Can't post copyrighted material (yes I read Tom's email) but I was perusing some photos taken from on high of cloud formations below when I realized it's the swirling from local wind/pressure effects on clouds that is sorely missing from anything I've seen so far for FSX. That is something you see quite a bit in the real world (I'm not a real pilot) and I think would add a huge sense of realism that is as I say missing from FSX weather generation. I wonder if it already exists in any weather addons, or if it would be possible by using an 'out-of-the-box' means of generating weather w/ existing tools.

 

Noel

My guess is the problem is they are based off of METAR's that are decoded and are not relative to other stations. Each station is its own entity and the change in pressure between stations (or the gap between stations) is not really modeled.

My guess is the problem is they are based off of METAR's that are decoded and are not relative to other stations. Each station is its own entity and the change in pressure between stations (or the gap between stations) is not really modeled.

 

Yes, however the 'outside the box' idea is to take what's dished out from decoded METARs then send them thru a randomizing algorithm that created the swirls I am referring to. Sounds possibly doable if there is a layer of programming to access between the decoded layer and the displayed layer.

FSX's weather model and graphical depiction of clouds is WAY to simplistic to do something like this.

I sort of wondered if maybe one day some clever devs might find a way of using SimConnect to insert clouds as 3D objects into the sim which they can then customize for special effects (including proper shading/shadowing). In this way an external program could have full control over the rendering and placement of the clouds and because it would know where it has placed them it would open up the possibility of allowing aircraft with weather radars to interface with it to give a realistic overview of the weather situation. There would be numerous other advantages with such an approach too.

 

Probably just a pipe dream - I'm sure if it was possible someone would have done something like that by now. I just figured, if Flight 1 can do it for AI Traffic with UT2 (using SimConnect to insert AI planes) then why can't someone do it for weather as well? Perhaps the SimConnect interface is too slow/inefficient to deal with the sheer volume of info that would be associated with weather on such a scale.

Kannwar

 

Mr P Leurkins, developer of CumulusX, a thermal/ridge glider soaring utility which inserts its own cumulus cloud objects in FSX is about to release an update with more realistic ground shadows, revealed in this thread:

 

http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/59028-are-there-any-news-regarding-further-development-of-cumulusx/

 

Not really what you were alluding to, but does show that improved shadow textures are a possibility. CumulusX's cloud textures are not 'photo-realistic' as in REX, but we're glad to be able to identify them as such when we're pushing hard around a cross-country task.

I sort of wondered if maybe one day some clever devs might find a way of using SimConnect to insert clouds as 3D objects into the sim which they can then customize for special effects (including proper shading/shadowing).

 

CumulusX does exactly this. Thermals are marked with clouds that are rendered as objects and cast shadows. They look slightly different from FSX clouds so they're easy enough to recognize, and similar enough that their appearance fits in well. It would be nice to have ALL clouds rendered this way.

 

Hook

 

PS. Ninja'd!

Kannwar

 

Mr P Leurkins, developer of CumulusX, a thermal/ridge glider soaring utility which inserts its own cumulus cloud objects in FSX is about to release an update with more realistic ground shadows, revealed in this thread:

 

http://forum.aerosof...nt-of-cumulusx/

 

Not really what you were alluding to, but does show that improved shadow textures are a possibility. CumulusX's cloud textures are not 'photo-realistic' as in REX, but we're glad to be able to identify them as such when we're pushing hard around a cross-country task.

 

Thanks for posting that! This looks like something that could be extremely promising - seems like it's mostly intended for glider sims though and the clouds only mark out thermals. Maybe some of the other WX Engine makers will take a look at this and start playing around with similar methodologies. Perhaps proper cloud shadowing in FSX isn't going to be a pipe dream after all at some point.