Food for thought....

[Guest tcable]

We're having a really mild winter here in Boston (more rain!) and the ground is certaitnly not snow covered, but that rather ugly shade of straw/brown/grey that we all associate with winder when t's not snow covered.Is it possible to have FS dynamically model this- maybe through snowcover data? While i'm sure it is not practical, I'll assume that it is possible- just sub fall textures for the proper locations. It's already done since I don't see white in Georgia when flying south, but I'm not sure just how this is defined.

[Guest Robin.B]

>While i'm sure it is not practical,>I'll assume that it is possible- It's what's practical that is done, not what is possible :)

[Guest tdragger]

We use a global season map to control what textures get displayed when and under what conditions. That's why you don't see snow in Georgia. The map is static, though. If you can find some accurate, on-line data for the whole world, let us know.

[ASterbenz 0]

Here are a couplehttp://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SNOW/

[Guest davidvoogd]

Either way the data could be improved for it, the snow textures stay in my area of Canada (southern Ontario, near Toronto) for at least a month too. I understand such data would be hard to come by though.Taildragger, what about making the snow disappear if the temperature is above the freezing mark for that area? Perhaps have just patches of snow between 0c and +5C, then no snow above +5 or something (maybe a bit too complicated but it would be a neat effect)Interestingly I checked out the historical data for my area to see if this weather is completely out of the norm or not. It seems this is a warmer than average January but not completely out of the norm, the January of 1958 was actually quite a bit warmer, so no need to scream climate change yet :(

[Guest]

then people'd complain that the snow in their area hasn't yet disappeared...If there's a cover it takes time to melt away after all, sometimes weeks or more.

[Guest pixelpoke_from_MSFT]

"...what about making the snow disappear if the temperature is above the freezing mark for that area? "Unfortunately the snow comes from a system that's not dynamic like that. We will be looking at/changing/ some seasonal stuff as schedule permits.Cheers,Jason

[Guest tdragger]

Interesting but it doesn't look like the data is high enough resolution or that it's available in a useable form. Graphics are nice but we'd need the raw data.

[Guest christian]

Data really is tough to come by for this. What I've done for the season bgl I created is take the DTM and combine this with a temperature profile (linear change over latitude and height) and the result is quite reasonable. I believe if what you have now (I assume some interpolated temperature points???) and apply the DTM to it you may get an improvement. All I can say is that I'm happy I don't have to do this for the whole world. ;)While we're at this topic, I don't believe you can ever come up with a dynamic system easily. Snow fall isn't just tied to temperature but also other aspects like rain fall. How is FSX supposed to know that it has been snowing for the last 5 weeks when you can start your flight at any day in the winter and currently the weather is nice? There are other natural dynamic scenery issues such as tides or non-perennial water bodies. Currently, it's not possible to have an aera covered by water depending on the time of day, and while the terrain system knows about non-perennial water bodies this doesn't seem to be implemented (ie water masks cannot vary during the seasons). Temporal scenery changes are tough to model and ones that require some form of memory (like snow fall) are impossible to do in FSX (unless you provide a whole lot of past weather data). On the other hand, I'd quite like to see a time-dependend scenery model that allows for example to fly in 2 different decades - ie say fly in the 30s with smaller cities and more bush country for example (although one can already hack that in FS9 with using different scenery folders).As long as the season bgl resolution will be matched to the landclass bgl resolution and hard winter water tiles (lakes) are frozen in FSX I think the system will be good enough. I guess for the frozen lakes you need some system to differentiate between open sea and lakes though...Cheers,Christian

[Guest]

And don't forget the granularity of the system.2 months ago my parents who live some 35nm away from me had something like 10" of snow on the ground while I had none.That snow (despite temperatures well above freezing) took several weeks to melt away.

[Guest tcable]

The only way to make it dynamic is through somehting like online weather, but update it with a bit of granularity- once a week or so.I'd imagine that those grpahics could be used- while a bit granular it would make for a bit of variance as would be seen in real life. IT's not like this needs a great degree of precison.Then again, the cost/benefit ration is not there, but it would be cool. I'll need to raise this to Damien :)Here in the Boston area, it's common for me near the coast to have bare ground, while my in-laws 30 miles away have a substantial amount of snow cover.Two winters ago, we were snow covered for over 2 months. I've never seen that in my entire life. I'm usually snow covered for no more thatn a week before it melts off, but that's what happens when you get a series of 12"+ snowfalls within days. At one point I had over 3 feet of snow cover- an awful lot for South coastal Mass!

[KERNEL32 497]

>Interesting but it doesn't look like the data is high enough>resolution or that it's available in a useable form. Graphics>are nice but we'd need the raw data.Why not "pixel poke" the map? That is, like any map generation program, a certain pixel within the picture represents a lat/lon. Well, if the pixel is "white" at 340,400 then we know the latitude and longitude at 340,400 is 35.34 -112.33 has snow for example... The only thing I'm not sure of is if it is legal to use/read their maps into your program (plus you would release the program with a reference to their web page which MS would probably need a license to do, etc.)

[Guest tdragger]

>>Interesting but it doesn't look like the data is high>enough>>resolution or that it's available in a useable form.>Graphics>>are nice but we'd need the raw data.>>Why not "pixel poke" the map? That is, like any map generation>program, a certain pixel within the picture represents a>lat/lon. Well, if the pixel is "white" at 340,400 then we know>the latitude and longitude at 340,400 is 35.34 -112.33 has>snow for example... The only thing I'm not sure of is if it is>legal to use/read their maps into your program (plus you would>release the program with a reference to their web page which>MS would probably need a license to do, etc.)I had that in mind but was commenting that the resolution doesn't look high enough to do that. FS renders textures at 1km resolution but those pixels look like the cover many, many km^2. Jason would know more about supersampling bitmaps but I don't think you'd be happy with the results.

[Guest BlueRidgeDx]

tdragger wrote:>I had that in mind but was commenting that the resolution>doesn't look high enough to do that. FS renders textures at>1km resolution but those pixels look like the cover many, many>km^2. Jason would know more about supersampling bitmaps but I>don't think you'd be happy with the results.Hi Mike,I was curious about the resolution, so I poked around the site a little. Its seems they offer a 4km (6144x6144) grid product. I'm not sure if thats what they're showing on the front page or not, but it seems as though its been available since 2004.Check here:http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SNOW/ims.htmlIts referenced in the next to last paragraph.Is 4km high enough resolution?Regards,Nick

[Guest christian]

No, as Mike said textures use 1km resolution. 4km seasons resolution is what FS2004 uses, so there is a good chance your data is in FS already (of course this is just a guess). That's why I believe if you mix this data with an elevation model you may get better snow coverage.Cheers,Christian