The new 2.0 and on clouds are definitely as close to real life as possible. I look up in the sky sometimes and it looks just like fgfs.
Thorsten wrote:The new 2.0 and on clouds are definitely as close to real life as possible. I look up in the sky sometimes and it looks just like fgfs.
*sigh* No, they are not. Stuart has done a really great job with the clouds, they are absolutely marvelous, I am slowly getting there as well with the local weather without performance being down the drain - but whenever I look up into the sky, I realize just how far away from the real thing we are.
Real clouds have self-shadows and also shadow each other. The result, especially with the sun low in the sky, never ceases to surprise me. Clouds in Flightgear don't shadow each other - too expensive in terms of CPU. The real sky has faint fields of haze - we can't really render that. From cruise altitude, visibility of cloud layers and towers is 250 km or more - the standard 3d clouds have 20 km, the local weather clouds offer 30 km - that's nothing like the impression from a real airliner. The real sky has much more variety in shapes and sizes than we render. The real sky has layered clouds fading into patches of small cloudlets - we can't really do that.
Should I go on?
It's one thing to be excited about how good the clouds in Flightgear are. But it's not even remotely true that they could actually measure up against the real thing.
erik wrote:Well, the aim of the project is to create a flight simulator, not a world simulator so tradeoffs are inevitable.
Usually distant objects are rendered using imposters; large rectangles facing the viewer that contain just one (of a fixed number of) textures, giving the impression of depth.
One thing we are missing now is shadows underneath the clouds. The whole cloud right now is the same shade of whatever color. The bottom of the cloud is a lot darker because the sun isn't directly on it.
float shade = usrAttr2.g;
shade = 0.0;
But self casting clouds (although that looks wonderful) is of little use for simulation.
But self casting clouds (although that looks wonderful) is of little use for simulation.
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