Visibiltiy, Precipitation, and Clouds

[ralphgpr]

From what I have seen with my system is--

1.) Visibility setting is realistic and just what I would expect to simulate the real flying conditions.

2.) Precipitation is remarkable--although you will get a framerate hit.

3.) Clouds no matter what I do is nothing more than something to look at, but has no real aviation value other than the view--which is quite good.

This is not all that bad. I'm just putting it forth as an observation, and it would be just great if an expert could criticize this.

What I am driving at is we can't expect clouds to work the way real clouds do, but the other factors--wind, visibility, precipitation do quite well.

Ralph

[budreiser]

Hi Ralph. My 2004 hasn't arrived yet but ya gotta believe me on this.
I have been using MS Flight Sims since before 1985. Back in some of
those older sims clouds were atrocious. They were actually cubed
hunks that you would fly in and out of. Two or three (maybe four)
versions ago they did away with those cubes. Since then it seems to
get better with every new release. We must be thankful for what we had
in the past but hope things continue to get better in the future. From
all the screen shots I have seen this baby tops 'em all.

I put in over 40 years with the N.W.S. so clouds mean a lot to me. I
also love flight sim and aviation in general.

[ralphgpr]

Thanks for your comment about clouds. I really meant to imply that we can (I hope) work around the clouds problem if we more or less consider them as good-looking decoration and not take them too seriously. They are quite good-looking as I see it. What I am experimenting with is visibility (which I think is real) and precipitation (also realistic) and let those factors give me a good instrument flight.

Remember the clouds in 5.1? They were like ping-pong balls. :-)