Too "glassy" and reflective water.

[fagulha]

Some people don´t understand that the problem to us armchair pilots is not the water itself but the reflections. And we know it´s WIP that´s why we report what is missing, or not, and what could be improved.

Love the water in 2.7 but the reflections need work (Valve Index user).

Edited April 27, 2021 by fagulha

[Pocket Kings]

Anyone can call me an armchair pilot, quarterback, president, whatever, I don't mind free speech and I think discourse is healthy in the long run.

 

However, I remain the right to call anybody who says the first screenshot vs the latter looks "perfect" to have issues, at least with eye sight. We all have at least been passengers on airplanes over waters. I've traveled quite a lot but I have never seen such an unified "soup" in my life under no weather or light circumstances.

 

For sure, both do not look perfect and far from the real thing. But try to ask normal people, e.g. non armchair pilots, for their opinion. I don't believe they would call the first screenshot "bang on reality".

 

 

 

[Zeagle]

On 4/27/2021 at 5:18 AM, Lurker said:

Armchair pilots are the worst. Seriously, this does not belong in the bugs section. It's a matter of taste and opinion, and IMO the water effects look much improved compared to 2.5. 

I agree with Lurker.

 

You guys complaining about how there is "no structure" and the water is a "mirror" need to get outside a bit more often. I have spent more than my share of time both on, below, and above the ocean. I can tell you ED did a great job. 

 

Do you know how many pilots have died because of disorientation over water? I have photos of my own where you cannot tell the ocean from the sky and the ocean actually looks like the sky. 

[Zeagle]

On 4/21/2021 at 12:34 PM, dundun92 said:

+1. There is zero depth perception over the water, and its far, far too dark. I cant count how many times this patch, for example, i've hit the water notching missiles because I have no idea hew high I am without having to go into the HUD/instruments that just detract from SA in the moment.

 

That's how it works in the real world too

[bkthunder]

My 2 cents, as I regularly fly over water (as a pilot, not passenger) in real life: 

 

- The amount of reflectivity seems to me, to be mostly based on the height over the water + the amount of waves. E.g. if you look straight down, you don't see any reflections, if you look far on the horizon, you see reflections. the lower you are, the easier it is to see reflections because you are more "flat". 

The single most important factor to a mirror / glass look or not, is the amount of waves. I have hardly ever seen a perfect mirror, because there always currents and small waves that make a texture. That said, the reflectivity in DCS, with a calm wind, doesn't seem so terribly wrong as some of you make it out to be.

 

- There are cases where water is like a mirror, and anyway every pilot knows that water is extremely deceptive and makes it very hard to determine your height visually. I have personally experienced this, especially when the sky is overcast with different shades of grey and bluish that merge completely with the color of the sea and waves. Disorientation over water is real.

 

Edited April 30, 2021 by bkthunder

[bkthunder]

On 4/21/2021 at 9:31 PM, dukovac said:

One extreme example:

Ok, this really looks wrong though!

[Ala12Rv-watermanpc]

3 hours ago, Pocket Kings said:

Anyone can call me an armchair pilot, quarterback, president, whatever, I don't mind free speech and I think discourse is healthy in the long run.

 

However, I remain the right to call anybody who says the first screenshot vs the latter looks "perfect" to have issues, at least with eye sight. We all have at least been passengers on airplanes over waters. I've traveled quite a lot but I have never seen such an unified "soup" in my life under no weather or light circumstances.

 

For sure, both do not look perfect and far from the real thing. But try to ask normal people, e.g. non armchair pilots, for their opinion. I don't believe they would call the first screenshot "bang on reality".

 

 

 

 

 

Actually the first screen IS the most realistic one, which doesn't mean that it is fully realistic.

 

Imo, water bodies reflectivity will depend, basically, of 4 parameters:

 

1- Water state (waviness).

2- Angle of view.

3- Height.

4-Fresnel effect.

 

1- The more waviness, the less visible the reflections are due to the dispersion of the light caused by the bumpiness, spreading the light in different directions equivalent to launching less light to your eyes. This could be done by decreasing intensity of the reflections accordingly to the winds. 

 

In a very calm water, reflections would actually look like a PERFECT MIRROR! (this happens a lot when flying over lakes), so yes, that screen you posted could be realistic (other than the quality of the own reflections),as in that screen, the real sky is being reflected into the water, which wasn't the case in previous versions of dcs...not to mention the absurd size of the waves and the way they behaved (constant size at any distance, angle or height), so please, do not blame what, in fact, is BETTER in any possible way to what we had before.

 

RL images:

 

 

 

2,3- The shallower the angle of view, the more visible reflections will be, in general...This could not be true in extremely choppy sea at extreme low angle where it would be the opposite, as waviness would completely remove the reflected light from our point of view:

 

But in calm water, that would be the case:

 

 

this is linked to the 3th parameter, height. The higher level you fly, the less visible will be the non shallow, for that height, reflections. This means that in a calm water, even flying at very high level, far away clouds reflections (if light conditions are met, aka, clouds are reflecting light in the direction you are looking) will be visible:

 

 

 

but other, more vertical reflections, "might" be lost, as always, depending on the other parameters. This would need actual ray tracing to be done in a fully phisically correct way, but due to performance constrains, SSLR won't do a good job with this.

