Warm Front

[Christopher Low 5,353]

Here are three screenshots of my new aircraft/weather setup in FU3. Flying in light rain with an overcast sky is excellent.Best Wishes,Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Hans_Petter 1]

Looks good!A related issue -- since I started using Robert Driscoll's CFG and cranked up the haze even the outer terrain looks quite good. I was just flying my little Baron project again, to test today's tweaks of interior bitmaps and livery. I took off from Port Angeles in slightly hazy weather and looked at the aircraft from all angles. Since the torque made the plane turn slightly while I was "outside" I got a bit desoriented and didn't know exactly where I was at the moment. Looking out it appeared that I was over "inner terrain" with softly contoured mountains draped in haze, all bathed in the reddish light of sunrise. Then I looked at the compass and realized that I was southbound and was indeed over "outer terrain".It's been stated innumerous times -- while FU3 may have become a bit long in the tooth, judged by the recent standards of polygon complexity, the weather outweighs it all. Yes, the wheels are not perfectly rounded, the buildings may look a bit simplistic etc but once we add some weather to the equation it still turns magic. I might make and post some screenshots from FS2002 as well as FU3 in various weather conditions. FS2002 does sunshine better (with glare and reflections) but I think FU3 looks better than any MS sim in hazy and rainy weather.Hans Petter

[Christopher Low 5,353]

Hans,Just be careful not to slag off FS2002 on this forum !Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[LAdamson 240]

>FS2002 does sunshine better >(with glare and reflections) but I think FU3 looks better >than any MS sim in hazy and rainy weather. >One of my FS2002 rainy evening pics that I think looks quite good.L.Adamson

[LAdamson 240]

The effect of the rain, overcast, and moving waves "breaking" on the shore has quite an effect. But IMO-- the FS2002 rain drops are not up to those of FUIII......looks wise.

[Hans_Petter 1]

Chris and LAdamson, I don't intend to be bashing / slagging off any of the sims since I like them both. This being said, it appears that we all believe that the FS2002 raindrops could be improved upon. Actually, there are quite a few FS2002 scenery tweaks that might be worth downloading and you may already have (some of) them. There are better raindrops and brighter night lighting of runways and cities. There are also several good cloud replacements / additions. Cornclose has a package of FS clouds available at his website. As night lighting is concerned it's more realistic to "up" the city light brightness than the runway lights. Most people think it's the other way around but an airport close to a metropolitan area looks like a dark spot compared to the city lights.I use both of the night lighting tweaks (runway and city) but I choose to use a brighter version for the city lights than for the runways. FU3 is too dark at night, especially with a default cfg and "beacon_brightness 2.8" goes a long way towards correcting this. I think we agree that FU3 introduced a very powerful "weather engine" and I think it's more dynamic than what we see in other sims. By "dynamic" I mean that the fog rolls in and out and the rain varies more with airspeed. A drizzle of rain appears quite differently while you're being parked / while taxiing versus ramming into it at 140 kias -- you won't see droplets on the windshield when going fast.If anybody knows, it would be interesting to learn how our favorite sims model the "weather elements". Basically, we're dealing with bitmaps but there must be a lot more to it. One can always put a cloud or a raindrop bitmap on the screen but this doesn't explain cloud wisp, rolling banks of fog, running drops of water and all the other transitions. FS2002 uses multi-channel bitmaps to produce glare as well as giving an illusion of substance and variability to quite simple structures. This is a major reason why FS2002 is quite "CPU-friendly" -- MS has manged to create quite powerful illusions through simple means. (And, "illusion" is definitly meant as a positive term here since that's what sims are all about). Sometimes you can tell though, as when clouds are being viewed from the side and you see that they're really two-dimensional bitmaps. I almost forgot to mention that your FS2002 shots look good and the one with the Archer approaching the runway looks stunning. I've got the Dreamfleet Archer for FS2002 as well as Steve's version for FU3 and like it / them a lot. However, I don't remember this very blue night lighting -- is this standard? I'll fire it up and check :-)best regards,Hans Petter

[LAdamson 240]

Hans,The blue lighting is an option in the "config-o-matic" dome light.It's just my preference over red and oranges.L.Adamson

[Guest R_Driscoll]

That's why I fly this sim - absolutely breathtaking moments like you've shown in the screenshots. I flew a trip in very heavy weather in the Malibu recently - battling the controls through severe turbulence the whole time, trying to find a break in the weather to land at my designated airport, and suddenly (after a few wisps of course) broke through into perfect flying conditions - sunset golden clouds all around me but clear sunshine where I was, and it wasexhilarating.And as usual I did a perfect stall-landing adjacent to the runway ...