New Clouds for DCS

[adrianstealth]

Clouds visuals & their effects on flight are important in a flight simulator

 

DCS is currently weak on this important area , I do hope it’s being address & maybe currently in progress

[Buckeye]

Any of these improvements would be absolutely incredible!

[Mars Exulte]

you are not wrong, however there are also lots of middleware solutions, that can be implemented "easily". see speedtree for example, that is used to generate and help with rendering all those trees in dcs already.

i would argue it is more a question of licensing cost versus cost of self development.

 

True, but speedtrees is designed to be modular (ish) as I understand it. This is an entire engine, it's questionable whether you could lop one piece of and expect it to work without the others.

 

Still, that is pretty cool, I'm checking it out )

[pimp]

I know it was not in any of those newsletters, but I can't see them not working on this improvement. Even Wags said in an older video, when he's showcasing or watching a DCS video he loves what he sees until he see the clouds.

[Cake]

I think it's important to make sure that whatever weather system we end up with, that it properly affects the airplanes operating in it. Icing and sensors are just two things affected by weather. We now have observed icing effects on perfectly clear air with at least the hornet. This is wrong, but how does it get fixed? For a weather model to be done right, we would need some kind of model that includes (for examples) the moisture present in the clouds to see how they cause things like icing and radar attenuation. These are just examples. We could have everything up to and including wind currents, hail, and SLD icing. Seems like a big task.

 

The eye candy vs realism battle continues.

[MonnieRock]

True, but speedtrees is designed to be modular (ish) as I understand it. This is an entire engine, it's questionable whether you could lop one piece of and expect it to work without the others.

 

Still, that is pretty cool, I'm checking it out )

 

 

Quote from this page https://unigine.com/en/products/engine

 

3D planet system with geographic coordinates

 

64-bit coordinates precision: real-world scale of virtual scenes as large as the solar system

 

Oculus Rift / HTC Vive, curved screens, monitor walls, CAVEs, multi-channel image generation

 

Superior performance for handling of CAD and 3D scanned data

 

Compatible with standard content pipeline: FBX, OpenFlight, GeoTIFF, etc

 

Embeddable into existing C++/C# codebase

...and much more!

 

Depending on the license, a company would look at the purchase vs paying an employee(s) the man hours needed to get to this level.

 

Happy Simming,

Monnie

[Thorimus]

+N for better weather and clouds. Sad to see it’s been left in the dirt

[Ala13_ManOWar]

I think it's important to make sure that whatever weather system we end up with, that it properly affects the airplanes operating in it. Icing and sensors are just two things affected by weather. We now have observed icing effects on perfectly clear air with at least the hornet. This is wrong, but how does it get fixed? For a weather model to be done right, we would need some kind of model that includes (for examples) the moisture present in the clouds to see how they cause things like icing and radar attenuation. These are just examples. We could have everything up to and including wind currents, hail, and SLD icing. Seems like a big task.

 

The eye candy vs realism battle continues.

Sorry to say, but depending on conditions a perfect blue sky causing icing is not uncommon nor unrealistic as any GA pilot would know. Icing may happen with a 20ºC temperature at ground level in a perfect blue sky. I agree we haven't hear of the announced new weather (and clouds) since a lot of time now and more than a few things could be better, but please don't start the usual bashing against everything before you even try to find out what's going on when something happens.

 

 

S!

[sea2sky]

If you guys want a substantial change in the weather engine as well as any other important "world things" that affect immersion then stop cheering for the new modules development: F-16, F17, F18, F-19, F20 etc etc add your number.

[Deano87]

If you guys want a substantial change in the weather engine as well as any other important "world things" that affect immersion then stop cheering for the new modules development: F-16, F17, F18, F-19, F20 etc etc add your number.

 

That's kind of backwards. ED needs to sell new modules to make money so they can invest money into new base engine tech like weather etc.

[Strikeeagle345]

I think it's important to make sure that whatever weather system we end up with, that it properly affects the airplanes operating in it. Icing and sensors are just two things affected by weather. We now have observed icing effects on perfectly clear air with at least the hornet. This is wrong, but how does it get fixed? For a weather model to be done right, we would need some kind of model that includes (for examples) the moisture present in the clouds to see how they cause things like icing and radar attenuation. These are just examples. We could have everything up to and including wind currents, hail, and SLD icing. Seems like a big task.

 

The eye candy vs realism battle continues.

 

The Hornets Inlet Ice caution is a bug in the hornet as i dont think DCS models this at all.

[ApoNOOB]

I was under the impression current clouds are only placeholder after engine upgrade and are WIP like lights?

[sea2sky]

That's kind of backwards. ED needs to sell new modules to make money so they can invest money into new base engine tech like weather etc.

 

 

I get it, but who said new weather can't be arranged as a payed module? How about dynamic campaign? I will pay for both.

[Mars Exulte]

Because those are core game features that are not the sort of thing you usually pay for. Do you really want to start paying extra for HD texture packs for your planes and maps? Is it not expensive enough already? @@ Also, money doesn't magically make stuff appear. It still has to be coded at some point. I.e. the long boring stretches of time inbetween the cool looking stuff. They're working on it, be patient @@

[sea2sky]

I'm patient. I'm saying I would rather pay for some improvements in fundamental features that bring this sim to another level rather than paying for new aircraft modules. To be fair I should note that most of the modules come from 3rd party devs hopefully leaving ED main team alone with their core projects.