 

4- One of the reasons for the odd looking reflections now, particularly at low altitudes, is the lack of Fresnel effect, as another forum fellow already pointed. In big water bodies, this is what makes for a realistic water reflections (together with the other things mentioned) as without this, reflections will always look like a perfect mirror independently of the water state or the amount of reflectiveness adjusted. Even in very calm water, there will always be some waves, which will cause the reflections to "stretch" depending of that amount of waviness. This effect should be included in DCS at some point.

 

 

another thing that would greatly benefit from this effect would be the sun reflection, which desperately needs an improvement in this regard. Sun reflection should be much more spread and stretch from the horizon (also depending on a variety of paramenters, conditions and time of day, so sun height over the horizon) to look something like this in most situations:

 

 

 

To sumarize, imho, ED should make reflections more water state dependant which would smooth them a lot, and make possible the Fresnel effect for them, specially for clouds reflections. Also, make the sun reflection look as close as possible to the last picture (when conditions are met), and we will have a very nice water rendering for DCS.

 

Edited April 30, 2021 by Ala12Rv-watermanpc

[Ala12Rv-watermanpc]

46 minutes ago, bkthunder said:

Ok, this really looks wrong though!

 

No, it doesn't look "wrong" by any means, it just needs some more work!!!, it's just partially done, that's why it is not looking fully correct as it is lacking some effects, but what we have there is potential and WIP, but there is nothing there that is "wrong", as actually was in previous to 2.7 versions (like water waves behaviour).

[Pocket Kings]

These two are good examples:

 

 

 

I know, they are most likely shot at different heights. But notice in the first picture the reflected clouds look like minecraft blocks and in reality they reflect well more defined, waves or not. Because with increasing height, waves don't matter as much. The amount of light rays that reflect with the right trajectory to hit your eyes lessen. Thus the light intensity to the eye decreases, not the crispyness. I hope you understand me, English isn't my first language.

 

If you look at images from the space station, notice regardless of the severity of wind speeds or nearby storms, sun reflections on the water never look bulky like minecraft? The same is true for 33000 ft, or 60000 ft, or 3000 ft.

 

This one is a great example:

 

 

It doesn't look out of touch with the sky. Those screenshots above the Black Sea do, imho. I'm not blaming anyone at ED. Being a programmer myself I recognize that sometimes results differ severely from intentions. And I'm not even in the graphical department where we have two major chip architectures and a plethora of chip generations. It just doesn't look right.

[112th_Rossi]

Erm it's not even the reflections that are the problem. There are no wave crests and the sea remains dead flat regardless of weather. Reflections aren't the issue

[Ala12Rv-watermanpc]

2 hours ago, 112th_Rossi said:

Erm it's not even the reflections that are the problem. There are no wave crests and the sea remains dead flat regardless of weather. Reflections aren't the issue

 

That's not true. Waves size is now way more realistic than it ever was. And you can get quite choppy seas increasing winds

 

Edited April 30, 2021 by Ala12Rv-watermanpc

[112th_Rossi]

48 minutes ago, Ala12Rv-watermanpc said:

 

That's not true. Waves size is now way more realistic than it ever was. And you can get quite choppy seas increasing winds

 

 

 

It's not as good as 2.5. There are hardly any white wave crests. You can't even see them at low level. 

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

2 hours ago, 112th_Rossi said:

There are hardly any white wave crests.

I remember reading a pilot's report recently commenting on how violent the seas were as he was flying over them. He said something to the effect of: "You could see the whitecaps at 1,600 ft."

I guess people can keep arguing back and forth for a while longer: some say it's more realistic now, others claim 2.5 was better... It's a difference of opinion that's not going to convince the others  

[Raisuli]

I spent three and a half years at sea, and I've seen water like this...maybe twice.  First thing I noticed when I finally came out of the clouds, and was half-hoping it was part of the 'work in progress'.

[Ironhand]

Deleted 

Edited May 1, 2021 by Ironhand
Won’t format properly

[westr]

On 4/30/2021 at 11:15 AM, Pocket Kings said:

Anyone can call me an armchair pilot, quarterback, president, whatever, I don't mind free speech and I think discourse is healthy in the long run.

 

However, I remain the right to call anybody who says the first screenshot vs the latter looks "perfect" to have issues, at least with eye sight. We all have at least been passengers on airplanes over waters. I've traveled quite a lot but I have never seen such an unified "soup" in my life under no weather or light circumstances.

 

For sure, both do not look perfect and far from the real thing. But try to ask normal people, e.g. non armchair pilots, for their opinion. I don't believe they would call the first screenshot "bang on reality".

