1 hour ago, flyinion said:

If it was just trees it would probably already be in. They need to figure it how to modify the ground textures as well. Winter trees with green farm fields just wouldn’t look right at all for instance (areas not cold enough for snow in winter for example). 

Australia is perpetually in drought with the current textures 😄

Well it sort of is in real life as well, but the Bing maps used seem to have all been done at the end of the recent decade long one so everything is brown brown brown 😄

On 10/9/2020 at 9:22 PM, jabloomf1230 said:

It's only dynamic snow like in FSX. The ground gets covered when it's snowing, but there are no seasonal textures in MSFS. Considering that the textures are streamed from remote servers, unless MS fixes this, the sim will be an endless summer.

You have to understand, that MSFS can't has a 4 sets textures, created manually by artist with colours for each season, like in  FSX. MSFS has only one set of textures based on Real satellite photos. So it's a very difficult to change colours automaticaly, according to the seasons.

38 minutes ago, ludekbrno said:

You have to understand, that MSFS can't has a 4 sets textures, created manually by artist with colours for each season, like in  FSX. MSFS has only one set of textures based on Real satellite photos. So it's a very difficult to change colours automaticaly, according to the seasons.

Actually it's not that hard fundamentally...  They can use shader technology which makes it easy to vary the shade and add an overlay such as snow...  same as they seem to use for water and damp tarmac...  the hard part is integrating it with the weather generator.. not just for temperature and conditions (ie is snow falling) but also with wind conditions to allow for build up and drift.

I suspect that seasons is dependant on finalising the weather systems so that the shader tech can properly integrate.  (This could also be a serious issue for 3rd Party weather apps as they will then have to make a fairly major change to interface their product with the shaders)

They may also need to do work to bring that shader tech down from Ultra settings to lower settings for those not lucky enough to have high end software.

At least the engine they use supports shaders already.

Other games tech uses shader technology for snow build up etc in real time currently, so the technology is available..  as always, it's the integration that is more complex.

Graham

Edited October 11, 20205 yr by Moria15

Seasons seem to get rather little attention. If it was me, I would drop the whole VR gibberish and world updates on back burner and put heavy focus on seasons.

35 minutes ago, Moria15 said:

Actually it's not that hard fundamentally...  They can use shader technology which makes it easy to vary the shade and add an overlay such as snow...  same as they seem to use for water and damp tarmac...  the hard part is integrating it with the weather generator.. not just for temperature and conditions (ie is snow falling) but also with wind conditions to allow for build up and drift.

I suspect that seasons is dependant on finalising the weather systems so that the shader tech can properly integrate.  (This could also be a serious issue for 3rd Party weather apps as they will then have to make a fairly major change to interface their product with the shaders)

They may also need to do work to bring that shader tech down from Ultra settings to lower settings for those not lucky enough to have high end software.

At least the engine they use supports shaders already.

Other games tech uses shader technology for snow build up etc in real time currently, so the technology is available..  as always, it's the integration that is more complex.

Graham

Using a LUT to change green fields into brown is pretty easy. The game is actually doing some color correction to the satellite textures already.

The hard part is what do you do about all the things that are green but not vegetation? Stuff like clay tennis courts changing colors with the seasons would look pretty strange.

On 10/9/2020 at 3:22 PM, jabloomf1230 said:

It's only dynamic snow like in FSX. The ground gets covered when it's snowing, but there are no seasonal textures in MSFS. Considering that the textures are streamed from remote servers, unless MS fixes this, the sim will be an endless summer.

I was hoping there didn't actually have to be snow falling in order to have it on the ground, but went to Alaska and set the time for December and everything was green.

1 hour ago, L3m0n said:

The hard part is what do you do about all the things that are green but not vegetation? Stuff like clay tennis courts changing colors with the seasons would look pretty strange.

Guss they have to feed it to well trained AI. 

11 minutes ago, desbean said:

I was hoping there didn't actually have to be snow falling in order to have it on the ground, but went to Alaska and set the time for December and everything was green.

All you have to do is change the snow coverage slider in the weather options.

 

2 minutes ago, Evros said:

Guss they have to feed it to well trained AI. 

Or use true color satellite images that also have an IR channel.

It's not an insurmountable problem to overcome. The vegetation leaf textures are easy to change as long as the vegetation conditions are based on RL data and not fixed dates like in FSX. With orthophotos it's really not necessary to have 4 different ground textures. Spring, summer and even autumn don't look all that different. You just need a brownish version of the ground textures for the rest of the year and that can be done by applying a color correction to the orthophotos using shaders.

Landclass textures are really better for capturing seasonal changes than orthophotos.Thats why SimElite Solution's Season Manager combined with 3D trees in P3d5 gives the most realistic representation of seasons in a flightsim.

 

4 hours ago, Evros said:

Seasons seem to get rather little attention. If it was me, I would drop the whole VR gibberish and world updates on back burner and put heavy focus on seasons.

 

 

Agreed!!!

2 hours ago, desbean said:

I was hoping there didn't actually have to be snow falling in order to have it on the ground, but went to Alaska and set the time for December and everything was green.

Yes, that does suck!!!

 

A lot of people in Northern regions will all of a sudden become season's fans when they look outside and see snow everywhere and jump in MSFS and fly over their area only to see summer everywhere!

5 hours ago, ludekbrno said:

You have to understand, that MSFS can't has a 4 sets textures, created manually by artist with colours for each season, like in  FSX. MSFS has only one set of textures based on Real satellite photos. 

It seems to me the approach might come from shaders that influence the coloration of tagged objects (leaves) that according to current lattitude, elevation, date, and recent temperatures --all of these variables might drive shaders to make leaves change colors much closer to the realtime world you're in.  Something like this seems to me to be much more eloquent (read: efficient!) and organic than having separate edited textures sets.   If they end up using this type of approach be prepared to be blown away yet again 

10 hours ago, L3m0n said:

Using a LUT to change green fields into brown is pretty easy. The game is actually doing some color correction to the satellite textures already.

It isn't the similar. The satellite pictures correction is done one-time before Asobo upload it to the scenery streaming server, not localy by game on user computer during play. But colors changes for seasons look is completely different, it must be processed by shaders on user computer during play.

To make ground textures respond to seasons, you need them proceduraly and have normal maps to store data on it's channels; for example the alpha channel of a ground texture can represent what gets a redish color in autumn obviously using shaders.

MSFS does none of that for ground textures, this is not just about seasons too, it's about any modern method to render a photorealistic material.

Since snow will accumulate almost anywhere* it can be done using just a white tone that covers everything.

They could try with color corrections, but will probably look bad.

*Other factors on procedural terrain may affect snow, like mountain slopes where snow might not accumulate and only the peak will be covered with snow. It mostly depends on the engine, but the idea is the same.

Long story short, although they promised, I can't see it done in MSFS in a good manner unless they change the way they generate their ground textures.

On 10/9/2020 at 10:20 PM, XMAN said:

Endless summer?  

Not entirely true. 

Seasonal lighting (sun position) is correct as would be the weather   It's only the seasonal textures which they need to implement and that is on the 'to do' list