Have I missed something?  I remember seeing a video of snow on top of some summer scenery, but I don't recall seeing any autumn scenery or barren winter scenery.  Hopefully we'll see something during beta.

14 minutes ago, pannellg said:

Have I missed something?  I remember seeing a video of snow on top of some summer scenery, but I don't recall seeing any autumn scenery or barren winter scenery.  Hopefully we'll see something during beta.

AFAIK Seasons wasn't in the original planning so we might not see it at launch, if at all. Too bad really since then we can't complain about vegetation having the wrong colour for south-east England or why there are leaves falling from evergreens instead of deciduous trees.

Yep, see here: July 2nd 2020 insider update

Seasons are on the 'top wish list'.

Snow has been in a couple of videos, don't know how that can be switched on or off.

Edited July 6, 20205 yr by RudyB24

Wishlist doesn't mean it will make it for launch.

That's what I meant to say, it's on the wish list, it may never come.

But it is on Microsoft's radar. Just like VR.

Thanks for the heads up...

I believe that it will all be dynamic in the future. Not texture based but shader based. At least that’s how I understand it based on my limited knowledge and understanding. 

I hope you can bear with me, but seasons were nicely done in MS Flight, so shouldn't be so hard to achieve, but what do I know...

 

-eelis-

6 hours ago, eelis said:

I hope you can bear with me, but seasons were nicely done in MS Flight, so shouldn't be so hard to achieve, but what do I know...

 

-eelis-

It's going to be hard to achieve because MSFS doesn't use generic landclass (except in off line mode, and almost no one is going to use that). They can't just swap some textures and tell the sim to change them out based on what day it is.

One of the costs of advancement is not being able to rely on the same old shortcuts to do things. The only real way to do seasons in MSFS is with shaders that overlay and modify the orthos. They've done it with snow, but "seasons" remains on the wish list. I personally wouldn't expect it at release, but those of us in the Alpha are also not "in the know" about stuff like that. We just test, so I'm speculating.

Edited July 8, 20205 yr by bonchie

One of the X-Plane weather addons (xEnviro) easily processes textures (including photo) to adjust colours for seasons. With some extra autogen models I'm sure it's possible with MSFS, if not in the base game then at some point as an add-on.

13 hours ago, scotchegg said:

One of the X-Plane weather addons (xEnviro) easily processes textures (including photo) to adjust colours for seasons. With some extra autogen models I'm sure it's possible with MSFS, if not in the base game then at some point as an add-on.

xEnviro doesn’t process the textures nor the photoimagery. What it does is use shaders to apply masks over all the surfaces. This way It can apply masks over the terrain, objects (airplanes, cars, houses, buildings, trees etc) and all.
 

Asobo must be using shaders too, judging their “Let it snow” video. 

In this video, Neuman and Wloch were clear enough that seasons didn’t mean for them only shading the trees and ground (from the 8’20’’ mark).  Beside that, in an interview in a German media, Neuman said that seasons were only a ‘maybe’ at release. The « let it snow » video seems to show they are working on it but having snow  is not having seasons.

 

3 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

In this video, Neuman and Wloch were clear enough that seasons didn’t mean for them only shading the trees and ground (from the 8’20’’ mark).  Beside that, in an interview in a German media, Neuman said that seasons were only a ‘maybe’ at release. The « let it snow » video seems to show they are working on it but having snow  is not having seasons.

 

Sure, I know what they’ve said. What I meant is they don’t need to have a lot of different models and textures for each season. Using shaders for that aspect of the seasons is way better.

I talked about the snow because they are already using shaders to depict snowy weather on the sim, that points out which way they choose for that.

But as he said, when they implement the seasons (not just the snowy weather as is already implemented in the alpha), it will be something more complex than just changing ground colors, trees, houses etc. It might involve animal migrations and more.

17 hours ago, ca_metal said:

Sure, I know what they’ve said. What I meant is they don’t need to have a lot of different models and textures for each season. Using shaders for that aspect of the seasons is way better.

I talked about the snow because they are already using shaders to depict snowy weather on the sim, that points out which way they choose for that.

But as he said, when they implement the seasons (not just the snowy weather as is already implemented in the alpha), it will be something more complex than just changing ground colors, trees, houses etc. It might involve animal migrations and more.

If they want to go beyond shading, and honestly that would already be very nice to begin with, one rendering issue is accumulation : banks of snow along runways/taxiways, swirling dead leaves heaping on the same, swelling of water bodies. But just the right shading is already an immense job as the seasonal effect on ground and trees is not exactly the same in Moscow or in New Delhi, in Paris or Beijing. To say the least.

Besides the migrations of ducks, the large scale forest fires are also an important seasonal aspect. Says the guy who sees the Protection Civile CL415 regularly flying over his house in Summer 😏.

Edited July 10, 20205 yr by Dominique_K

4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

If they want to go beyond shading, and honestly that would already be very nice to begin with, one rendering issue is accumulation : banks of snow along runways/taxiways, swirling dead leaves heaping on the same, swelling of water bodies. But just the right shading is already an immense job as the seasonal effect on ground and trees is not exactly the same in Moscow or in New Delhi, in Paris or Beijing. To say the least.

Besides the migrations of ducks, the large scale forest fires are also an important seasonal aspect. Says the guy who sees the Protection Civile CL415 regularly flying over his house in Summer 😏.

Hey Dominique, I agree with you on all of that. And just to be clear, I’m not saying they won’t go further with the seasons implementation (or the snowy weather). I was just pointing out they’re probably not using the old technique of using seasonal textures, they will probably go with shaders as they are already using the shaders for the snow.

Also, if they want to go further with seasons, shaders are the way to go, because they can use them for things like wet ground, ground covered by red foliage, they can even use them to depict floods.