 

 

 

The first image would look alright if it was a lake maybe. But it’s not a lake.
I’m with you please put it back to how it was. 

[Ironhand]

The problem we have with the water--or one anyway--is that the DCS static atmosphere is homogeneous. If there's no wind, there's no wind anywhere on the map, including over water. If the wind is set to 13 m/s at 10 m, it's that across the entire map. So, with no wind you have flat water, just as the sea would look with no wind anywhere. No swells, no waves. As you add reasonable winds for flying to the mission, the wave height increases and whitecaps begin to form. Where the sim really falls down are with near gale and stronger winds. There is no spray, etc to suggest the violence being done to the sea.

Edited May 4, 2021 by Ironhand

[bkthunder]

Well, that new GA sim got the water pretty much spot on as far as I have seen, especially the "milky" look at higher altitudes and the patches  of different currents that drastically change the reflectivity. The sea is never a one continuous surface with the same color and reflectivity all over. 

I have probably ever seen a mirror-like reflection once or twice in over 16 years of flying. I'm talking about the sea, not rivers and small lakes which are a whole different story.

[St4rgun]

On 4/30/2021 at 3:42 PM, Pocket Kings said:

These two are good examples:

 

 

 

I know, they are most likely shot at different heights. But notice in the first picture the reflected clouds look like minecraft blocks and in reality they reflect well more defined, waves or not. Because with increasing height, waves don't matter as much. The amount of light rays that reflect with the right trajectory to hit your eyes lessen. Thus the light intensity to the eye decreases, not the crispyness. I hope you understand me, English isn't my first language.

 

If you look at images from the space station, notice regardless of the severity of wind speeds or nearby storms, sun reflections on the water never look bulky like minecraft? The same is true for 33000 ft, or 60000 ft, or 3000 ft.

 

This one is a great example:

 

 

It doesn't look out of touch with the sky. Those screenshots above the Black Sea do, imho. I'm not blaming anyone at ED. Being a programmer myself I recognize that sometimes results differ severely from intentions. And I'm not even in the graphical department where we have two major chip architectures and a plethora of chip generations. It just doesn't look right.

The issues with the reflections on the first example image are:

• the reflected clouds seem much different than the ones they mirror (different shapes, colors, sizes and positions) - almost to a degree it seems like the reflection is some kind of "cloudy" texture which does not match
• if in a given situation the water reflectivity can be so high then the contours of the mirrored clouds also should be much more defined. If the mirrored clouds are blurry (because of the waves on the surface) then the reflectivity also should be much subtle. - like in the last example photo. You can not have both - high reflectivity with blurriness.
• lack of Fresnel (changing the reflectivity based on viewing angle) makes it difficult to guess altitude

Edited May 5, 2021 by St4rgun

[Skysurfer]

Not armchair pilots but actual pilots who have flown over bodies of water countless times. My biggest gripe with the current depiction is the lack of height perception since the reflections and light interaction looks fake and you can barely see wave patterns from altitude. This was not the case pre 2.7 hence why no one was complaining. You can still see wave patterns etc. from a flat angle and down low (around 1000 feet and below) but once you get higher you lose the reference. And once again, this was mostly fine pre 2.7 - no need to post countless pictures of bodies of water to concoct some new "actually" argument.

[peachmonkey]

in VR if I select a 'none' for clouds the water still shows the reflections of the clouds even though there are zero clouds in the sky.

[bigalsunit]

56 minutes ago, Skysurfer said:

Not armchair pilots but actual pilots who have flown over bodies of water countless times. My biggest gripe with the current depiction is the lack of height perception since the reflections and light interaction looks fake and you can barely see wave patterns from altitude. This was not the case pre 2.7 hence why no one was complaining. You can still see wave patterns etc. from a flat angle and down low (around 1000 feet and below) but once you get higher you lose the reference. And once again, this was mostly fine pre 2.7 - no need to post countless pictures of bodies of water to concoct some new "actually" argument.

Nailed it! Thanks for posting this.
 

 

[westr]

I think the water textures are back after the last update. Looks that way too me, I can see the textures at altitude now.

[Squiffy]

I would add that it's not just reflectiveness and waviness but the SCALE of those waves. This has been an issue in sea rendering and special effects for decades. The old film Bridges at Toko-Ri and others with model ships on water (live action) suffer the same problem. I would suggest increasing the scale of the waves (smaller) so they match the terrain and adding more blend and dithering LODs to eliminate any "crisp glassy massively out of scale" waves from distracting from the scene. The last update is very promising and I have to try adjusting my settings to get rid of the new LOD box edges in the volumetric clouds. The screenie with the F-18s is a problem because the swells are out of scale with the terrain. Also the dry land is virtually featureless without the trees. This makes the scale problem easier to see. And are they swells or ripples? That's part of the problem.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Squiffy

[Aarnoman]

I think this graphical bug contributes largely to the odd looking water, particularly at distance, as it makes it appear closer to the observer than the nearby water: