I was reading a few posts about water looking great and water looking bad and I decided to turn on the water detail again to check it out. Imho water detail looks totally unrealistic UNLESS you are flying a few feet above it. Now I am not talking about P3D 2.3 waters looking bad but I am talking about water detail (animations) in general. In FSX I also disabled water animation because those waves look way too big during flights! They make it look like you are flying above a miniature world! Waves like that are okay when you are sitting with your feet in the water or during fishing but at 3000 feet or so I don't expect to see waves like you see in P3D (or FSX)! Imho water detail at OFF looks a LOT more realistic. It isn't until I am flying a few hundred meters above the surface of the water that I start thinking that it looks very calm today and some waves would look nice (although I never really miss them).

 

So I was wondering: am I the only one who has water detail turned off? And did any of you ever give it a try...? I think most people have it on by default and don't even think about turning it off but you might be surprised!

 

BTW I do have ALL reflections turned on which imho looks awesome.

 

(I tried to upload a screenshot but somehow the Flickr option to share photo's doesn't work today.)

Interesting observation, I am usually in a jet high above the water and have not really noticed the waves being too big.  When it comes to water I have turned down the water detail to 2x.low (I think) because I think high looks totally unrealistic.  Too each his own, I guess.

I have water detail cranked up to max, and all reflections enabled. The reflections are sooo lovely!

You do have a fair point about how the waves look, definitely going to try your (somewhat counterintuitive) suggestion, thanks Jeroen! :smile:

Water off  here.  Always has been, even in FSX.  I'm not an amphib flyer and yes, it might the nice to see the occasional wave action, but it's also nice to allocate computer resources to things like cloud shadows and traffic and not have to worry about an OOM event at 3 mile final.  IMHO

I absolutely agree!

 

Wave animation has historically looked good-great below a certain altitudes, and phony at higher altitudes. Keeping in mind that wave animation, to be seen realistically should be at lower altitudes, and of course that's exactly when we need all of our instruments to be maximally responsive… So there might be a conflict here…

 

Then again, it could be that wave animation is nothing more than an animated Gif, in which case ...

 

Shut up Chas!!!.. there ARE NO real system resources required for wave animation.

 

...JUST playing devils advocate with myself...

 

-let's have a poll from those of us who are REAL coastal flyers, who KNOW at what altitude they can generally see wave movement(AS IF LM DOESN'T ALREADY KNOW…)

 

...then TELL US , and we'll request LM to put in a very simple boolean switch, such as

 

T=turn wave animation ON below 3000 AGL

 

...or incrementally 0-50-100-200-200 etc,etc...

 

Sooooooooo simple!

 

Such a huge addition to the realistic, wonderful eye Candy transitions that Lockheed Martin has produced for us!

 

Am I right or am I wrong?

 

Let's put this puppy to bed forever...NOW!

 

Chas

I tried it and find turning the water detail off looks very unappealing... at lowish altitude anyway. Turning detail off loses the lighting off the surface texture, leaving a big blob of sun... plus the clouds do not seem to reflect properly, with cirrus clouds seeming much brighter, which is more obvious with no surface texture.

 

I do agree about the scale of the textures, but on balance would rather they were there... lots of room for LM to make it better though.

 

Ultra, which I normally use.

 

Detail 'Off'

I like it on - I've flown over water and while the in game affect is a bit over the top it does look ok.

I must admit that after trying both I prefer Ultra as well.

 

But  - speaking of water - I think it's a bit sad that bathymetry only works in a few places, the ocean is quite shallow everywhere else as far as I can see.

I also prefer to keep it on ultra although I don't appear to be seeing many waves. The cloud reflection is nice though. I tend to fly between 1500-6000 feet.

Ultra for me...I have experienced little to no performance loss changing this parameter. And I'm not sure what the problem is, but that first picture looks pretty good imo.

Ultra for me too...looks more realistic, especially in higher winds.

Water details switched OFF looks dull. Better with ultra (at least medium) and tessellation on max.

Spirit

It looks really nice when you're sitting on the water. :smile:

 

It's been awhile since I have flown, but when I did, I do not recall really seeing cloud reflection in the water. More light reflection than anything.

 

Bob

Wish I could turn it off just for lakes.