Has there been any screenshots, videos or mentions of seasons? It's not a deal breaker for me if there are no seasons but if there is going to be seasons, hopefully at some point in one of the updates, they will hint at the fact that seasons will be in the sim.

Surely there will be seasons. FS has had seasons as long as I can remember.

I have a feeling we are going to see something special, like snow accumulation on runways, roofs, trees.  

Oh and icing on windows and wings, handled natively by the sim!

Looks like the sim already natively handles rain on windows, instead of every 3rd party developer having to implement their own.

The only season not included will be the winter of our discontent:)

1 hour ago, Ident said:

Has there been any screenshots, videos or mentions of seasons? It's not a deal breaker for me if there are no seasons but if there is going to be seasons, hopefully at some point in one of the updates, they will hint at the fact that seasons will be in the sim.

In all seriousness, if we’ve had seasons in FS9 and FSX, you don’t really believe that they’d release an up to date sim with no seasons, do you?

I think common sense would lead us to believe that they would not build a sim without seasons after already including them in the last two versions. Perhaps they are not ready to show them yet?

I wouldn’t worry about it. The backlash from the community would be huge if they didn’t include seasons.

If the sim is orthophoto scenery only (which it seems like it might be), seasons are hard to do well.

You can manipulate the orthophoto images to replace greens with whites for winter. You can maybe get smart and detect tree areas, and replace those greens with browns for autumn / fall. The end result is pretty hint and miss though. Some stuff gets recoloured that shouldn't be. Some stuff is missed. The output of existing tools that do this isn't great in my opinion.

An alternative approach is have snow fall on the landscape implemented by some shaders. This works nicely close up, say, at an airport, but doesn't scale well flying at altitude with good visibility.

There are no great solutions to seasons that I know of, so I'll put my money on there not being seasons in MSFS. (I think we'd have seen a screenshot showing them off by now if there were).

1 minute ago, nickhod said:

If the sim is orthophoto scenery only

For the entire planet? Even in places like Africa and Asia?  Would be nice I guess.

In any case, I think they will find a solution like implementing snow using shaders which would allow for snow accumulation on runways, trees, roofs etc too.

1 hour ago, nickhod said:

If the sim is orthophoto scenery only (which it seems like it might be), seasons are hard to do well.

Maybe, but that assumes MS can't create new tools to do it or improve the use of shaders.

What they've done so far is well past what many thought possible, so we'll see.

Edited August 31, 20196 yr by n4gix
REMOVED EXCESSIVE QUOTE!!! Please stop quoting the entire post you are replying to!

2 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

In all seriousness, if we’ve had seasons in FS9 and FSX, you don’t really believe that they’d release an up to date sim with no seasons, do you?

I think common sense would lead us to believe that they would not build a sim without seasons after already including them in the last two versions. Perhaps they are not ready to show them yet?

I wouldn’t worry about it. The backlash from the community would be huge if they didn’t include seasons.

The fly in the ointment is that the scenery engine in MSFS has never been based on satellite imagery before.

I've commented before about how jarring it is that Orbx TE Washington in XP11 looks so brown in the area I live, because for 9 months of the year it's supposed to be green. But the satellite images are all made in Summer when there is less cloud cover. So in that scenery package we only see the dried-out open areas, not the way it looks for most of the year. Snow cover isn't even an issue here except up at high altitude in the mountains because this isn't a heavily snow-covered area at low altitudes. It's just the kind of seasonal terrain change you see in many areas of the world with wet and dry seasons.

The default landclass terrain in XP11 looks better, but only in that one specific sense, because it's more green. In every other respect the Orbx TE looks better... except that it's locked into that one short Summer season.

It will be fascinating to see how MS handles this. It's been mentioned that seasonal changes on ortho-based scenery could be done with shaders for seasonal vegetation and snow cover. There is a preview of sorts with the XEnviro weather plugin, at least for snow cover. I think the point here is that we can't just assume we'll have seasonal changes until they show something, because it's going to be more of a technical challenge than in previous versions of the sim.

3 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I think the point here is that we can't just assume we'll have seasonal changes until they show something, because it's going to be more of a technical challenge than in previous versions of the sim.

Unless they plan different sets of Ortho to be sucked down depending on the time of year, but the question is if the Ortho is even available for that.

Seasons are as important to a flight simulator as weather. I do hope that the MSFS team provides exceptional weather depiction as well as beautiful seasons.

7 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

In all seriousness, if we’ve had seasons in FS9 and FSX, you don’t really believe that they’d release an up to date sim with no seasons, do you?

I think common sense would lead us to believe that they would not build a sim without seasons after already including them in the last two versions. Perhaps they are not ready to show them yet?

I wouldn’t worry about it. The backlash from the community would be huge if they didn’t include seasons.

This is the solution chosen by OrbX for their TE ortho sceneries (exccept NE), no season.

7 hours ago, bonchie said:

 

What they have done so far is lovely but not "well past what many thought possible,". Photogrammetry, raytracing etc.  have been with us for some years now. They are known techniques including in games for some. Giving a seasonal look to orthos is certainly achievable but remains to be seen. By the way, this is not only about snow and foliage, this is about dry and wet seasons too.

MS has the expertise to do it but I would understand if they couldn't do it in time for the release.

 

2 hours ago, Greazer said:

  Ortho is even available for that.

 Snow,monsoon, etc. come with clouds if you see what I mean. 

15 minutes ago, domkle said:

This is the solution chosen by OrbX for their TE ortho sceneries (exccept NE), no season.

ORBX could do seasons for theirs ortho sceneries but would require too much disk space. However if MS has a solution like using shaders for theirs, it won’t require all the extra disk space. I don’t know anymore about what MS is planning but I’m confident that they won’t go backwards and release a sim with no seasonal variations. The blow back would be too great. Granted X-Plane has gotten away with it but I doubt very seriously that MS won’t have a solution for it.

10 minutes ago, cmpbellsjc said:

ORBX could do seasons for theirs ortho sceneries but would require too much disk space. However if MS has a solution like using shaders for theirs, it won’t require all the extra disk space. I don’t know anymore about what MS is planning but I’m confident that they won’t go backwards and release a sim with no seasonal variations. The blow back would be too great. Granted X-Plane has gotten away with it but I doubt very seriously that MS won’t have a solution for it.

For OrbX, user disk space is the offcial reason. The ratio sales/bandwidth costs might be also in the picture. it might not be a problem for MS but we really don't know how they will channel sceneries down to our end.

I certainly would welcome any hint in a future update but wouldn't hold against them if they couldn't  bring seasons at release for the whole planet. If they do, all the more the better.