http://windwardmark.net/products.php?page=...⊂=technologyIt's a lighting/weather engine "add-on" for simulators.Look at the before/after screenshots.It's incredible how "just" a proper lightning processing can immensely add to the realism of the scene, without the need to modify the 3d scene at all.MS should licence that engine for FSXI :-lol Marco

I 2ND THAT!! W O W!josh

HDR lighting is possible in DX10. ACES are probably working on it right now.

That company should be sued for fraud. They are obviously just taking real world photographs and passing them off as screenshots ;-)Seriously though, that's amazing. Hopefully a sneak peak at the future of FS11.Make sure to check out some of the videos.Matt

Yea look the videos! You can see cloud shadows!

"WindLight doesn't suffer from this quality/speed problem. It is based on entirely different models, and uses patent-pending algorithms to keep its framerates extremely high at all times. WindLight was written from the ground up to be used in real simulators, on all objects, in all conditions, while always maintaining its photographic fidelity and speed." !!

>"WindLight doesn't suffer from this quality/speed problem.>It is based on entirely different models, and uses>patent-pending algorithms to keep its framerates extremely>high at all times. WindLight was written from the ground up to>be used in real simulators, on all objects, in all conditions,>while always maintaining its photographic fidelity and>speed." !!I think they mean that their lighting/weather engine don't add much overhead to the graphic engine. I think FSX frame rate problems are mostly not caused by its weather/lighting engine.Of course their quality/performance ratio seems very good and be very useful in a performance hungry app as FSX! :)Marco

Awesome stuff!I couldn't tell if it's included with Windlight, but their Nimble system looks just as fantastic. If only someone could implement this in FS!!

I wouldn't be too optimistic. Trees of Pangea was released a fair while ago but the trees are still static in FSX. Maybe FS11?

Billy should buy the company and merge it into MS products..namely FS11. Now that is something I would buy on release day!

Thanks for pointing out the site. Amazing stuff!

I'm traditionally skeptical about things like this, but I've seen some great advances recently.I'd love to see it implemented in a real world situation to see how it works in comparison (by the way, I notice that a lot of the "before" comparison shots have no shadows or anything rendered at all, like just one point light for the scene).Recently, I've been doing a lot of reading (and a few of my own experiments) with procedural generation of architecture. This paper from SIGGRAPH talks about a lot of what can be done. It's similar in concept to autogen, but definitely higher cost in polygons.http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/~pmueller/wik...ngine/DocumentsThe demo reel on this page:http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/~pmueller/wik...gine/Animations (the 560MB one) really shows off all they can do.However, I don't believe something like this is ready for prime time yet. My understanding of autogen is that it takes prebuilt low poly buildings and places them where they need to go based on certain factors. This new process uses base shapes (cubes, cylinders, etc) and then applies a set of rules with some probability to each shape or face of the shape, creating random but similar and fitting architecture on the fly. It expands to use vector data to assign where these buildings should be, and fits them within the confines of the space allowed. So you get a random, but natural and realistic collection of houses, storefronts, etc.One day, perhaps not too far from now, we'll be at the point technologically where this form of on the fly content creation is more plausible for commercial products. I think we'll probably see those better lighting solutions before then.

HDR is available in DX9. Valve's been showcasing HDR in HL2: Lost Coast and it is available in HL2: First Episode.Cheers,

Yeah...HDR would work wonders in FSX. With high dynamic range, the sun would really look bright compared to the ground. I bet the night enviroments would look better too (with say runway lights standing out more).

Basically, we have the salt, the pepper, the egg yoke and the olive oil. All we need is some creativity, maybe a touch of vinegar and crushed garlic, patience and elbow grease, to get the real mayonnaise. One might also want to ponder why the bother since Kraft already did that for you?As far as smaller but as creative initiatives also check out this guy:http://www.white-clouds.org/