sightseer

That video is almost as important as a checklist system itself I think. They are very helpful when they work correctly AND when the user knows how to interact with them (dumb word not allowed me may not be smart enough without a video like this). and after watching this I saw a video by Squirrel who did a night VFR flight from EGMC Southend to London City and it looked fabulous, simply fabulous as Phil Collins might say. I don't know why the SFO to Las Vegas video didnt look that good. settings?

While I don't think either HiFi or REX will be able to continue weather addons, both will be able to produce graphics products like alternative cloud sets and weather effects or anything related to autogen. maybe better runway/tarmac textures/effects.(alternative) HiFi created the 'clouds whipping by the cockpit' effect (which was actually my idea several years earlier 🙂 so they should be able to create more of that type of thing if they wanted.

I've got this same situation. The trees here (and most of the trees at most places Ive lived) are almost all 50 to 100 feet tall. I realize that if you live in a city you might suffer 'city planning' where they bring in intentionally small trees but out in the country, in all parts of the US that Ive lived, trees are tall. X Planes trees and buildings are too small and there is photographic evidence of MSFS trees being too small at Istanbul (see the bing images vs MSFS thread).https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/558821-in-game-vs-satellite/page/70/ I dont want to lose my proper size trees.

When I was first starting out with flight simulator back in the 80s, I used to joke about having a 100% chance of getting the passengers to the destination airport but only a 75% chance of not crashing in back of the place 🙂

I'd rather here Shine On You Crazy Diamond

seeing that guy's video (747 posted by @Nyxx ) makes me realize how much of a gamer/non-hardcore simmer I must be. I've been flying for decades but I dont know the procedure for starting a 747. I know what iFly told me was the procedure to start their 737 but Ive forgotten. I just like to fly around and see stuff...aka 'sightseer'. and I love VOR's and ILS's but I still dont know "proper procedures" or what all the buttons do. Im glad I enjoy it and I hope/know that others do as well.

Have you considered that severe weather also causes lots of devastation and loss of human life? I personally dont see much difference between fire and flood (hurricane, tornado, lightning). These things exist in the real world. I don't need or want forest fires but I'd like to see the smoke rising from typical small burns. Its just part of the scenery.

dont miss northern Alabama, western NC, West Virginia, Virginia, MD and PA. Lots of great stuff in there.

I hope the SDK informs me how to create sky and clouds with shaders (or whatever they are doing) because I would be interested in learning and I really dont know where to start.

I'm hoping that the game cache would improve performance over time. I wasnt greatly impresssed by this particular video but I cant tell if it was the sim or the video. I can definitely say the pilot was off a bit. any landing you can walk away from though. On the other hand (you have different fingers) - I was very glad to see the Earths shadow making an appearance in the default sim sky(at about the 50 min mark). something not right about the colors though. too much red in the upper sky imo and clear sky sunsets are often quite simple without much color. I'd like to see a flight over a solid cloud deck at sunset showing the shadow line that progresses as the sun 'sets'.

I think the clouds are 96% great. I've seen so many shots (have not yet flown the sim) where the clouds look very good that I certainly dont want to complain (yet) about the few situations that arent right (namely distant towering thunderstorm which are not collections of many small clouds but rather one large dark blue cloud with a bright wispy anvil top) and maybe there should be more blue in general. and then theres wispy cirrus types... but I think they have to consider performance overall as well so - "you can't have everything. where would you put it?"(Steven Wright - the guy who lost a button hole...bought some powdered water but didnt know what to add, etc)

In several earlier videos, I remember seeing Renton KRNT looking quite good imo but its not on the list of included better than average airports. I wonder why. I'm thinking it all looks quite good and I still can't get over that the base sim is basically the entire planet covered in Orbx True Earth with great looking sky and now VR and such as well. I want to visit Japan all of a sudden.

I have limited understanding of shaders as well but I do know that they take an area of the screen and change it in some way. Its code that is designed to be run at runtime directly by the GPU (I think). The code can alter what is seen in any way imaginable. The limit is the programmer. The .fx files that are found in FSX/P3D are a type of shader file. They produce lights and fireworks and smoke and raindrops. I don't know that the trees are shader based but I wouldnt be surprised and I see no reason why they wouldnt/couldn't be. There are many people on this forum who could answer this question. Maybe @n4gix ? I know Ant could. Hes the first one I know of that put raindrops on the VC windshield.

it would be easy if the trees were created with shaders like apparently the grass and water and clouds are (to my understanding).

I have no idea either but I'm sure the clouds are shader based which is something I know next to nothing about. I bought a book to try and learn a little but the first thing it wanted me to do was download some program I never heard of. I wish books would quit doing that.