If cloud shadows were a library effect - a weird idea

[sightseer]

I don't do effects. I have tried to read and understand the SDK but I just don't see how an effect can be a light on a plane, a flour bomb, dust, dirt, a wildfire, and fireworks. effects can do it all it seems.

So... cloud shadows... could cloud shadows be conditional effects built into the textures? Is it possible to trigger an effect with the presence of clouds? Its just a weird thought I had. I have plenty

[Tommy Bernes]

I know that the little program CumulusX managed to show some cloud shadows under its clouds. dont know how though..

[Yardreamer]

Try http://www.fsdevelop...forum/index.php I am sure someone there should answer that for you Scenery Maker II developers posts there.

Regards Dreamer

[anfield ace]

Hi Guys,

The only time that I have seen cloud shadows on the ground is in Rise Of Flight, very impressive!

Mal....

[John Lovell]

The Northern lights in SAK... now that will be impressive!

If someone could pull that off, night flying would have a new meaning.

But cloud shadows id love to see. I know the guys at rex tried it but it got dropped. If it could be done, im sure it would have by now.. but you never know

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi guys,

the problem with using dynamic fx files is (a) they eat up a lot of resources, which is why larger effects like wildfire smoke can only be placed quite sparsely; and ( their priority sits at the bottom of the FSX display engine totem pole meaning if your sim is busy loading other files it'll drop all visual effects and then start them again (quite obvious with the shoreline surf effect that often stops and starts when flying along it).

As for Northern Lights they do exist in FSX by default. I believe it's a random effect and thus difficult to predict but I've seen its greenish glow a number of times during night flights at higher latitudes.

Cheers, Holger

[chik]

.....How is it that clouds can be reflected in water but not on land?........................just to blow a little more dust off the topic.

[Derek McAllan]

Reflections are handled differently than shadows, they're an entirely separate process. To have cloud shadows, you would need an object to cast the shadow. Ordinary clouds in FSX are not an object, they're a representation of an object made of stacked 2d images. CumulusX can generate cloud shadows because it renders a cloud object on top of each Cu producing thermal, these are entirely unrelated to the normal clouds that FSX generates, and are probably best thought of a replacement for the graphic representation for thermals rather than an actual cloud. Hence you'll see a mix of CuX clouds and FSX clouds being rendered, there's thermals under the CuX clouds but not under the FSX clouds. Each CuX cloud is an actual 3d object, like an aircraft, and is rendered accordingly. As a consequence, they also eat up rendering time and result in a lower framerate. The clouds look pretty crappy in comparison to those from REX or AS, but this makes it easy to tell the thermal bearing Cu's from the weather generated clouds. The latest paid version of CumulusX enables soft shadowing which actually looks really nice - have a look a my last lot of screenies posted here for example.

Cheers,

Derek

[chik]

Very much appreciated! Thank you for your elaboration.

[momo737]

It would be nice to see the plane lights and strobes reflecting in the clouds as you fly through them.

[sightseer]

I've wondered about that cloud reflection thing too. The sim must know where clouds are. It has to put textures in the sky at that location. It can reflect the textures in water but not on ground. Why cant the reflection property of water be applied to the ground? maybe if there was a layer of water that only reflects clouds and doesn't have animation? Oh well. If there was a way, Im sure it would have done by now. But its fun to think about.

I think Ill look into Rise of Flight. I had forgotten about it.

[Misha Cajic]

As Derek said, the clouds in FSX are simply a 2d object with a texture on them, just like the autogen trees (you may have noticed this when looking at the trees from top down, they look like crosses)

If the cloud shadows were to be implemented, they would have to be from the texture, and not the model. Otherwise you would end up with square looking shadows. I don't think the FSX engine is capable of doing that

[Russell Linn]

Unfortunately it wouldn't be a simple "reflect" effect. Although you can specify an environment texture to be reflected on a model (a texture of cloud shadows for example), their effect would be based on the camera position and a light source, so it wouldn't look right at all.