First Cumulus Nimbus attempt

[hgtonyvi]

  frame rates increase will be a plus.

[hgtonyvi]

How big was your FPS hit this time?

I saw his lowest was 37 i believe....

[LilMak]

IMC. A whole new dimension to the game. Digging it.

[Sabre]

Very cool. However, is that some ice build up on the trailing edge of your left wing? Does that cause a drag hit?

[cav58d]

IMC. A whole new dimension to the game. Digging it.

100 foot overcast at TT!

[cav58d]

Clouds look awesome btw, this will be an amazing addition HT!  <S>

I love the idea of eventually adding moving weather systems.  Doesn't necessarily have to include precip, but I like the idea of CB clouds, maybe periods of IMC, turbulence.

Kind of like battlefield levolution but better!

[Dobs]

I saw his lowest was 37 i believe....

Down from 170ish before cloud entry...

IS that a GPU computation or CPU computation occurring for cloud?

But I think it looks pretty damn nice!

And having danced through Cumulus many times...sometimes its bumpy, other times its smooth. But the big Thunderstorms that Loco talks about carry a  "there is no peace time mission which requires you to penetrate a thunderstorm"..... 

Call it Stratus, Cumulus, or Nimbo Stratus and you'll be good:)

[Skuzzy]

We will be adding "In Cloud" I.E. complete grey out masking in large clouds like this that will drastically improve FPS when inside the cloud.

Just a reminder.

[bustr]

Clouds look awesome btw, this will be an amazing addition HT!  <S>

I love the idea of eventually adding moving weather systems.  Doesn't necessarily have to include precip, but I like the idea of CB clouds, maybe periods of IMC, turbulence.

Kind of like battlefield levolution but better!

All of the fronts created in the cloud editor are moving weather systems made up of clouds as fronts you can make very tiny to as wide as the arena traversing in any direction at speeds that can be set form 1 to hundreds of miles per hour.

If we created the front at one corner of the map as wide as the map and gave it enough depth to look like a real world system, say 1\10th width of the arena, it would eat your FPS. And only a small number of players at a time would see the system as it would take hours to cycle across the map unless it's depth was set as deep as say half the width of the arena. So to give everyone the opportunity to see the weather system, you would build several mirror systems behind it say 1\10 the width of the arena and launch them at staggered intervals in the cloud editor. I did this all across my terrain bowlma for a total arena weather system. Hitech made me scale it waayyyyyyy back because his testing showed bad FPS hits for the rest of you. But, it was massive and covered 75-80% of the arena including very low sea cloud system hiding many of the water ways to protect the task groups.

I also created it to be localized constantly repeating weather systems between 20-28 minutes in cycle, so all players no matter when they logged in would see weather. And there would be weather about everywhere you jumped to on the terrain. Hitech mentioned this generation of codeing he is working on would have less FPS impact than the current cloud system codeing. And I get the impression I will have to create a new weather system for bowlma due to the new cloud program when he releases it. Hopefully I can bring back my large scale weather system.

I don't suppose you ever noticed the large fronts that cycle across all of the islands on bowlma about every 30 minutes at 7000ft? That's what I had to reduce everything to so your FPS wouldn't suffer. You guys lucked out on the permanent heavy cloud covers I had over the HQ\city\strats\ports to make them harder to drop laser guided single finger salutes on.

[Dawger]

The inside of a thunderstorm is not much fun but it is exciting.

I entered one at 4,000 feet (quite unintentionally). About 3 lifetimes  later (probably less than 30 seconds in the time frame existing outside the cockpit) I got slung out at 9,000 feet with the throttles at idle and the nose pointed down 25 degrees.

I was pretty mad at ATC and was going to give them a piece of my mind but they had evacuated for a tornado and wouldn't answer or that was the story Center gave me when I found a working frequency.

I have been in a few others, smacked my head against the ceiling and listened to the wings creaking over the sound of the fire hose being sprayed on the windshield.

I would prefer clear skies and 12 noon in AH please.

[Vraciu]

Houston loves to put people through weather.   I just flat out refuse now.  I will fill out the paperwork. 

The last time they did it to me we were coming in from the east--it was eye opening. I told them to send me to San Antonio and bring me back in from the west but they would have none of it.   My RSP was a genius with radar and I slaved to his display to pick our way around as best we could in IMC.   We were doing a fair job of it and then I heard him say, "This is gonna' hurt."   About five seconds later the airplane went up, then down, and then back up again like a football being punted. 

Then dead calm.

I was told all the side trays came out of their holders, hung in midair, then slammed back down (they've since had latches added).

When I went to apologize to the boss on the ground he said with a big grin (before I could utter a word), "That was interesting."  He was a good sport.   

Never again.   I am NOT brave.

(The storms I saw in Nigeria will spit an airplane out in little pieces.    No thank you!)

----

Any way, that's a good first attempt but you'll need a LOT more density--and turbulence.

[LocoMoto]

The inside of a thunderstorm is not much fun but it is exciting.

I entered one at 4,000 feet (quite unintentionally). About 3 lifetimes  later (probably less than 30 seconds in the time frame existing outside the cockpit) I got slung out at 9,000 feet with the throttles at idle and the nose pointed down 25 degrees.

I was pretty mad at ATC and was going to give them a piece of my mind but they had evacuated for a tornado and wouldn't answer or that was the story Center gave me when I found a working frequency.

I have been in a few others, smacked my head against the ceiling and listened to the wings creaking over the sound of the fire hose being sprayed on the windshield.

I would prefer clear skies and 12 noon in AH please.

my god Dawger luckily you got out of that updraft! I would have been livid.

[Devil 505]

I'm also questioning the need for cumulonimbus clouds specifically. It would seem better to have a more dynamic variation in the regular cumulus and stratus clouds. 

[bustr]

Because some genius will pop in a bunch of them flowing across the terrain at about 70mph and the game players will play hide-n-seek in and around them thinking it the greatest game play enhancement since the claw fighters mothership floating super carriers were introduced during an AHcon weekend. The cloud editor is a player content creation program just like the terrain editor. If there are no FPS problems with gaggles of towering cumulonimbus floating across the arena, get ready to play hide-n-seek. I'm looking forward to putting back in a larger cloud front system in my terrain with base elevation 4000-5000 agl clouds after watching how my terrain has been utilized.

[hitech]

I'm also questioning the need for cumulonimbus clouds specifically. It would seem better to have a more dynamic variation in the regular cumulus and stratus clouds.

Sigh , Post like this make me think I should never post about works in progress.

The cumulus is just one example of the new system. The reason I am working with it , is because it is by far the most demanding form to simulate. If the system performs well with it, the others are a piece of cake.

HiTech