answered KSAN buildings are visible through clouds

[Officer25]

I am using the KSAN airport addon from ORBX and the additional buildings that the add-on provides around the city are visible through the clouds. This is not an issue personal to me; the user here https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/527996-scenery-shows-through-clouds-or-is-it-fog/ experienced the same issue in the same location.

 

Here is an image:

[Larry_R]

Hello,

I'll leave it to Matteo and/or our forum moderators to comment on this problem specific to FSX and KSAN but perhaps I can add the following.  The 'visibility through the clouds' problem has been noted in P3D for a while; the LM team is aware of it may address it in a future update. It was not addressed in the last couple of updates so it's  presumably not a simple fix. I have looked into the issue a little and find that in P3D v4, it occurs even with a few default objects, eg the AI 'sailboat 4' and some of the objects from the hazards library. It's primarily associated with transparent textures (DXT5) but it can occur even with opaque textures when unusual material properties are used. Furthermore, it's inconsistent. Of two identical objects side by side, only one may be affected, and even that can be a function of the viewing angle.

Often transparent textures are required in scenery so there is no easy way around that one. To me the fundamental problem is a transparent texture (clouds) in front of another transparency and in general P3D does a far better job with this than FSX. My guess is that for performance reasons, clouds may be handled in a special way thus preventing a simple fix. 

Cheers,

[Officer25]

Sorry, I shouldn't have posted this in the FSX forum. I am on P3D v4.5, though I have noticed this in earlier versions of v4 as well. I didn't own KSAN in v3 or v2, and I didn't play v1, so I can't tell you for sure in those versions.

 

It's interesting you say that it even occurs with some default objects. Seems to be a larger issue than I expected.