Von,
That's not entirely true although generally speaking its accurate. Peripheral vision is screwed because the lack of texture affects depth perception. That's a fact because too many people have said it is. A pilot doesn't need to look directly at it for it to negatively affect their alt perception.
This is true only once you are very close and level to the surface, it is like landing, your peripheral vision along with looking far ahead give you a very sensitive altimeter. But as you are in a normal decent judging your alt above the water is not what I consider fun flying. But flying level 10 feet over lake passing boats and jet skies is something I thoroughly enjoy at lake Texoma.
Also I have many times seen ocean looking exactly like AH does when at altitude.
At the moment AH is limited by not being able to add waves that actually change the height of the waves. This is not a technical limitation,the code to do so is very simple, but a very intentional one when it was created to support older hardware. To change the heights requires a 3.0 shader. When the water was written, not enough video cards supported 3.0 shaders.
And unlike stand alone games in which you could simply allow a player to turn the wave off. In AH the waves would have a real effect in game play, hence you can not make it an option to turn waves on or off.
The number of people today who have video cards that do not support 3.0 shaders is extremely small (we gather this data), hence we will most likely be adding real wave effects in the not so distant future.
HiTech
