4 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

I’d argue that even “quite good” falls way short of the mark for what we’ve seen so far!

Well, I am too old to don a miniskirt and agitate fluffy things. So "quite good" seems praise enough for me😁.

4 minutes ago, domkle said:

Well, I am too old to don a miniskirt and agitate fluffy things. So "quite good" seems praise enough for me😁.

and to don a miniskirt attracts the bad guys 😁

13 minutes ago, domkle said:

Well, I am too old to don a miniskirt and agitate fluffy things. So "quite good" seems praise enough for me😁.

I can only assume, then, that you’ve been generally unimpressed with what we currently have? I’ve always thought of FSX and P3D with add-ons as being quite good. What we’re seeing now seems so much better to me.

7 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

I can only assume, then, that you’ve been generally unimpressed with what we currently have? I’ve always thought of FSX and P3D with add-ons as being quite good. What we’re seeing now seems so much better to me.

My dear, this is a multinational forum with a lot of cultural differences between us. Add to that the generation gap.  Some may express their appreciation in a more subdued way than others. It doesn't mean that  they are unimpressed. I just tend to avoid word like awesome, or fantastic or the like which are used and abused to the point where they don't mean anything anymore.

A fully loaded P3D was and still  not bad but it shows its age. To accommodate you, I will go as far as saying that what we've seen so far from FS20 is not bad "at all" 😉.

 

13 hours ago, Mace said:

Yes it is.  But if ancient FSX could do it in 2006, they can do it now.  Back then they used a seasons.bgl which was made with colored pixels overlaying a map.  The sim assigned a code to each color, for example, hard winter, winter, spring, summer, fall.  So, Nicaragua, for example, could be made brown and dry from Jan to April, then green the rest of the year.   Unfortunately the default seasons.bgl left much to be desired in terms of accuracy, particularly in the areas cited (i.e. dry season areas).

As long as they build in the ability to control what season shows at a certain location at a certain time, I'm ok with it.  I think a similar overlay mechanism would be ideal, because it wouldn't take much computational power to tell the sim what season to render at a given spot.  It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

 

Fair points. If I'm honest, I don't mind too much if they sacrifice extremely accurate regional seasons. As long as its good enough. 

 

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Edited January 6, 20206 yr by martin-w

Something further to consider regarding snow. And why its inclusion isn't necessarily related to seasons. 

They had to include snow whether they include seasons or not. If they hadn't, the weather engine would be compromised. 

Imagine downloading real world weather for your region (or fixed weather scenario) when its snowing outside. And the weather engine, couldn't generate snow so you get rain instead, or worse still nothing. We would be throwing our arms in the air complaining about how rubbish the new sims weather engine is.

So snow, regardless as to whether we get seasons or not, had to be coded. 

Edited January 6, 20206 yr by martin-w

40 minutes ago, martin-w said:

Something further to consider regarding snow. And why its inclusion isn't necessarily related to seasons. 

They had to include snow whether they include seasons or not. If they hadn't, the weather engine would be compromised. 

Imagine downloading real world weather for your region (or fixed weather scenario) when its snowing outside. And the weather engine, couldn't generate snow so you get rain instead, or worse still nothing. We would be throwing our arms in the air complaining about how rubbish the new sims weather engine is.

So snow, regardless as to whether we get seasons or not, had to be coded. 

This was my point in calling for seasons why spend all that effort on an advanced weather engine only to let it down with the environment. In the UK in oct-November we often get fog-mist low lying and it can snow in April, replicate this and flying is more of a challenge AKA realistic.   

2 hours ago, vortex681 said:

I’d argue that even “quite good” falls way short of the mark for what we’ve seen so far!

As has been said 'not bad' and 'quite good' are understatements.

5 hours ago, martin-w said:

Something further to consider regarding snow. And why its inclusion isn't necessarily related to seasons. 

They had to include snow whether they include seasons or not. If they hadn't, the weather engine would be compromised. 

Imagine downloading real world weather for your region (or fixed weather scenario) when its snowing outside. And the weather engine, couldn't generate snow so you get rain instead, or worse still nothing. We would be throwing our arms in the air complaining about how rubbish the new sims weather engine is.

So snow, regardless as to whether we get seasons or not, had to be coded. 

They could just code the snowflakes. They didn’t need to use the shaders to change the whole scenery.

In your other post you compared snow to rain, so we can do it again. Right now, the rain on the sim isn’t giving an wet aspect to the scenery (ground, rooftops, trees etc). The rain is just the raindrops falling from the sky and that’s it. No chances on the environment making it more wet or changing the level of the body of waters (as far as we know).

Which I meant above is, if they bother to code the shaders for the snow on all the scenery elements (buildings, trees, houses, roads etc), why would they just stop there? The feature is implemented already (initial phases, of course), they just need to tweak the other seasonal aspects.

Also remember what Jörg Newmann said, they don’t want to implement not finished features on the sim. If they are to include any seasonal aspect on the sim (snowy environment) they are probably aiming to deliver the other seasonal characteristics also.

I don’t believe they would release a teaser, with no further explanations, knowing seasons are one of the top requests (based on their feature request panel), if they didn’t have the intention to implement things right.

 

Edited January 6, 20206 yr by ca_metal

 

2 hours ago, ca_metal said:

Also remember what Jörg Newmann said, they don’t want to implement not finished features on the sim. If they are to include any seasonal aspect on the sim (snowy environment) they are probably aiming to deliver the other seasonal characteristics also.

I don’t believe they would release a teaser, with no further explanations, knowing seasons are one of the top requests (based on their feature request panel), if they didn’t to implement things right.

 

So true. All the speculation and quibble about snow meaning something else than seasons seem quite absurd to me, given all we've seen and heard from the developers so far.

 

5 hours ago, domkle said:

this is a multinational forum with a lot of cultural differences between us.

You mean we all don’t all  see things the same way?   I’m amazed! With age comes wisdom.

18 minutes ago, jpc55 said:

You mean we all don’t all  see things the same way?   I’m amazed! With age comes wisdom.

He he

Age helps, I suppose. There is also a French saying that goes like travel shapes youth (les voyages forment la jeunesse), Having lived in 7 countries (including the Bay Area...) I am shaped well enough  to understand that even if we sing the same song the tempo may differ 😏.

6 hours ago, vortex681 said:

I can only assume, then, that you’ve been generally unimpressed with what we currently have? I’ve always thought of FSX and P3D with add-ons as being quite good. What we’re seeing now seems so much better to me.

I think we are being spoilt by what we are being shown from MSFS, it doesn't mean that we are unimpressed with P3D/Xplane.

1 hour ago, domkle said:

He he

Age helps, I suppose. There is also a French saying that goes like travel shapes youth (les voyages forment la jeunesse), Having lived in 7 countries (including the Bay Area...) I am shaped well enough  to understand that even if we sing the same song the tempo may differ 😏.

I am "shaped well enough" too, I could lose a few pounds after Christmastime.

I am SO stoked for this release..

I can’t even remember the last time I’ve been this excited about an upcoming game or piece of software... It’s been at least over a decade since I have been - if ever