Has there been any further mention of opening up the weather api to third parties?

10 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Has there been any further mention of opening up the weather api to third parties?

It may be that there is no need to open up the weather API to third parties if they've implemented the necessary improvements themselves. It's early days so who knows?

Edited August 31, 20232 yr by jarmstro

15 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

It may be that there is no need to open up the weather API to third parties if they've implemented the necessary improvements themselves. It's early days so who knows?

Jorge said they would give serious consideration to opening it up. It would involve a lot of work to create something similar to an Active Sky interface.

And AS know how to create cirrus clouds. @Damian Clark, heard anything?

12 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Jorge said they would give serious consideration to opening it up. It would involve a lot of work to create something similar to an Active Sky interface.

And AS know how to create cirrus clouds. @Damian Clark, heard anything?

Well, in XP the AS cirrus were just 2D injected based on a user setting and were pretty fanciful. They were not based on actual weather. Still, it was nice to have cirrus. 

Edited August 31, 20232 yr by jarmstro

6 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Well, in XP the cirrus were just 2D injected based on a user setting and were pretty fanciful. They were not based on actual weather. Still, it was nice to have cirrus. 

Never used XP. Cirrus in P3D have been great. Just imagine how much better the clouds could look with experts involved.

1 minute ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Never used XP. Cirrus in P3D have been great. Just imagine how much better the clouds could look with experts involved.

Experts?!!! I've had just about enough of experts.🤪

13 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Never used XP. Cirrus in P3D have been great. Just imagine how much better the clouds could look with experts involved.

The only way to create realistic highly textured cirrus to to use 2D “canned” textures, as was done in FSX and P3D prior to EA. All clouds in MSFS are volumetric, and it is impossible to create detailed thin clouds like cirrus using volumetric techniques. It would require some sort of volumetric/texture hybrid.

I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but it would definitely require a modification to the way the core MSFS weather system currently works.

1 hour ago, JRBarrett said:

I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but it would definitely require a modification to the way the core MSFS weather system currently works.

Maybe that’s what’s needed. More of the same in the next gen is hardly progress.

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Maybe that’s what’s needed. More of the same in the next gen is hardly progress.

I think that's one of the driving forces behind a new sim vs. just updating the existing one.  Asobo/MS have stated that the current architecture does not allow them to do what they want to do, in many areas...I'm guessing that one of those areas is weather/opening it up/cirrus etc.

1 minute ago, Mace said:

I'm guessing that one of those areas is weather/opening it up/cirrus etc.

For Hi-Fi’s sake I hope you’re right.

8 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

And AS know how to create cirrus clouds. @Damian Clark, heard anything?

You're not referring what Damian does w/ 2D sprite based weather/clouds are you?  If not I don't believe Damian has had much success w/ cirrus or other in volumetric, voxel based clouds we see in EA and MSFS and XP12 weather.

3 hours ago, Noel said:

You're not referring what Damian does w/ 2D sprite based weather/clouds are you?  If not I don't believe Damian has had much success w/ cirrus or other in volumetric, voxel based clouds we see in EA and MSFS and XP12 weather.

I’m not familiar with the processes to create cirrus or any other type of cloud. My reason for posting was to ascertain if Asobo were going to open up the weather api to third parties. Unless that’s done the discussion on different cloud types is moot.

On 8/30/2023 at 4:53 PM, andymandy said:

Reading the info in the link above tells me that we probably will not see any

- multi-view / multi /monitor improvements.

- ATC improvements

- AI airplane improvements

 

In one of the FSExpo's interviews the lack of any mention of ATC changes was specifically mentioned and Jorg's reply was "No, I did not!". Jorg then went on to mention that there was plenty of time before release to start drip feeding functionality. My view is that there will be changes to ATC but whether this will be minor tweaks or a complete revamp and what the community's view of those changes will be is another matter altogether. I suspect there'll be some changes to those other topics you mentioned but not necessarily major.

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’m not familiar with the processes to create cirrus or any other type of cloud. My reason for posting was to ascertain if Asobo were going to open up the weather api to third parties. Unless that’s done the discussion on different cloud types is moot.

You mentioned awhile back that you did not use EA in P3D and used the old 2D sprite based cloud depiction because I guess you preferred this and I can see why because you do get cirrus, stratus, and distinct cloud depiction there and don't in volumetric.  My point was Damian has no magic to apply to this aspect of weather in MSFS, that is to say distinct cloud morphologies including cirrus, stratus and all the rest.

20 minutes ago, Noel said:

You mentioned awhile back that you did not use EA in P3D and used the old 2D sprite based cloud depiction because I guess you preferred this and I can see why because you do get cirrus, stratus, and distinct cloud depiction there and don't in volumetric.

I did it because I preferred the look but also because my 1080Ti performed better with EA off.

I haven’t realised EA prevents cirrus and other types being generated. That means I’m unlikely to turn it on even after getting a faster PC. Volumetric clouds may be better in some respects but there’s certainly a negative side to them.