Could SMP use 'haze' to limit 'cloud area covered'?

[toby23]

I posted this on the .org and then thought it would be good to share here too.

Here's something I worked out using Sky Maxx Pro.

I might be wrong but if visibility is 30 miles from your centre point, you need to render at least 60 miles around you in Sky Maxx Pro.

60 miles is about 96km.

96km x 96km = 9216 km2

So that's the lowest 'cloud area covered' setting to use in SMP if you want a realistic 30 mile visibility and it is a shame that in certain kinds of bad weather, that setting hits performance so much (10fps) and I have a relatively high end PC. It doesn't always hit so hard but some kinds of bad weather hit worse than others..

SMP does not touch the 'haze' value, which is influenced, I think, by the METAR, but also affected by the sim/private/controls/fog/fog_be_gone dataref.

I am not sure but if SMP could use the METAR visibility values to force the haze value to simulate accurate view distances and then limit its cloud rendering to that area, maybe that would improve performance in bad weather and low visibility?

[Cameron]

This was basically trialed in a slightly different way during earlier betas of v4. The end result was not satisfactory to our testers and the feature was removed. There's a lot that goes on under the hood.

[sundog]

The upcoming SMP 4.6 release will address performance in stormy conditions in other ways, too.