Seasons?

[carbonbasedlifeform 179]

7 hours ago, Claviateur said:

Again, if a plugin for X-Plane 11, called XEnviro manipulates dynamically any ground texture  to render autumn like hues and adds dynamic snow coverage over the autumn dynamic changes, then MSFS engine will indeed have the capability of doing the same for BING or any textures.

Impressive. How developed is this plugin? I may have to try it although I still really don't like X-Plane. I find it so sterile. Seasons really add immersion to sims.

4 hours ago, Evros said:

And that is the issue with early announcements and alpha features. Everyone becomes an expert on how a developer does something or is supposed to do something, while we have no technical information of any kind on the subject matter.

You're right, but out of curiosity I'd like to know. I guess part of it comes down to how serious Asobo is about doing it right vs implementing something like they've talked about it. I personally don't care about VR, but it seems like some form of VR could be supported on release. If people Laminar and Aerosoft do VR, why can't MS/Asobo? 

 

[smoothchat 99]

Having watched Episode 2 of the Feature Discovery and seeing how they went to the trouble of putting in rainbows and sheets of rain, I reckon seasons is an almost insignificant certainty for the devs.  If they haven't mentioned it, it's because it's a given.

[orchestra_nl 923]

1 hour ago, smoothchat said:

Having watched Episode 2 of the Feature Discovery and seeing how they went to the trouble of putting in rainbows and sheets of rain, I reckon seasons is an almost insignificant certainty for the devs.  If they haven't mentioned it, it's because it's a given.

Even it if isn't, it will still be a great upgrade and I wouldn't mind flying only in summer for the first months. After that, a change of scenery would be nice to match the real-time weather.
With the the obvious expertise the Asobo and Microsoft I can't imagine that seasons will be missing in the sim at launch or at least be in the first upgrade thereafter.

[Murmur 3,941]

10 hours ago, smoothchat said:

I reckon seasons is an almost insignificant certainty for the devs.  If they haven't mentioned it, it's because it's a given.

They said seasons won't be there at launch.

[carbonbasedlifeform 179]

8 minutes ago, Murmur said:

They said seasons won't be there at launch.

I think it's pretty clear there's not going to be seasons at launch, but I didn't realize it was officially confirmed.

I'm not doubting you but what is the source?

 

[ca_metal 2,015]

24 minutes ago, Murmur said:

They said seasons won't be there at launch.

They never said that, which they said was seasons weren't implemented yet and they had no plans to do so (that was said on the press presentation last month).

After that, they informed they had a chart ranking the most asked features and seasons were in the second place on the rank just after VR.
 

There's a chance they don't implement it for the release, but they never confirmed that.

[irrics 1,517]

@ca_metal

Ahhh!!  You said "VR"!  🤣

Watch out for the tomatoes coming your way on stage...

[Murmur 3,941]

2 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

They never said that, which they said was seasons weren't implemented yet and they had no plans to do so (that was said on the press presentation last month).

After that, they informed they had a chart ranking the most asked features and seasons were in the second place on the rank just after VR.
 

There's a chance they don't implement it for the release, but they never confirmed that.

Yes I stand corrected, that is the actual quote. Just wanted to make clear that, since in this thread people were giving seasons for granted, while they won't be there at launch, likely.

[ca_metal 2,015]

51 minutes ago, irrics said:

@ca_metal

Ahhh!!  You said "VR"!  🤣

Watch out for the tomatoes coming your way on stage...

😶

 

49 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Yes I stand corrected, that is the actual quote. Just wanted to make clear that, since in this thread people were giving seasons for granted, while they won't be there at launch, likely.

Agreed, it's not a sure thing until they confirm it.

[Claviateur 789]

16 hours ago, carbonbasedlifeform said:

Impressive. How developed is this plugin? I may have to try it although I still really don't like X-Plane. I find it so sterile. Seasons really add immersion to sims.

Last night I downloaded the plugin update (1.12) and it works very well. 

Although it is still not too polished and other iterations might be required to get it to where it should be, the most impressive part is that now in XP11, in addition to Volumetric clouds, dynamic seasons are now possible with this light weight plugin... This shows that the engine is ready for it.

With this plugin, simply by using a slider I can change the seasonal effect live as well as other atmospheric and volumetric clouds parameters,

The ground and trees hues go gradually from geen to brown tones if we play with this slider. Puting it at max value will let the weather data as well as the time of the year determine... Same goes with sky tones that are dynamic...

So I am not worried at all about what the MSFS engine is capable of delivering in this field. It has a technology way beyond XPlane's engine... So judging from the obvious ground breaking realism in the MSFS engine and the attention to detail in so many aspects of the world natural phenomenons, I am confident the seasons/snow will get a realistic treatement that will be probably way beyond what XPlane's XEnviro plugin is delivering...

But like in every software developement process, the seasons' feature has no doubt a priority number in the features backlog of Asobo and it's all up to their/MS business oriented decisions to bring it up or down... 

Edited October 29, 2019 by Claviateur

[Kilo60 660]

On 10/26/2019 at 4:45 AM, martin-w said:

Hope the mods don't mind me starting a new topic, I know this has been briefly discussed in the "what we want" topic. But I'm confused...

 

I don't seem to be able to find anything about this from Asobo or MS. Does anybody know what exactly they have confirmed? I've heard it said there will be "no seasons". This seems weird to me. Flight Sim without seasons would be bonkers. It's one of the main features of the sim we know and love.

So you download real world weather, which in your location is the middle of the winter, in a heavy snow storm, and you see snow falling but the foliage is as green as a summers day! What! That sounds bonkers to me.

Or are they saying that it will be just the vegetation that will be verdant and not change colour or lose foliage and that the ground itself will be snow covered and the textures will change colour? Or seasonal daylight hours not present?

 

Bit confused. 

 

 

Yes unfortunately we won’t be flying in the “Real-World” on initial release despite the super accurate Bing terrain maps...

 

Instead, we have to imagine we are flying in an alternate universe parallel earth were it’s always summer in the Northern hemisphere and despite the visible falling snow there is a winter season in summer were the ground terrain and foliage never changes and the water never freezes!

 

[Kilo60 660]

On 10/26/2019 at 10:46 AM, dal330200 said:

I'll scream if there are no seasons in FS2020.  With everything else looking so good, along with the powerful new atmospheric engine, it would be a disaster not to release with seasons.  Same with the night lighting- I caught a glimpse of how some roads look the same as they do in X-plane at night- just lights, completely unrealistic.  I hope they fix that too.  I mean if not, all X-plane needs to do is copy the streaming idea, improve weather and add some seasons, and bam, I don't have to change sims. 

Well apparently the Must Have VR crowd screamed louder and VR is now their top of the list initial release priority...

[irrics 1,517]

2 hours ago, Kilo60 said:

Well apparently the Must Have VR crowd screamed louder and VR is now their top of the list initial release priority...

Love it!

Smart characters over there at Asobo!

[smoothchat 99]

13 hours ago, Kilo60 said:

Well apparently the Must Have VR crowd screamed louder and VR is now their top of the list initial release priority...

I hope it will support Oculus native as well as others and not just WMR

[suncoastflyer 685]

If you look at it objectively, even if Flight Simulator launches without seasons it's still a monumental advancement over landclass scenery. I understand the opinion that seasons are really important, and I agree.

But the point I'm trying to make is that if seasons are not there at launch (seems likely), then we are still not going backwards.

Edited October 30, 2019 by suncoastflyer