I think the water in MSFS is stunning, but what is missing from what I have seen is behavior of water at elevation changes. How cool would it be to see some nice rapids in the mountainous areas!! Would greatly enhance realism and liveliness of the scenery. 

With the jumping salmon too 😁

And a fly fisherman, or should  that be "fisherperson" in this PC correct world !

I would like to see snakes on the banks of those river rapids.   

On 4/26/2020 at 3:25 PM, 767lover said:

I think the water in MSFS is stunning, 

I beg to differ. Water is definitely a weak point  so far.

We have seen a few nice shots like the Arcachon Bay in France but besides, we have seen so far that rivers and tropical costal waters are uniformly  blue. No silt, no coral reef.  

 

10 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

I beg to differ. Water is definitely a weak point  so far.

We have seen a few nice shots like the Arcachon Bay in France but besides, we have seen so far that rivers and tropical costal waters are uniformly  blue. No silt, no coral reef.  

 

In terms of color, true, but in terms of texture, it seems pretty good, at least from high up. No images seen yet on what it looks like at the surface. Also breaking waves on shores has been unconvincing so far. Water seems to behave the same whether in small ponds, rivers or oceans. 

But seeing rivers flowing through mountains with great elevation differences, but no sign at all of disturbance in the flow feels too unrealistic and non-next gen like. 

We also have seen a screenshot, last year, who shows the water effects following the river. The effect is clearly more important in the middle of the river.

It's not "rapid" but it's almost convincing. Missing only some breaking wave following the stream to be good.

It's a bit far to know how it'll be from 100' high.

38 minutes ago, 767lover said:

In terms of color, true, but in terms of texture, it seems pretty good, at least from high up. No images seen yet on what it looks like at the surface. Also breaking waves on shores has been unconvincing so far. Water seems to behave the same whether in small ponds, rivers or oceans. 

I think this is pretty convincing. But yes, apart from that I agree that there's still some work to do.

Edited April 29, 20206 yr by Shack95

12 hours ago, Greazer said:

With the jumping salmon too 😁

What about the bears at the river rapids catching those leaping salmon?

2 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

I beg to differ. Water is definitely a weak point  so far.

We have seen a few nice shots like the Arcachon Bay in France but besides, we have seen so far that rivers and tropical costal waters are uniformly  blue. No silt, no coral reef.  

 

Water in MSFS certainly has certain issues to be fixed, but it's still vastly superior to water in nearly all aspects to the other current sims.

3 minutes ago, eaim said:

Water in MSFS certainly has certain issues to be fixed, but it's still vastly superior to water in nearly all aspects to the other current sims.

I agree 100% but compared to other elements of the sceneries it needs some work. And no harm would come to tell that at that stage, only good 😉 !

My main concern now is water color. One of the worst parts of XP11 is the dark blue water in the Carribean and blue water in muddy rivers. MSFS has to get water classes incorporated.

I hope Asobo will find a way to keep rivers and lakes (and maybe ocean shores) photoreal and combine that with dynamic water effects like reflections.

Some photoreal packages I use now in P3D offer the choice of inland waters to be shown as photoreal or as waterclass. The latter provides water effects like reflections (and makes it landable with a floatplane), but it loses all the nice details like currents, rapids, sandbars, shoals, details of shorelines, changing water colors at river mouths and confluences etc. That's why I always choose the inland water to be photoreal (and lose reflections and landability with floatplanes).

To me such a plain waterclass overlay makes inland water completely lose its appeal. Just as can be seen in the picture of the Grand Canyon a few posts above, which I found quite disappointing (there should be a lot of sandbars, shoals and rapids instead of the consistent flat blue water).

 

More encouraging, this image shows that they seem to try to overlay the photoreal river with a kind of semitransparent  waterclass mask (even though the water class mask is a bit off in this case): 

 

 

This is even more promising:

 

 

Another poblem that can be seen in some of their screenshots (e.g. the Grand Canyon a few post above) is that the water texture used for rivers looks more like the waves of ocean water than the currents of a river.

 

One more wish in this regard: Inland water traffic, in particular cargo vessels on large streams and canals.

I never liked to see for example the river Rhine as an empty body of water, wereas in reality there is a dense chain of cargo vessels running up and down the Rhine. I'd love to see that in MSFS.

 

All in all I think that there is a long way to go for Asobo when it comes to water - but not everything has to be perfect on release.

 

Edited April 29, 20206 yr by RALF9636

4 hours ago, RALF9636 said:

I hope Asobo will find a way to keep rivers and lakes (and maybe ocean shores) photoreal and combine that with dynamic water effects like reflections.

Some photoreal packages I use now in P3D offer the choice of inland waters to be shown as photoreal or as waterclass. The latter provides water effects like reflections (and makes it landable with a floatplane), but it loses all the nice details like currents, rapids, sandbars, shoals, details of shorelines, changing water colors at river mouths and confluences etc. That's why I always choose the inland water to be photoreal (and lose reflections and landability with floatplanes).

To me such a plain waterclass overlay makes inland water completely lose its appeal. Just as can be seen in the picture of the Grand Canyon a few posts above, which I found quite disappointing (there should be a lot of sandbars, shoals and rapids instead of the consistent flat blue water).

 

More encouraging, this image shows that they seem to try to overlay the photoreal river with a kind of semitransparent  waterclass mask (even though the water class mask is a bit off in this case): 

 

 

This is even more promising:

 

 

Another poblem that can be seen in some of their screenshots (e.g. the Grand Canyon a few post above) is that the water texture used for rivers looks more like the waves of ocean water than the currents of a river.

 

One more wish in this regard: Inland water traffic, in particular cargo vessels on large streams and canals.

I never liked to see for example the river Rhine as an empty body of water, wereas in reality there is a dense chain of cargo vessels running up and down the Rhine. I'd love to see that in MSFS.

 

All in all I think that there is a long way to go for Asobo when it comes to water - but not everything has to be perfect on release.

 

Thanks for summing it up quite nicely! Much to look forward to in the next 10 years! 

4 hours ago, RALF9636 said:

One more wish in this regard: Inland water traffic, in particular cargo vessels on large streams and canals.

I never liked to see for example the river Rhine as an empty body of water, wereas in reality there is a dense chain of cargo vessels running up and down the Rhine. I'd love to see that in MSFS.

That‘d be cool indeed. I cross that river almost every day and in summer take a swim in it as often as I can and there‘s always a lot of traffic going on. Would be nice to have this in the sim.