What the clouds should look like in CoD. Video of clouds at altitude with Fighters

[I/ZG52_Gaga]

Have you guys ever seen the "Real Enviroment Xtreme" for FSX?

I think it is wonderfull and the fact that it gets updated by real data
on fixed intervals makes me love it even more!




more Screenshots here

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums...owtopic=175883

[sigur_ros]

FSX clouds just flat billboards, no volume, no lighting, no shade.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Mystic,

Lovely video! I hope that someday I'll be able to fly in a sim that can look that good. Hopefully that sim will be IL2-COD.

If not at release then hopefully the sim will be successful enough to see it develop up to that stage. I'm willing to put up with the place holders until it has time to mature. (I honestly doubt my current PC could handle it at present)


Cheers and thanks for sharing!

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by I/ZG52_Gaga

Have you guys ever seen the "Real Enviroment Xtreme" for FSX?

I think it is wonderfull and the fact that it gets updated by real data
on fixed intervals makes me love it even more!




more Screenshots here

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums...owtopic=175883

I like the way they look as well, but as others have said these are only 2D photos of real clouds without volume.

In short, they are perfect for a civilian sim but not good for a combat sim where we need 3D clouds, since they have a tactical use as well. For example, how can the game know when i'm inside the cloud if the cloud is 2D and how does it relay that information to the other guy flying against me online? With a 2D cloud i might think i'm inside the cloud and safe, but the other guy can see me just fine, etc. That's why 3D clouds are preferred in combat sims.

Originally Posted by sigur_ros

FSX clouds just flat billboards, no volume, no lighting, no shade.

Which kind of FSX clouds?
The default FSX clouds ARE indeed volumetric ones. The clouds on Gaga's post are not default FSX clouds, they are from a 3rd party add-on and they aren't volumetric.

[sigur_ros]

FSX default clouds bundles of billboards, not true volumetric.

[The Kraken]

Considering that all cloud implementations in games or even dedicated tech demos are a far cry from that video, and that no other flight sim has a cloud rendering system that is really superior in all relevant areas to what has been shown so far for CoD, this looks like a severe case of unrealistic expectations to me. Sure Oleg raised those himself back when speaking about his plans, but if people seriously expected that this could lead to anything approaching the complexity of real-life clouds then that's a delusion. It's simply not possible, both for technical and financial reasons. You might as well post real footage of planes, landscapes, explosion/smoke effects or pilot animations, and complain that CoD doesn't look like that.

As with many other aspects of CoD you should consider that this is as good as it gets at the moment; not because the developers don't know any better or don't care, but because they can't do any better. And yes I have a list of stuff I'd have done different to what's been shown myself, but certainly in a different league than this complaint.

Oh and the FSX clouds sure would suck for a combat sim

[JAMF]

I'm pretty sure that the 1c:Maddox guys can create a beautiful cloud. But what they're trying to make is dynamic weather. That has to be a difficult task.

Depressions and high pressure areas moving over a map, the arms of the fronts rotating around the depression, the fronts having big closed clouds and possibly rain below them, the wind going from high to low... How do you make that? How do you make a high that is off the map have influence on the clouds around the depression that's on the map? Do you create a reel of weather "film" that moves from west to east, on which the highs and lows move? Do you create a film that projects weather overlay images on the map, 1 frame every 10 minutes? How do you make the clouds move so they stay near the weather front? How do you make a weather programme stay within English/French weather parameters and not have a heatwave that lasts the whole period?

We've seen Japanese programmers simulate clouds and weather around a mountain, but that has to be done for a whole map. That's a big task. Potentialy bigger task than creating a dynamic campaign (war management AI), as such a programme doesn't need to calculate in 3D.