tropical waters

[Nouknitouk]

Ive complained many times at various websites including the x-plane developer blog about this. Ive always wondered why x-plane does not have beautiful tropical water and reef textures, but more importantly, why is it that the REX for x-plane, nor any other add-on company created some water textures.

Have a look at the pics of the keys with tileproxy on fsx. This is the kind of water textures im talking about.

I am desperately hoping for better textures or for allowing 3rd party vendors to create some in xplane 10, but could not get an answer.

any thoughts ?

[Nouknitouk]

forgot to post the link:

http://www.edtruthan.com/tileproxy/keys/floridakeys.htm

[karingka]

I hate the default blue water color in FsX, just horrible!

[amerrir]

It's certainly possible with a custom scenery, which I guess is what the FSX link you've given is... These shots are from Societe Islands by XPFR, Heron Island by DaveDuck is another that springs to mind.

[Claude D]

Society Islands :

http://xpfr.org/?bod...&sc=166

Edited November 23, 2011 by Leglaude

[uwespeed]

@Nouknitouk:

You probably expect the water to be blue like in FSX, because you are used to see the water being blue when you are e.g. at the beach and the blue sky is reflecting at the horizon. In my eyes this effect is simulated very good in X-Plane.

In contrast: did you watch the water (rivers, sea) from a plane looking downwards or when the sky is grey as in the picture below?

The water isn't blue anymore. The water being blue all the time is only the dream of non-pilots. (Real) Pilots do know how the water looks in reality.

Only in the tropics the water is lovely blue very close to the coast - that's true. But I, for myself, don't like to have such blue water all over the world, as it is unrealistic.

[GrahamH]

Water could look blue, or it could look more grey. It's just the sky reflecting in the ocean, and the reason it looks bluer in the tropics is because of salinity, clearness and depth of the water. If it's cloudy, than yes. The water will look more grey.

You don't have to be a pilot to know what water looks like from above.

http://www.google.ca/imgres?q=ocean+from+a+plane&um=1&hl=en&biw=1920&bih=857&tbm=isch&tbnid=w_SYjenJZBLXoM:&imgrefurl=http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/b2/index&docid=RiBaZXeN2XyztM&imgurl=http://chamorrobible.org/images/photos/gpw-200905-UnitedStatesAirForce-090512-F-2482B-025-B-2-Spirit-stealth-bomber-Western-Pacific-Ocean-20090512-large.jpg&w=2306&h=1700&ei=L4LNTvH_LeHiiAKC56zyCw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=436&vpy=318&dur=324&hovh=193&hovw=262&tx=124&ty=105&sig=107901978826604628177&page=1&tbnh=151&tbnw=205&start=0&ndsp=33&ved=1t:429,r:9,s:0

[Claude D]

Water could look blue, or it could look more grey. It's just the sky reflecting in the ocean,

 

http://www.google.ca...=1t:429,r:9,s:0

no, the water molecules are responsible.White light, which comes from the sun, is actually made ​​up of waves of different wave lengths representing all colors of the spectrum.

Water molecules absorb a specific part of this light: the wavelengths corresponding to the colors red and yellow. Now when we subtract these components to the incident light, it remains essentially ... blue.

That;s why water molecules return a depleted light red and yellow, rich blue.

In areas where biological productivity is high, the chlorophyll contained in phytoplankton absorbs the blue component and the light shifts to green.

In a cave there is no sky and the water is blue.(white light come from the sun)

Edited November 24, 2011 by Leglaude

[Nouknitouk]

@uwespeed

I talked about Tropical water, and corals. Not all the water.

I don't get your answer and your rant about real pilots vs non pilots. X-plane does not even have those tropical beach blues...

And for having spent some time in the keys two years ago, I can tell you that its not ONLY cloud coverage that affect water color. I have amazing shots of the gulf of Mexico during a thunderstorm and no, the water did not suddenly switched to black, more to vibrant light green, so it definitely has something to do with whats in the water as well...

[Nouknitouk]

thank you Leglaude

great explanation i wanted to know that for a long time. I also think that the angle of the sun have something to do as well with how blue gets the water.

gulf of mexico in summer vs winter, at the same beach, looks VERY DIFFERENT!