Cloud Shadows Coming to FSX/FTX

[Guest drdaru1]

I forgot, there's people out there that are nay-sayers at every turn. Put your product out and let the public decide. Don't let people who have less acumen than you take your drive to deliver. It sounds like a great product and if you deliver, the market will reward you for it.

[Manny 1,293]

Ed,What product do you represent? IF you do work for an addon...then a full disclosure is in order!;)MannyPS: I actually concur with your overall premise of the potential problem you highlight!

[Guest Xiderpunk]

>I'm about 100% certain one could say that is ACES' position on>releasing service packs for FSX... however, it never works>that way... for them, or just about any software company I can>think of.>>Based on your responses here, I'm now getting the impression>you won't be publicly admitting what features are only>supported by hacking the FSX code.>>Which means for the rest of the developers to be able to>support their software... the first requirement will be to>tell the user to uninstall your add-on to ensure it isn't>causing a conflict or other bug. I'm certain you can agree>that's not a position you desire to be in if you had to>support software. Just imagine what response you'd get from>your customers if the first thing you told them was to get>further support they must first uninstall something else.>>So... think about it... don't just "note it".>>Hi Ed,With all due respect the impression you have is assumptive, and I have personally spent well over a year 'thinking' on this problem and how it can be solved. Your suggesting we would release a product that will automatically conflict with any number of other addon's. Rest assured if that happened we would not continue the products development, because we are as much simmers as developers ourselves.In respect of how it is achieved and what parts of FSX would be effected using certain FEX/FTX features we will disclose this fully, and furthermore we will take full responsibility for supporting that code, as we have done for FEX.Regards,Chris

[Guest Lennyt]

>>Hi Ed, and point is noted. Certainly it is a design goal to>>avoid breaking anything else indirectly, and hopefully a>>thorough beta period will minimize any unforeseen problems.>>>>In respect of cloud shadows and other environmental stuff,>>they will of course be entirely optional.>>>>Warm regards,>>>>Chris>>I'm about 100% certain one could say that is ACES' position on>releasing service packs for FSX... however, it never works>that way... for them, or just about any software company I can>think of.>>Based on your responses here, I'm now getting the impression>you won't be publicly admitting what features are only>supported by hacking the FSX code.>>Which means for the rest of the developers to be able to>support their software... the first requirement will be to>tell the user to uninstall your add-on to ensure it isn't>causing a conflict or other bug. I'm certain you can agree>that's not a position you desire to be in if you had to>support software. Just imagine what response you'd get from>your customers if the first thing you told them was to get>further support they must first uninstall something else.>>So... think about it... don't just "note it".>>With respect - you don't have to buy it and indeed when it's used and there are/may be conflicts with your products just give the appropriate warning. Lots of software won't reveal their algorithms and neither do they have to.

[jjjallen 37]

Chris, you guys need to be commended at FE. I have your product FEX and really enjoy it. One request: in addition to the clould shadows that would be excellent, could you tweak the FSX engine so we would no longer be plaqued by the BLURRIES.Thanks a Bunch for your efforts.Jim Allen

[Guest Ben74]

does the recent release of FTX Blue include cloud shadows? if so, can we see some screenshots please? thanks.

[Guest fsxmissionguy]

Chris,If a photo says 1,000 words, a video says a million words.Screenshots are passe.I would encourage you to show some video. Moving cloud shadows don't come across in a screenshot the way they would a video.I'm psyched that you've solved this problem. Should be a fantastic improvement in realism.

[Guest pwheeler]

The FEX guys and the FTX guys are no longer in partnership hense FTX has no cloud shadows.Peter from FEX has hinted that their new ground texture addon that he just announced on FSW will have cloud shadows generated by their upcoming environment simulator (thats me reading beween the lines though).Paul

[Holger 0]

Hello Ben,sorry, FTX doesn't contain dynamic cloud shadows. The code to enable this feature was supposed to be provided through the integration with the FEX weather engine/environmental simulator: http://www.flightenvironment.com/ However, the direct cooperation between ORBX (FTX) and Aerosimulations (FEX) was ended a few months ago. The FEX weather/environmental engine hasn't been published yet and we don't know whether it will include cloud shadows. If it does, we also don't know whether that feature will be exclusive to ground textures Aerosimulations publishes itself or applicable to ground textures in general. Perhaps Chris or Peter will read this thread and can speak to that.For FS9 many of the more exciting add-ons didn't show up until late in the cycle. With FS11 at least two more years away there's still hope that one day we will have at least the beginnings of dynamic cloud shadows ;-)Cheers, Holger

[Ramasurinen 0]

If FS11 ships with absolutely no aesthetic improvements other than real time cloud shadows then I would be perfectly happy with that. It would do wonders for the visual realism of the sim. I understand that it's a difficult thing to add given the structure of the FS graphics/scenery engine, but it's seriously long *long* overdue. Lomac's had them since 2003.Here's hoping.-mike

[Guest christian]

Some talented script guy should be able to enable cloud shadows quite easily. All you need to do is take the environment cube, filter the clouds and map that onto the ground. In theory, I'd know how to do it, but I've never done any dx shader programming...What sort of performance penalty you'd get I don't know though.Christian

[Guest cbuchner1]

I disagree, the environment cube cannot be projected onto the terrain to achieve realistic cloud shadows. The environment cube is in no way related to the sun's position - rather the camera's position!What you need is a projection of the clouds from the sun's vector onto the terrain mesh. This projection could modifying the already existing shadow map textures. These currently appear to have 256x256 pixel resolution. So the shadow edges unfortunately appear somewhat blocky.Fly at sunrise or sunset in mountaneous terrain and you can see these shadow maps. They're updated in "almost real time", a bit too slowly for moving clouds though. I just wish the light/dark contrast of the shadow maps was much stronger.To generate the shadow projections, one also needs the cloud positions.One could hook the DirectX API to get these cloud positions. Hint... Tileproxy already has some DirectX9 hooks - grab the source code if you want to try this yourself ;)

[DadJokeCinema 145]

>>I disagree, the environment cube cannot be projected onto the>terrain to achieve realistic cloud shadows. The environment>cube is in no way related to the sun's position - rather the>camera's position!>>What you need is a projection of the clouds from the sun's>vector onto the terrain mesh. This projection could modifying>the already existing shadow map textures. These currently>appear to have 256x256 pixel resolution. So the shadow edges>unfortunately appear somewhat blocky.>>Fly at sunrise or sunset in mountaneous terrain and you can>see these shadow maps. They're updated in "almost real time",>a bit too slowly for moving clouds though. I just wish the>light/dark contrast of the shadow maps was much stronger.>>To generate the shadow projections, one also needs the cloud>positions.>>One could hook the DirectX API to get these cloud positions.>Hint... Tileproxy already has some DirectX9 hooks - grab the>source code if you want to try this yourself ;)>Or write you own graphics engine and hook into FSX with SimConnect for the simulation aspect.

[Guest christian]

Well, I have to say I wouldn't really care about sun direction. Are you really going to notice that when flying? While this is a quick and dirty hack it's still better than what we have now -> no cloud shadows!Christian