Suggestions Requests for furure development

[Balu0]

Hi!

Just bought SMP4 and RWC, and I love it, but seeing a lot of the xEnvio videos I can't notice some things are missing from SMP, and I'm not talking about weather engine, but strictly visual.

I think SMP will need to keep improving and I would like to suggest some ideas that might just work.

- City lights illuminating clouds (simple solution would be to generate a dim light in dense autogen regions that lights the clouds only)

- extending cloud cover to the horizon: this should be done with keeping the current detailed coverage as it is, but beyond that just draw low res 2D clouds or in overcast the currently implemented stratus layer), this way performance should not suffer.

- better transition when new metars are received. Clouds should drift with the wind. the direction will move them towards a new metar station, if that station have a different metar a cloud transformation should be interpolated, and the clouds should slowly morph into the new type as they drift and with time.

- Actually I would love to see a system where clouds are never created or destroyed instantly , but they are always morphed in and out over time, some of this is already implemented I think.

- I would be super excited to have cumulus clouds generated over thermals, with dark crisp bottom over strong and new thermals, and soft wispy clouds that  slowly dissipate with week dying thermals. This feature would transform X-plane into a nearly proper soaring simulator, and a lot would be glad for that. If you could implement a custom thermal generator with dependance of current weather parameters and non uniform thermals like in condor that would be a killer too, but I think I might ask too much here.

- strong wind ground effects, this is just some eye candy but if strong gusting winds could generate some sand or snow, or in case of heavy rain, water puffs that drift along the surface then dissipate that would look cool imho, same mechanic could generate ripple on water surfaces (just a bump map drifting on the water surface)

- true volumetric clouds actually it can be done, some guys did it for kerbal space program, I think it can be done in XP too

I hope I gave you at least 1 good idea.

For other users, what do you think? What feature you would like to see in the future in SMP/RWC ?

 

 

[3saul]

These are all good ideas..vote +1

[IndiB]

I'd like to see cloud wisps.

I saw them first flying in GTA V, just small wisps of cloud that fade in a couple of hundred feet in front of the aircraft,slightly affect visibility and quickly fade out, the immersion is incredible.

I could see it working really well in SkyMaxx which doesn't really represent small clouds.

Also, smaller clouds in general would enhance the experience, especially with large weather fronts where currently SkyMaxx can look a little 'wall like' and stark.

[rtataryn]

I'd like to see the ceilings and visibility match the METARs.

[qdavweb]

Some 'bumpy' air inside SMP's clouds ! I'm hoping that since they know to turn rain on when below or in their clouds, they could do this too...