answered KJAC - Unrealistic water blend around Jackson Lake

[DAVIDF4]

I've tried to fight the urge to say something, I really have, but the more I look at it, the more an inexplicable rage has built up inside me.

The following diatribe is my way of trying to rationalise a scenery defect and seek correction for it. I don't mean to sound hostile or ungrateful. It's just the way I come across sometimes.

I've just purchased Jackson Hole (KJAC). The scenery is beautiful...or would be except for some rather ugly water blending at Jackson Lake where the photo scenery meets the lake water. This is for the largest lake, the smaller lakes look okish as they currently are, since they are completely coloured in, even if the blue colour used is a bit strident.

It just looks plain daft to me, like someone has gone round the lake edge with a highlighter. The uniformity and colour of it is not at all like anything from the real world.

I call it the Pago Pago effect, because until recently that scenery was similarly blighted with an unsubtle water blend (between the photo coastline and the ocean water) more or less identical in look to the one here.
For some reason, development has deemed it necessary (again) to apply an extended area of oddly coloured water out from the lake font. I know you have to manage the join between photo and water/landclass somehow, but I've seen this done with far more reaslistic results elsewhere.
Here, because of the large extent of the coloured area and the poor choice of colour (a weird irridesent blue, possibly dictated by the underlying photo water...dunno) it just looks jarring and artificial.
 

Would it please be possible to make the blended area much, much (much) narrower around most of the lake, or tint it to a more natural/matching colour (or just eliminate it altogether in some places), possibly leaving some of the fiddly detail at the Northern end intact (Things already look a bit more natural up there. The blending isn't so obvious and you'd expect some lighter discolouration from the inflowing river there anyway).
Around most of the lake it looks like there's nothing much in the original water photo image worth retaining if the blend can't be done with a lot more subtlety. You might get lighter shallow patches in bays, but not uniformly along the full length of what is a pretty deep lake.

The KJAC scenery is within the CRM ORBX region, with the main lake body colour (which looks rather good) a known quanity, so I don't really understand why this problem wasn't noticed immediately.
 

The reason I am annoyed...actually I'm more saddened to be honest...is that I see in this scenery the potential for becoming immersed in some very relaxing sight seeing flights and glider work, but currently any immersion or sense of realism is immediately broken for me as soon as I clap eyes on that bizzare felt tip coastline. When I see how lovely the rest of this scenery is and imagine what it could look like with better photo integration it almost makes me want to cry.
 
Thankfully and for which I am most extremely grateful, the water problem at Pago-Pago was recently repaired and now looks much more realistic.  
Is there any chance for a similar patch for KJAC?

Please, oh pretty please.

Thank you for reading,

Dave








 

[Jarrad Marshall]

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and feelings

 

I'll be honest, a "small" change like this will create a 2GB patch, so if it's changed at all, it's unlikely to be done so until there is next a need to release a full version. 

 

Cheers

 

[BradB]

In Jarrad's defense , Jackson Lake viewed from Google Earth looks very much like his scenery . One thing to note , that until the water level reaches it's fullest level later in the Summer , you will have dirt and rocky beaches .

 

Cheers

 

John

 

 

[Stewart Hobson]

Precisely the same phenomenon with Lake Shasta here in California because of our drought.

[DAVIDF4]

Thanks for the response Jarrad and for being so understanding  :-)
I just needed to unload.
And I appreciate what you guys are saying about the look of lowered water levels, but I think in this case it doesn't really look like that sort of thing might have happened in the scenery...it just looks a little unconvincing to me.
Understood about any potential patch size and work.

Dave.