I need to chill a little in-between CTDs. :grin:

Believe me, there is nothing to be jealous about. The build, that I have isn't in the state, where one can enjoy the game. But, even though, it looks very, very promising. :cool:

Guys, don't confuse the stock, 3d, volumetric FSX clouds with the ones from the real environment extreme payware add-on. The REX clouds are not fully 3d objects, but photographs of real clouds scanned into a PC and overlayed on the screen during gameplay. They say it themselves on their website.

You can also check it yourself by going to the FSX top-down view during a flight with cloudy weather. If you have the stock clouds, cloud cover is visible on the top-down/satellite view because the stock clouds are 3d. If you have REX installed you see clouds in all the other views but not in the satellite view. What REX probably does is read the weather information about where the default 3d clouds would appear and replace them with its own textures on the fly, which would explain why there's no clouds visible at all in the top-down view.

Don't get me wrong, they look terrific but when flying close or through them it's clearly visible that they are somewhat "flat". I like them a lot, but in a combat flight sim where people will use clouds as tactical tools there are other considerations that prevent such an approach.

If a cloud is a collection of 3-4 "flat" faces, how can the game engine calculate what's visible to each player in a multiplayer scenario? I might think i'm in the cloud trying to escape an attacker while he sees me plain as day, or vice versa. Also, how will this work (or not work) with ray-tracing/line of sight calculations for the AI, etc etc.

I wish we could have REX quality clouds through real 3d volumetric methods, but i think we don't have the PCs to do it yet. And since the question ends up being "prettier but technically dodgy or just pretty but tactically functional", for a combat flight sim the second option is best.

2007 stuff here. I have posted this before, but it shows (to me) that really good 3rd party apps for effects like clouds are available which also look great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLfHDul5XGw

Still jealous lol :)

I'd happily spend hours compiling bug reports :D

Nice but with its own drawbacks, and there's always a risk when integrating 3rd party libraries into your code. FWIW you can try a demo of those clouds here (not sure it's the exact same thing but looks seems to use the same approach).

Yes I thought that too...as Oleg has to model transparency etc for visibility and the AI coding, using 3rd party apps is probably too complex...

Someone will be along soon to ask you what computer you were running it on...
:-)

It would be extremely nice to see the ground look just a little different where the hole has been filled. Just a little difference in texture, a bit muddy maybe.

I think he said there won't be deep craters due to some sort of game engine restriction. BUT the question is how deep is deep? I would imagine they will have some depth, just not 10ft deep.