 

Because those are core game features that are not the sort of thing you usually pay for. Do you really want to start paying extra for HD texture packs for your planes and maps? Is it not expensive enough already? @@ Also, money doesn't magically make stuff appear. It still has to be coded at some point. I.e. the long boring stretches of time inbetween the cool looking stuff. They're working on it, be patient @@

[mstauning]

Ill would pay for better weather and even for a multithreaded version of DCS ;)

[Devil 505]

Looking forward to what ED and third party Devs have in mind. Trying to keep this thread positive and see if more people are interested in weather/cloud change in DCS. We all know everyone wants more planes.

[Headwarp]

I'm all for lifelike and awesome looking clouds, as long as it doesn't tax hardware too much :P Certain settings with clouds even with the current weather engine can cause stuttering for me, and there's not much out there in the way of hardware improvement for me at this point.

 

2.5 was a big jump from 1.5 in regards of performance, let's hope vulkan adds more headroom in that regard.

Edited January 26, 2019 by Headwarp

[Tinkickef]

I'm all for lifelike and awesome looking clouds, as long as it doesn't tax hardware too much :P Certain settings with clouds even with the current weather engine can cause stuttering for me, and there's not much out there in the way of hardware improvement for me at this point.

 

2.5 was a big jump from 1.5 in regards of performance, let's hope vulkan adds more headroom in that regard.

 

Exactly my thoughts. Wags admitted in so many words that the present weather has become a little outdated, and also that they are working on it.

 

I have never had just cause to have any reservations over Wag's comments and am confident they have something in the pipeline, whether that be a bought in product as detailed in this thread, or a home brewed version. Personally I would think a bought in product would be the easiest for them, just like speedtrees.

There certainly seems to be far more collaboration with high quality third parties than ever before.

 

However, as you said Headwarp, due to performance issues, we will not see the implementation until Vulkan comes to OB and stable.

 

It would be nice to see "drag and drop", mobile and fully adjustable pressure systems for dynamic weather, plus selectable, multi layered cloud types with adjustable coverage for static weather included in mission editor.

 

And yes, I would pay a reasonable amount for a high quality product for single player use, because with Vulkan my system could handle it, however I recognise that others may not want it at all for the same performance reasons; and also to avoid opening another multiplayer can of worms for the private servers, they can choose to have it or not.

Of course I think it should be able to be available to all for free when logging into the dedicated ED Caucasus MP server.

Customers could then make a more informed purchasing decision re benefits and system impact.

After all, everyone looks to different things in DCS, some like as visually realistic a flight as possible and others are more concerned with shooting stuff down, don't really give a fig about clouds and see them as performance eaters.

 

Of course, it would be nice to have it for free, but my thinking is that those of us looking for eye candy realism over combat would pay a commensurate amount to add realism to their setup and if ED can make a modest profit from doing so, it would encourage them to offer more *. Someone mentioned paying more for higher definition packs for existing modules.... that is a step too far however and I am absolutely confident that ED would never do that. A paid module is a paid module.

 

* Addons such as animations for ground crew, support vehicles on the ramp. Spawning in a briefing room with your fellow squad mates, then fully controlled walking, climbing into and getting driven across the base in a breadvan / humvee to the flight line, walking up to your assigned aircraft and climbing aboard - this is one of my most hoped for VR wishes.. cockpit access and egress plus using the breathtaking detail of the PG and NTTR bases from " behind the scenes" to its full.

 

Granted that many would not be interested, esp if not using VR, which is why a payware add-on makes sense, it gives people a choice, encourages ED to sanction it and also allows ED to pay third party developers to carry it out.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Tinkickef

[Owl Dynamic]

Honestly, I do like the current clouds. As long as you are not too high up, then the illusion breaks apart. For me the problem is there seems to be only this one cloud type and while the idea of the dynamic weather system is absolutely amazing, I feel there is not enough control over it. But then again, the Su-25 relies on good weather anyway. I think the night sky should be much brighter on a clear night than it is now.

[Tinkickef]

I prefer the Unigine cloud tech, to me it's more natural and polished

 

 

 

Agreed and they were making it compatible with Vulkan!

 

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-unigine-powered-superposition-benchmark-will-get-vulkan-support-this-year.9509

[OnlyforDCS]

I won't comment on other engines and solutions except to say that it's pretty much wishful thinking at this point.

 

With that said I do wish that Eagle Dynamics finally implements some better looking clouds and atmospheric effects into their "new" engine, it is IMO the single most important part that is still missing to make this simulation the best there is.

 

In my opinion it is more important than new maps, new modules, or anything else in the pipeline simply because the sky is where we spend 99% of our time in DCS World and while it can look good at times, a lot of the times we do have some weather systems they look so much poorer compared to the looks of all the other great stuff we have in the game that it can be pretty immersion breaking.

 

There was nothing regarding weather updates in the last roadmap that ED have published so I think it is very doubtful we will see anything of that sort in 2019.

[Biga42]

This is one of the newest videos demoing the engine. Imagine these clouds rolling over the Caucus map in VR.

 

Amazing! ED shall spent more time in the sky enviroment then in the land, because we spent more time in the sky then in the land.

[S-GERAT]

Agree, the clouds in DCS are totally obsolete. I think that ED and their partners should put things like the weather system, ATC, performance and AI as top priorities.

[sirrah]

I'd very much prefer a new cloud system over additional new aircraft.

 

For me it's mainly the "rotating" clouds issue (when you tilt your head in VR) that completely ruins immersion. Not sure if the effect is also visible on a monitor, but as a DCS VR only user, I prefer clear skies just to avoid this.

 

Which is a pity, because that way I miss out on the canopy rain effect (which looks really good considering the current possibilities performance wise)