As I understand it you do not think rain effect on windows is important to immersion? I thought you went into X-Plane to take advantage of all that it provides as other developers have so I hope you rethink your position on this.

 

 

I thought you went into X-Plane to take advantage of all that it provides as other developers have so I hope you rethink your position on this.

 

X-Plane is no different than FSX in this regard. If you want rain drops, you have to custom code it on your own. It isn't a default function.

This means you are not interested in coding it then. You lost one sale and I understand that one sale does not mean much to you but some things are more important to me than others and there are several other developers that think weather immersion is important.

 

 

weather immersion is important.

 

To each their own.  Honest, I rarely even glance at the windscreen when IMC, the attention is on the instruments.  Full immersion occurs when the gyro fails and you're flying partial panel using the compass, the only time a glance will be made to the windscreen is when looking for the rabbit.  However, there is usually quite a bit of noise and that should be up to the weather provider and not PMDG.

This means you are not interested in coding it then. You lost one sale and I understand that one sale does not mean much to you but some things are more important to me than others and there are several other developers that think weather immersion is important.

 

To be honest, when you're actually flying a plane, you either rarely see it or notice it (100+ knots of motion through air will do that), so I question the "immersion" commentary from various people. Moreover, I'd be interested to see the level of experience people have when making such assertions. Along those lines, I have yet to see a decent representation of windscreen rain in any flight simulator, and I'd argue that this is due to the amount of hacking around people have to do in order to sidestep the limitation of the platform. Some of these efforts come at an incredible cost to performance, all for something that is of questionable worth, at best.

 

If an entire simulation of an aircraft comes down to rain drops for you, then that's your prerogative.

 

 

I've heard this a few times and I don't quite get it. If the exe does the same thing, what's the difference for the end user? Is it a control thing?

 

It's because X-Plane is meant to be portable. You can move the complete X-Plane folder to another hard drive or USB stick etc. without worrying about corrupted installs or missing registry information needed for running anything.

C'mon give PMDG a little leeway, it's their first foray and it's ver 1.X. Lot of established X-plane plane makers don't do raindrops.

This means you are not interested in coding it then. You lost one sale and I understand that one sale does not mean much to you but some things are more important to me than others and there are several other developers that think weather immersion is important.

It hasn't rained in FSX for years! The punters are still happy with PMDG products even so.

You could always fly in FS9 that's got rain.

Re installers and writing to the registry; I'll second Mario here . 

Windows Registry's get messy over time and I prefer to have as little to do with them as possible.

 

Regarding raindrops on the windscreen .. I find that a nuisance mostly. Fun for the first time, but I'd rather time be devoted to the technical aspect of the sim.

 

Oh ... and the Cloudmaster is a.b.s.o.u.t.e.l.y ... f.a.n.t.a.s.t.i.c; beautiful airplane in every respect I'm having a love affair with this old dame. Thanks PMDG for the insight to build her (I doubted the wisdom of this choice originally lol).

To be honest, when you're actually flying a plane, you either rarely see it or notice it (100+ knots of motion through air will do that), so I question the "immersion" commentary from various people. Moreover, I'd be interested to see the level of experience people have when making such assertions. Along those lines, I have yet to see a decent representation of windscreen rain in any flight simulator, and I'd argue that this is due to the amount of hacking around people have to do in order to sidestep the limitation of the platform. Some of these efforts come at an incredible cost to performance, all for something that is of questionable worth, at best.

 

If an entire simulation of an aircraft comes down to rain drops for you, then that's your prerogative.

I got lucky and was able to sit in the co-pilot seat on a Cessna Mustang. We flew from KSBA to KBUR on a rainy day ! I remember seeing the rain on the windshield ! I dont remember how fast we were going. I wish I still had the video. I find it very immersive !

 

 

I guess you have not seen the rain animation in the IXEG 737 ? Skip to 19:30 -

What makes something immersive is subjective; I get that.

 

It'd be a real pity if the lack of raindrops on the windshield becomes the criteria by which people make the decision to buy or not to buy.

 

Every jewel has it's blemish ...  and trust me, the PMDG DC 6 is a jewel, right up there with the IXEG 733 & the LES SAAB 340A .. and vFlyteAir's Cherokee, AirFoilLabs .. ahhh great days for X-Plane!

What makes something immersive is subjective; I get that.

 

It'd be a real pity if the lack of raindrops on the windshield becomes the criteria by which people make the decision to buy or not to buy.

 

Every jewel has it's blemish ...  and trust me, the PMDG DC 6 is a jewel, right up there with the IXEG 733 & the LES SAAB 340A .. and vFlyteAir's Cherokee, AirFoilLabs .. ahhh great days for X-Plane!

 

Yes it is Subjective. I like my windows dirty, scratchy, with reflections and rain drops ! lol... Otherwise it's feels like there is know window there.  

Almost every decent add-on for X-Plane has raindrops on the windshield while I cant think of one example in P3D. So, clearly, it must be easier to implement it on X-Plane. It boggles my mind that a developer like PMDG won´t offer things that most users of the platform are used to and expect. 

 

Thiago Braun

Finally downloaded and flew two flights. Great job PMDG, top of the list with IXEG 737, JAR, Rotate and a few others...but DC6 numero uno! Worth every Rappen/CHF/Euro/$.  As far as the rain is concerned, no biggie...I'm just happy no one has done flying thru simulated hail.  I still have some PTSD from a flight I did in a c310 back in the 80's ..wish smart phones were around then instead of the bricks we had so I could have recorded a vid and posted it!.  The hail was like ping pong balls hitting our windscreen reaaally loud along with the plane pitching, yawing and a rolling. My Pilot friend luckily was quite experienced, having flown some crazy missions for the cia. He taught me some good flying (along with a German gal and another American german guy)

 

Any-who, thanks for foraying into the X-plane whirl-ed..looking forward to your future superb work. (like...porting the t7?) Aint nuttin like this cloudmaster on xplane..until now

ciao from planet Earth

Almost every decent add-on for X-Plane has raindrops on the windshield while I cant think of one example in P3D. So, clearly, it must be easier to implement it on X-Plane. It boggles my mind that a developer like PMDG won´t offer things that most users of the platform are used to and expect. 

 

Thiago Braun

Well IXEG prioritised rain drops over fundamental systems like TCAS! In a PMDG aircraft all the systems work exactly how they should. I know what is a bigger priority for me and it certainly isn't rain drops!