THIS IS NOT A WISH but a question about clouds

[Warbird_242]

I'm not actually sure how to ask a question like this so I put it here because it's not a wish

To ED team - For DCS A-10 will there be any different clouds because the Black shark ones aren't so good when flying above them

[GGTharos]

News about A-10C will start coming in 2010.

[joey45]

How high are you and how low are the clouds???

[Warbird_242]

Ah okay thanks GG -feel free to delete this thread

 

Joey45, I think that's irrelevant. Since helis don't usually fly above clouds they seem to currently be very low res and blocky at any height

[sweinhart3]

The problem I have about the clouds is there never seems to be a ceiling. I tried running missions where the cloud deck was lower than the mountain peaks you have to pass so I attempted to climb through the clouds but after 5000m with no end in site I gave up and just hoped I didnt descend into a mountain top.

[slug88]

There is most definitely a ceiling. I've flown above the clouds many times.

[drhow]

I was flying above the clouds just the other day, thick overcast and rain, sunny up top.

 

Now that's not saying everything was sunny (ha ha). The clouds looked very strange from above, almost as if there was an interlacing problem. I guess it was like an endless pattern of high frequency, high amplitude sine waves were warping all through clouds. There was also a flicker all along where the clouds met the edge of the mountains. I found it to be quite rough on the eyes, definitely headache inducing stuff.

 

I'm going to assume this is another cloud lighting bug that has no solution.

[slug88]

I don't think what you're describing is a bug, it's just a disadvantage of ED's solution to efficiently displaying a very large cloud layer. If you fly quite high above the clouds, maybe 1km or more, then they look rather nice, with soft, rolling depth and shading. However, I agree they look odd when you're very close up.

 

The effect is very similar to how forests are displayed in the Il-2 flight simulator; they appear to have a lot of depth and complex geometry from far up above with amazingly little performance impact; however, if you get close to the forests it's apparent that they're made of just a few stacks of large flat planes. It's hard to describe the effect very well, but anyone who's played Il-2 will know what I'm talking about.

 

I imagine that if ED attempted to make the clouds out of actual polygons rather than stacked texture planes, that the performance hit from looking at an overcast layer from above would be exponentially greater.

Edited November 13, 2009 by slug88

[Feuerfalke]

It should be possible to make clouds that put more stress on the graphics card than on the CPU, so there's some room for improvement. But looking at this screenshot from SimHQ, they probably are coming up with a solution anyway - Looking forward to 2010 ;)

 

[Boberro]

Hope we get new clouds, present are really very resources eating (forecast), and in sunny day all clouds look same :D

[Warbird_242]

@drhow

 

I'm with slug88 - I think that the clouds are not a bug, just unneccesary considering the heli is more for NOE flight not high altitude.

@ Feurfalke - those clouds look better :)

[miguez]

I think the technique used by ED to render clouds is voxels and volume rendering.

[Cp]

They look pretty good IMO.

 

 

 

:)

[159th_Viper]

Seen the new Promo Vid?

 

Clouds are definitely a step-up.....never mind the Water! Lovin'It!