normal). And all these particles and associate shadows must interact with many-many objects at various distances. Three things particles are not very efficient at. In my opinion interactive clouds won’t come out of some code innovation, they will come when the hardware overhead allows for it. The code work is largely already there and understood. But I do think we’re there now.

Was working on the comparison screenshots right now. Got shot #1 finished. Shot 2 will be a little challenging because I don't know what airport it's at. You would kind of have to compare the buildings and fence in the background to all the airports on the hawaain islands to figure it out. Shot 3 will be even more challenging. Anyone got the eyes of an eagle to identify the locations? If all else fails, I'll select a random location in Hawaii at night. :(

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?

Mon Dieu Jean-Paul, je crois que tu est le seul qui ne sais pas que Flight est comme un vieux film repris... Nobody is complaining, we are just exchanging ideas and fact as we see them, so if you don't care about what Flight is you can leave the floor to us who do.

Pics look fantastic! Can't wait for this release!! -Why do we have to nit-pick so much? Why can't we be thankful for what we have and appreciate it that MS is working hard on a sim for us?

The clouds are looking pretty good. 'Taxi for Ten Minute Taxi...' Al

I agree, they seem better than anything I've seen in Active Sky, more natural and imposing... Love the cloud difusing with the landscape. Not sure the pundits across the pond will get the taxi reference, I think the use of taxi for... originally came from a Soccer AM feature but I might be mistaken. The night shot has got some stick, it's not that bad, clearly though the lack of global lighting means MS are stuck with using textures. Seeing roads at night from the air you tend to have a nice red street glow from street lamps and buildings, while windows are nicely lit the illumination surrounding them isn't too clever becuase of the use of images cutting off when the road is rendered. Maybe this will be addressed but the overall affect is ok if you glancing over the terrian quickly lol! Looking forward to October's preview!!! Cheers,Dave.

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

Start Internet Explorer up as a 32-bit process and it should work...

Personally, I'm not too impressed with this set!, I think REX clouds look better, the Ground scenery looks ok in daylight, but those night shots look bad. FSX looks better at night. Also I'm still waiting to see something other then Hawaii! Right now I'm beginning to think that may be all there is in the base product. I hope not.

Not sure the pundits across the pond will get the taxi reference

Probably not, but I thought it was funny and I'm sure anyone who 'gets it' will get a laugh as well Al

Mon Dieu Jean-Paul, je crois que tu est le seul qui ne sais pas que Flight est comme un vieux film repris... Translation for those who don't speak french : My God, Jean-Paul, I think you are the only one who doesn't understand that Flight is like a rerun of an old movie... Nobody is complaining, we are just exchanging ideas and fact as we see them, so if you don't care about what Flight is you can leave the floor to us who do.

Alain,Don't get me wrong. I am very much interested in what Flight is going to be but I must admit that I am growing tired of your trying to shove your opinion down our throats over and over again.

I am not getting you wrong at all Jean-Paul, au contraire I think you are a smart man, I to am interrested to see what Flight will be or should I say perform when released, I am not trying to shove anything down anybody's throat, you can see by yourself that a lot of peoples are warming up to the idea that Flight is the same engine reworked (for the best we hope) after seeing more pics from MS something they would have not agree with eight + months ago.

If certain people are so sure this is just a rehash of FSX and a waste of time then why spend so much time on here and why feel the need to respond to any positive posts with immediate dismissal?

If certain people are so sure this is just a rehash of FSX and a waste of time then why spend so much time on here and why feel the need to respond to any positive posts with immediate dismissal?

Because people do actually want a better product than FSX is. If everyone just goes gaga over what MS has released about Flight so far, it just encourages MS to produce better looking screenshots but not much else. Everyone likes better looking visuals. This is great. However, where is the beef? What is going to get us to not be like our FS9-loving brethren and stay with FSX instead of moving to Flight? People are not being negative. They are being critical. There is a difference. Some criticisms are valid, such as how Flight looks like a better dressed FSX with a teenage personality, but the bones of an octogenarian.

Because people do actually want a better product than FSX is. If everyone just goes gaga over what MS has released about Flight so far, it just encourages MS to produce better looking screenshots but not much else. Everyone likes better looking visuals. This is great. However, where is the beef? What is going to get us to not be like our FS9-loving brethren and stay with FSX instead of moving to Flight? People are not being negative. They are being critical. There is a difference. Some criticisms are valid, such as how Flight looks like a better dressed FSX with a teenage personality, but the bones of an octogenarian.

No they don't. They want to be right. Constant whining and dismissing of everything on here does nothing to affect development. You have no idea what the personality is nor the bones. You have what you perceive from some screenshots. I have no problem with idle criticism but the constant berating and dismissing of anyone with a positive opinion is tiring.

Bronchi, assuming your post was for me where I've I said that Flight is a waste of time or can you point me out to where I responded to a positive post with a negative one, I always said that Flight will be a good sim if they get it right and by getting it right will be to offload the work the CPU as to do to the GPU as much as possible like today's games, and make sure Flight will be able to use as many core as you can have in your rig, SLI is not a must but it's the way to go for the best graphic (HD) and perf. on a new engine. By pointing out the good and the bad we can see from the pics and vid. MS released is nothing negative, to me it make more sense to point out what we see as the same as FSX (night lighning for example) so MS can work on it, it's better to talk about now and not after the released of Flight if we want MS to correct what we can see as "not so good", trust me they are listening. I showed a lot of positive stuff already like this below.....DX10 SLI....and like I said, if it's there it's because MS is talking to Nvidia, if MS need to test Flight in DX10 SLI they will need a driver for it won't they, like I said before I can't see workers at Nvidia sitting around their office one afternoon having nothing to do and say "Hey! why don't we incorporate FLIGHT in one of our driver using DX10 SLI since we have nothing to do"... do you think that's how it happened? So DX10 SLI is a positive point is in it?

Personally, I'm not too impressed with this set!, I think REX clouds look better, the Ground scenery looks ok in daylight, but those night shots look bad. FSX looks better at night. Also I'm still waiting to see something other then Hawaii! Right now I'm beginning to think that may be all there is in the base product. I hope not.

The idea is to still keep REX and alike still in business, so they won't touch the cloud textures.