Volumic clouds in fs9

[Rocky 128]

Hello everyone,

I may be mad or too old on the flight sim area... I think I found an interesting trick but I may be completely wrong here. If so, please let me know.

The idea came from thinking about the old versions of flight sim. For those who knew FS5.0 or even FS98, the coulds were modeled as piles of big white cubes. It was horrible but it was realstic in a way because they were volumes, so when you entered into a cloud, you could see nothing outside except the white of the clouds.

When the textured clouds appeared (in FS2002 I think), the cloud rendering was much nicer but I never had this feeling of volumic clouds again, it was impossible to fly into a cloud and seee nothing outside. So I tried something: in the weather settings, I created a thick cloud layer and at the exact same place, I create a visibility layer with very low visibility.

It worked perfect in fs9: as soon as I entered the cloud (at 2000 feet in this example), I could almost see nothing outside except the white of the clouds.

Do you know if weather add-ons do this automatically to give the feeling of volumic clouds? I mean, do you already have this in fs9?
I don't use P3D but I guess LM did much better clouds.

Any feedback is greatly welcome, I would be happy to know if this idea is interesting or if it has already been covered by other means.

Thanks;
Eric

[hjwalter 25]

Eric,

Sounds great but does normal visibility range re-occur automatically when you fly below, above or away from your clouds ? I havn't tried it yet myself because my experience is that your particular cloud and visibility settings will be valid for your whole flight and not just in particular area(s) along your flight path.

Hans

 

[Rocky 128]

Hi Hans,

Sorry for late reply, I missed your post...

I think you're right, but my goal is to code a small module that would dynamically adjust the visibility layer according to your flight conditions. In other words, it would reduce the visibility by creating a short range visibility layer when you fly in clouds, and this layer would disappear when you fly out of the clouds.

I think it is technically possible, but so few people are now interested in fs9 that I decided to postpone this development. I may come back to this in a while for my personal use...

Eric

[sascha 314]

I for one would be very interested in such an addon!

[PebbleBeach 120]

#Metoo 😀

[Dave Morgan 68]

On 8/9/2018 at 3:25 PM, Rocky said:

On 8/9/2018 at 3:25 PM, Rocky said:

...but so few people are now interested in fs9 that I decided to postpone this development...

Eric

Hi Eric.

 

I came to FS9 from Flight Unlimited, which had a weather engine and volumetric cloud modelling years ahead of their time. The one thing that's always saddened me about FS9 is the billboard clouds.

I have hundreds of hours (by now possibly thousands!) and who-knows-how-much money invested in mods to FS9. I'm strongly disinclined to shelve it and would download such a module as soon as I saw it.

D

[diego1958 0]

me too !