autogen fade and native rain drops in the VC like FS9 had, without the 3rd party designers having to build VC rain drop animations into the model.

 

I haven't noticed any autogen popping in P3D?  I think the reason there is no default rain in all aircraft VC is because 3rd party have more control over the VC ... for things like a HUD, frosting, heaters, dirt and bug build up, etc. etc.   ... I don't know if that's available for FS9?  To do believable rain on the windows it would require knowing the exact geometry of the window(s) -- the aircraft devs would be the ones most capable of doing this and making it look more realistic than a generic rain splatter effect.

 

RealAir have done a great job with their rain effects ... hope more devs look into that feature in the future.  Add that with PrecipitFX and you really have a convincing environment.

 

Cheers, Rob.

I always thought Wings of Prey had great weather effects. On the other hand, others thought it was not "realistic"

 

I will sometimes take "really cool" over "realistic" though.  :smile:

 

Devs can kind of "hack" together rain effects and frost on the windows, but rain effects are not documented in the SDK - there is no official way. I think the way some devs do it now is to animate hundreds of transparent polygons with water drops texture on. I don't know what the industry standard method is.

To get cool water effects (reflection), and perhaps more optimised LM would need to introduce some techniques.

 

How's this for cool:

Go to 1:44

 

NZ255;

That's a bad a** video! Wow!

Often its the little details that add up to that final suspension of disbelief.

yea the rain beading on the windshield and the windshield wipers are pretty awesome, goes to show Flight Sim needs a major new engine instead of tinkering with the 10 year old FSX engine like P3D is. 

Note in the video how the water on the left of the windshield reacted to the air moving across the windshield when turning to the left. Instead of moving up the windshield, it was pushed to the right.

 

This of course was done entirely with DX shaders.

Yeah, but wipers aren't useful when racing ... rain-X is ... but for cars it's missing the most important detail ... spray from the car in front

 

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

EDIT: and if you tried to go that fast in a BMW in the wet you'd be in the wall pretty quick ... as you can see I'm going pretty slow in rain race tires and my car is < 2000 lbs vs. BMW at 3300+ lbs  ... however, it is a pretty cool rain effect and I'll love to see it emulated 

Guess it all depends on the car. 

 

Excellent you stayed off the curbs ... wet (and dry) racing is often about finding out where grip is and isn't ... at Sonoma because of the long duration of time between rain fall with rubber and oil build up, first rain fall is like driving on ICE ... you should have seen the days when the drag strip was used as part of the front straight at Sonoma ... that was NUTS!  Fortunately Sonoma changed the layout keeping the drag strip "mostly" separated (not entirely).

 

 Once the track gets saturated enough such that it clears rubber/oil off the track, the line starts to change/improve (unless of course rivers form and mud is brought onto the racing surface ... I love racing in the wet because each lap is almost a new experience as conditions change.

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

 

. as you can see I'm going pretty slow in rain race tires

 

Yikes, is that an Elise?  I owned one of those, never has the moniker of Lotus been so apt:

 

Lots

Of

Trouble

Usually

Serious