Visibility changes?

[sanh 823]

One of the things I dislike the most with current flightsims are the visibility changes. For example you are at 20000ft and you can see everything clearly below and then as you descend below 5000-10000ft you are suddenly in foggy/low visibility conditions. The conditions are correct - it just did not show them until the plane flew low enough.

Some addons improved this to a certain extent but the weather model in those sims only allowed a partial solution.

Looking at the fs videos it's clear they have improved the "distant" weather. Rain shafts for example are visible in the distance. It would be great if they have done something with visibility so the changes are smooth rather than sudden when you go from good visibility to poor visibility and vice versa. Something to hope for 🙂

Edited February 27, 2020 by sanh

[zalox 54]

As they said, 600KM and all clouds layers and also ground can be affected by sunlight, shadows and city lights/polution. So I exepect accurated representatin within 600Km around. Maybe far away the rendering would be less accurate, but as seen in the leaked vids, the clouds are persistant.

[Casualcas 830]

Correct. And hope, just hope those sudden weather changes dont happen anymore. 

[Claviateur 789]

Yeah. Well the weather data, update frequency, visibility layers and the way the engine displays all this at a given transitional aircraft speed affect the experience. And I think it's not easy to implement with a smooth effect unless the weather is half data half procedural and not purely live?

 

[threexgreen 3,139]

They did say that clouds will be generated (procedurally?) in real time based on the actual weather conditions and atmosphere physics, so you won't just have a weather engine that reads METARs and builds the weather based on what it reads from it. I don't know if this pertains exclusively to clouds but I would assume that fog is handled the same way, which would suggest it starts to form realistically I think instead of just being thrown in there. In this case I think you'll be seeing that sludge of fog from above as you descend into it and from further away.

[Claviateur 789]

36 minutes ago, threegreen said:

They did say that clouds will be generated (procedurally?) in real time based on the actual weather conditions and atmosphere physics, so you won't just have a weather engine that reads METARs and builds the weather based on what it reads from it. I don't know if this pertains exclusively to clouds but I would assume that fog is handled the same way, which would suggest it starts to form realistically I think instead of just being thrown in there. In this case I think you'll be seeing that sludge of fog from above as you descend into it and from further away.

Ah ok, I missed this info. Thanks. This will be a better way to render the weather for sure than displaying the metar when refreshed.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Claviateur

[GlideBy 324]

I think MSFS having multiple levels of clouds, helps on this.  So it should be able to render fog, or thick clouds below you and above you if needed.

[Bdub22 1,609]

On 2/27/2020 at 1:16 PM, GlideBy said:

I think MSFS having multiple levels of clouds, helps on this.  So it should be able to render fog, or thick clouds below you and above you if needed.

Exactly. The more layers - it's easier to blend through transitions.