SMP4 Rain/Snow Effects

[kentwerickson]

My initial impression of SMP4 is fairly positive--cloud rendering looks better than v3, frame rates seem to be no worse (or not much worse), along with a few other virtues. However, to my eye the precipitation does not appear very realistic. For one thing, it's hard to distinguish rain from snow because at least some raindrops seem to fall at an unrealistically slow rate, and (in my estimation) are unrealistically large (playing around with configuration options, per the manual, does not seem to have a significant effect). I've tested this under various weather conditions using www.badbadweather.com to find airports with moderate-to-severe thunderstorms, rain, snow, etc. Additionally, while on the ground I hear no sound effects for rain. I need to test more thoroughly, but my initial impression of the rain and snow effects are not too positive (just offering this as friendly feedback). On the snow side, I noticed immediately that my snow drift surface textures now move/change at hyper-speed with SMP4 installed; as though the wind is blowing at 200+ kts!

It would also be nice, perhaps in the future, to have the ability to adjust the rate of snow and rainfall (i.e., from light to heavy). Thanks.

Edited December 19, 2016 by kentwerickson

[JohnMAXX]

Thank you! Noted

[kentwerickson]

Interesting; just visited an airport (LEPA) with thunder and lighting in the area, and I can hear heavy rain, but don't see any rain.

EDIT: Check that, just needed to turn rain drop size way up.

Edited December 19, 2016 by kentwerickson

[donoscar]

I had the occasion to see a light snow fall yesterday evening at Vienna, which looked nice, what was a bit odd was the snow blown across the tarmac. At first this looks great when you are standing still, sitting in your captain seat looking at a gate or other, but as soon as you have more tarmac in front of you, or you change your view to external you have a repetitive pattern with that effect across the whole airport, a bit like wave patterns. It needs a rework (DONE BY LAMINAR AS I WAS CORRECTLY INFORMED), the idea is ok though. Ah, and considering the snowfall intensity (light) I thought there was a lot of those snow waves for "light snowing".

Edited December 19, 2016 by donoscar

[sundog]

The blowing snow on the tarmac is a feature of X-Plane, not SkyMaxx Pro.

[donoscar]

oh

3 minutes ago, sundog said:

The blowing snow on the tarmac is a feature of X-Plane, not SkyMaxx Pro.

ah... guess I should read the manual once  

[JohnMAXX]

I think there is an alternate set of snow tarmac textures out there that may look better, I don't have them but it might be worth a Google....

Edited December 19, 2016 by JohnMAXX

[kentwerickson]

Just an opinion. But in my estimation the image below is better representation of heavy snowfall than I am currently able to achieve in SMPv4. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, I would also like to see heavy rainfall represented more accurately in SMPv4; in particular, by increasing both the density and rate of rainfall (as it stands, to my eye some raindrops appear to fall too slowly--looks more like snow than rain). Thanks in advance for your consideration.

(screenshot taken from stock XP 11):

Edited January 22, 2017 by kentwerickson

[sundog]

For what it's worth, the rate at which the rain falls is based on real physics and the terminal velocity of real raindrops. People tend to fly with wider-than-natural fields of view, which can create the illusion of them moving too slowly.

[kentwerickson]

On 1/22/2017 at 6:48 AM, sundog said:

For what it's worth, the rate at which the rain falls is based on real physics and the terminal velocity of real raindrops. People tend to fly with wider-than-natural fields of view, which can create the illusion of them moving too slowly.

Got it, thanks. My FOV is set at 65, and at this setting the rain falls like snow (I can visually track individual drops to the ground, yet which I cannot even come close to doing in real life).

[sundog]

65 degrees is not a realistic FOV in terms of what your brain sees in real life. 30 or lower is closer to reality.

Your framerate can also affect how fast the rain particles appear to be falling, so if you're struggling with performance issues that may also be to blame - especially if you're below 20 FPS.

If you're curious, we compute the terminal velocity of individual raindrops based on their simulated droplet size, using the equations in this paper: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0450%281977%29016%3C1322%3APAAIRM%3E2.0.CO%3B2

Edited January 24, 2017 by sundog