Seasons?

[ckyliu 1,749]

Everybody keeps saying it's satellite imagery. But I think it's aerial photography. I don't believe satellite imagery delivers the quality you are seeing in the previews.

Edited June 21, 2019 by ckyliu

[pracines 823]

19 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

Moving trees - yes, but blowing leaves? Seems like an awful waste of development resources.

Then one must ask you, why moving trees - yes?

My suggestions/wish list concerning seasons are designed to reach as close to reality as possible, without repeating too much what has been requested for years....no harm. If implemented intelligently, nobody suffers, if not implemented, nobody dies, and the request remains.🙂 

Edited June 21, 2019 by pracines

[ricka47 611]

15 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

Laminar didn't get into that because of time/money constrains, but the XEnviro team made it, at least it's working for the snow and looks good enough. P3D is also capable to do so, but nor LM nor any developer is willing to use it.

Having the XEnviro in mind, lots of issues they are facing lies on the fact they don't have full control over the engine and Laminar isn't willing to get them the access (at least is what I've read they say). Now, if you developing the platform yourself, you can implement or take features the way you want.

A lot of modern games use shaders for that, they don't have multiple textures for each season, they just have shaders working on a single texture.

I have XEnviro 1.10 and TerraMaxx for seasons.  But, like you said, LR doesn't always play well with add on vendors, so the capabilities are limited. 

In the new MSFS, I would not be willing to give up seasons and think that they will make that part of the base sim.

 

[vortex681 806]

1 minute ago, pracines said:

Then one must ask you, why moving trees - yes?

Because it's nothing new - P3D Speed Trees for example, not to mention the moving trees in almost every modern game, and it adds to the immersion, especially in helicopters.

[ca_metal 2,015]

6 minutes ago, pracines said:

Then one must ask you, why moving trees - yes?

My suggestions/wish list concerning seasons are designed to reach as close to reality as possible, without repeating too much what has been requested for years....no harm. If implemented intelligently nobody suffers, if not implemented, nobody dies, and the request remains.🙂 

For some reason you quoted me, but that's not what I've said. LOL Some Forum bug.

But I will answer it anyway, with my own point of view. The thing is, the development team won't have infinite resources (money, time, people etc), so I would rather prefer to have them focusing to tackle the major issues than spending time with little details (of course, if it's easy and no time/money consuming, why not?).

Edited June 21, 2019 by ca_metal

[pracines 823]

12 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

Because it's nothing new - P3D Speed Trees for example, not to mention the moving trees in almost every modern game, and it adds to the immersion, especially in helicopters.

The point is, Speed Trees was new at some point, and they use up resources too. And the further point is Speed Trees can be turned off. Falling and blowing leaves does not need to be any different, just another notch toward a living world.

Just to be clear, I don't count falling and blowing leaves as a version 1 requirement, I count it as, we should head toward this. If its possible in version 1 then great, if not, no problem.

Think big; we need to have a need for 10 GHz processors, if we keep thinking small we will never get to 6 GHz processors.

If only we were at the zettahertz (10²¹ Hz, ZHz) stage (holodecks sized in square miles) 🤣 

   

[UAL4life 237]

No Seasons, No buy for me. Just like with Orbx. Part of the fun for me is landing in a snowy Colorado, I’m cool with being left behind if that’s what it means. 

Edited June 21, 2019 by UAL4life

[dave2013 1,129]

1 hour ago, vortex681 said:

It's clearly not quite as straightforward as that because that's what LR have been saying for years and it still hasn't happened in XP.

Moving trees - yes, but blowing leaves? Seems like an awful waste of development resources.

I'm talking more about texture coloring changes based on the season, along with autogen vegetation changes.  The accumulating snow has already been done and is a nice effect but not absolutely necessary IMO.

Dave

[LHookins 3,103]

1 hour ago, pracines said:

Then one must ask you, why moving trees

Oh.  That one's simple.  When you are landing somewhere without a wind sock, the trees moving with the wind tell you which direction the wind is blowing.  Also, the lighter undersides of blowing leaves shows the direction the wind is coming from.

I mean, you've done some bush flying, right? 😄

The Speed Trees implementation in Flight was pretty bad.  I hope they've improved.

Hook

[vortex681 806]

1 hour ago, pracines said:

Just to be clear, I don't count falling and blowing leaves as a version 1 requirement, I count it as, we should head toward this.

But do realise the processing power that would be wasted calculating the physics of millions of individual falling leaves (even if you could do it on an average PC)? Just having them fall straight down would be as unrealistic as not having any.

Edited June 21, 2019 by vortex681

[MikeT707 1,181]

I totally hope that the studio(s) developing Flight Simulator will be able to utilize shaders and post processing to generate seasonal variety. It could be that MSFS has some season-related capabilities and as the product evolves updates can be introduced to make seasons more and more robust. I fully anticipate that MSFS will have continual releases as new features are introduced or enhanced and as bugs/defects are remediated.

[pracines 823]

11 hours ago, UAL4life said:

No Seasons, No buy for me. Just like with Orbx. Part of the fun for me is landing in a snowy Colorado, I’m cool with being left behind if that’s what it means. 

Well MS said they....lets just quote them:

On behalf of the entire Microsoft Flight Simulator team, we humbly and deeply express our gratitude for such an overwhelmingly positive response to our announce trailer! We recognize that without people like you, we don’t get to make experiences like this that span more than 35 years and maintain such a passionate following. Thank you for being patient enough to weather the turbulence caused by some of our previous missteps. Thank you for being willing to look to the possibilities of the future while asking us to be accountable for the past. We hear you, we value you, we want to make the next generation of Microsoft Flight Simulator for you, with you.

I don't think they have any intention of leaving anyone behind; we may not get exactly what we desire in every aspect in the first iteration, but like you, I hope seasons did not get forgotten...its a biggie.

[pracines 823]

On 6/21/2019 at 12:36 AM, overspeed3 said:

Yeah, and I want to smell the jet fuel on the tarmac!

That's easy, I keep a small bottle of jet fuel next to my PC, I pop it open for a minute just prior to starting pre-flight, whalah. 🤣  

[pracines 823]

On 6/21/2019 at 10:03 AM, bonchie said:

Frankly, if they give me what I saw in that trailer, I'd take that over P3D w/ seasons every day of the week.

BUT, I can almost guarantee they've got seasons figured out. They aren't going to punt on something so fundamental to MSFS going back decades.

For me it would take much more than a trailer less than 2 minutes long, to abandon the PMDG 737 and other planes, with the FB FT ect. scenery, and all the utility add-ons I have in P3D 4.5.1. When I say abandon, I don't mean its not possible to have both, but I will only fully support (vote with the wallet) that one most realistic experience. I still have not bought a single add-on for XP or any others, and I won't, until they meet my standards like P3D has.

BUT, I agree the new sim looks wonderful, and I agree seasons should be obvious to include in a flight simulator. The MSFS trailer its self (no conclusive evidence of seasons except spring), XP, and Orbx come to mind. If MS developers see XP growing so much in popularity, and assume that seasons are not so vital to simmers, then what, we have to wait years for a 3PP to fix it...unacceptable. 

The recent statement from MS is reassuring, but I leave nothing to chance, none of us simmers should assume anything. Leave no stone unturned.👍  

[188AHC 2,138]

Why are we concerned about seasons.  Microsoft has provided weather and seasons for practically all the version of Flight Simulator in one fashion or the other.

I have no doubt seasons and weather will be a part of the new sim.