WEATHER

[cauldron]

A humidity and vertical physics engine:

 

There is nothing greater than a global update that affects all player experience. It is my opinion that it is in these issues that ED should have the greatest concentration of efforts. For example better hardware integration (multi core, vulcan), global damage models, missile proportional navigation, radars and ecm,eccm global issues.

 

But of all these in my opinion the one that lags behind the most is weather:

 

A humidity physics engine upgrade can globally handle the following, not the least of which:

• 
  all over wing vapor effects
  

• 
  shock cone vapor effects
  

• 
  rain
  

• 
  virga
  

• 
  cumulus clouds, towering cumulus, steady state Cb's, strato cumulus, fogs, mists
  

• 
  icing
  

• 
  hail
  

• 
  radar rain reflections and attenuation, as well as rain radar shadows
  

• 
  vertical wind (updrafts & downdrafts) and windshear, downbursts, microbursts
  

• 
  etc
  

 

These are important immersion criteria, especially for actual/retired pilots playing on the sim, as well as to show those who have not yet, or cannot fly into the real sky. The lack of winds, turbulence, updrafts & downdrafts, a physics model for cloud formation & dissipation and weather as a whole should be of primary importance. Just as getting the temperature and pressure model correct of the atmosphere which DCS already does, weather is a major step that is missing. Without a proper or an evolving weather physics engine DCS will become and feel "empty"

 

If a pressure & wind model can co-exist with a vertical & humidity model it would be amazing, and will catapult DCS into a new era of flight sim. Currently, (this is not meant to be negative) DCS is an amzaing simulator that flies in laboratory conditions where for the most part there is no wind effects or weather, and when they are implemented they are minor at best (yet for most multiplayer servers even these are non-existent i.e. zero winds, severe clear and the player base has become accustomed to "simming' in zero wind, zero weather conditions. Most plane modules can successfully fly in IMC but most players are not even aware of this. The lack of weather will year by year become more and more evident in its lack there of.

 

To the developers, please have this on your roadmap, implement it progressively. Here is a taste of the "world" DCS could enjoy. (it's mostly visual but it may help get my point across) it's from microsoft simulator where DCS should be much much better, regrettably its not. Weather in a flight sim is a core attribute, just as temperature and pressure are, its the atmosphere, its where everything takes place, without it you lose the joy of flying, give us this wonderful sandbox of weather, so we can experience what many of us remember fondly from our past flying experiences, and others dream of.

 

 

To steal a "signature quote" from the late CarlSagan: "Witness mere F-14s taking off from adjacent flight decks, gracefully canting left and right, afterburners flaming, and there’s something that sweeps you away—or at least it does me. And no amount of knowledge of the potential abuses of carrier task forces can affect the depth of that feeling. It simply speaks to another part of me. It doesn’t want recriminations or politics. It just wants to fly.”

 

 

...or even better, one we have all probably read, but without weather, this poem would never have been written:

 

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds ... and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of ... wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

-John Magee

Edited October 28, 2019 by BIGNEWY
1.15 removed video link

[sirrah]

Why did nobody think of this before?!?

 

 

 

 

:music_whistling:

[lucky-hendrix]

You are a bit late to the party ...

 

Wags stated a few time that they are working on a new humidity simulation. That will bring among other new clouds.

 

However how long this will take before it releases is anyone's guess

 

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