Visibility settings in 433
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Loving the fact that clouds have a thickness to them… descended into the WX yesterday en route to KUN and had a bit of a fit, had to go looking for lead to make sure I could still see him!
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@Red:
For you guys easier minds following this conversation, basically you just adjust the cloud layer for ceiling. (Cloud base is the lowest altitude of the clouds not the highest as said above - and thickness is the thickness of the layer from the cloud base and up)
and the VISIBILITY slider for horizontal visibility (Under the clouds).
No rocket sciences needed. Just pure logic as explained in the manual, as stated before.BMS manual Page 5-57 with the answer you didn’t find in Bold Hans
BE CAREFUL
for cumulus you adjust cumulus BASE
for stratus you adjust ceiling, so stratus base = stratus ceiling layer - thickness
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zero (no visibility) to 30Nm (10Km) visibility
30 Nautical miles = ca 55.6 Kilometer.
I guess the silders goes from 0 to 30 Nm, Where do the 10 Km come in?
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The funny thing is that according to the ICAO the cloud ceiling is the lower end of the cloud and the cloud base is the upper end.
If you stay below the ceiling you will fly below the clouds, If you stay above the base you will fly above the clouds.In normal english, in metrology and in mav-JPs and Reddogs it is the other way round.
According to ICAO one had to say
for cumulus you adjust cumulus Ceilingfor stratus you adjust base, so stratus ceiling = stratus base layer - thickness
In any case the clouds go from 13300 ft to 6300 ft (7000 ft thickness) in inclement weather with the numbers I quoted out of the manual.
If anybody has some insight what the meaning of 10km is (see aboves post) I would be grateful
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Tested and made 2 strange observations
Weather Poor: Status height 5000 ft Poor thickness 3000 ftA) Fog at 30 NM (I know unrealistc but for the test)
Below 2000 ft I see a cloud above me and I can see very well.
Inside the cloud layer (from 2000 ft to 5000 ft) I see grey
Above the clouds (5000 ft) i see clear weather and blue skies.All that is as expected. However when flying above the cloud layer and looking down I can see holes in the clouds below me, I can see the ground through those holes (looks like the holes are part of the grafic that textures the top of the cloud layer)
When I fly in one of those holes in the clouds I can see the ground until I descent below 5000 ft and are suddenly in the clouds, were just a second before I could see a hole.Solution might be to modify the “cloud level skin” so there are no holes.
B) Fog at a small number (about 1 slider button diamater, so maybe about 2000 ft)
Visibility below the cloud layer and in the cloud layer shitty as expected.
again grey until I reach the 5000ft (top of the cloud layer)
Above those 5000ft everything around me looks white, The sun is visible but not really bright and there is no blue sky.Seems like fog settings are in some way active above the cloud layers as well
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Friendly bump. since I dropped from the first page rathr quickly.
Is eveybody seing the same? Is there a trick to get the described behaviour (Fog settings only applied below the stratus clouds)?
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know issue
. only workaround would be to remove the holes in the texture…. or to make different textures dependant on fog value below… -
Rgr, any insight on case B) as well?
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i will check B)
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Not sure if I’m allowed to post this in this topic, but I don’t think it’s worth opening a new topic (if it is, feel free to split) as it’s also related to visibility and clouds, and I’m not certain yet if this is a bug or feature. So consider this also a post to inquire about its status.
During some poor weather test flights (I don’t have the TE’s here yet, but I could ask my team mate to share them), we noticed that we have very poor visibility on other aircraft at longer distances. At first, we thought this was due to (invisible or indistinguishable) clouds being rendered in between us and them, but even if we are well above the clouds and looking for other aircraft at similar altitudes we don’t see them.
For example, in our test, we had no more clouds (except the stratus layer above us) above 14,000ft, but we could only get visual (Mk.1 Eyeball and/or TGP) on KC10/KC135/E3A at VERY close ranges, despite the fact that they are very large aircraft and have contrails. To be honest, it’s actually giving me the impression that the model is not rendered until that distance… Below, some screenshots of several setups to approach a KC10.
Looking down a lot (28 -> 22):
KC135 “emerging from the clouds” where the contrail starts, at approximately 4-5NM.Slightly looking down (27 -> 24):
At 9NM, blindAt 5.2NM, just barely visual, and still impossible to tell it’s an E3A.
Slightly looking up (22 -> 24):
At 5NM, slightly more visual than in the looking down example, but only because the contrails are only just escaping the haze and thus contrast more against the blue sky.What is a known bug, however, is that we can easily lock through the clouds:
At 21NM and no visual whatsoever, we can TV lock a target and disengage RADAR lock but still keep some SA on our target.Cheers,
Eagle-Eye -
Looks like its the same effect that I see. it becomes even more obvious with a lower fog visibilty setting
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use smartscaling and yes there is haze above clouds else it would be a too much contrast a’d will not look good above clouds
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Not sure if I’m allowed to post this in this topic, but I don’t think it’s worth opening a new topic (if it is, feel free to split) as it’s also related to visibility and clouds, and I’m not certain yet if this is a bug or feature. So consider this also a post to inquire about its status.
During some poor weather test flights (I don’t have the TE’s here yet, but I could ask my team mate to share them), we noticed that we have very poor visibility on other aircraft at longer distances. At first, we thought this was due to (invisible or indistinguishable) clouds being rendered in between us and them, but even if we are well above the clouds and looking for other aircraft at similar altitudes we don’t see them.
For example, in our test, we had no more clouds (except the stratus layer above us) above 14,000ft, but we could only get visual (Mk.1 Eyeball and/or TGP) on KC10/KC135/E3A at VERY close ranges, despite the fact that they are very large aircraft and have contrails. To be honest, it’s actually giving me the impression that the model is not rendered until that distance… Below, some screenshots of several setups to approach a KC10.
Looking down a lot (28 -> 22):
KC135 “emerging from the clouds” where the contrail starts, at approximately 4-5NM.Slightly looking down (27 -> 24):
At 9NM, blindAt 5.2NM, just barely visual, and still impossible to tell it’s an E3A.
Slightly looking up (22 -> 24):
At 5NM, slightly more visual than in the looking down example, but only because the contrails are only just escaping the haze and thus contrast more against the blue sky.What is a known bug, however, is that we can easily lock through the clouds:
At 21NM and no visual whatsoever, we can TV lock a target and disengage RADAR lock but still keep some SA on our target.Cheers,
Eagle-Eyeyour post is not clear
what was your weather setti ng ? poor, sunny ? inclement ? and what was your fog setting ?
and yes if you are above stratus in poor or inclement the model in layer or below is not rendered else you would see it in front of the clouds….
but first answer my question have you set a lot of FOG in sunny or fair weather ?
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your post is not clear
what was your weather setti ng ? poor, sunny ? inclement ? and what was your fog setting ?
and yes if you are above stratus in poor or inclement the model in layer or below is not rendered else you would see it in front of the clouds….
but first answer my question have you set a lot of FOG in sunny or fair weather ?
I didn’t make the TE myself, but I’m 95% certain it was a “poor” weather map made in WeatherCommander and loaded in BMS (maybe the default one included with BMS, but that, I’m not sure). To my knowledge, aside from that, all settings were default. I’ll ask my team mate to confirm ASAP.
Also, smart scaling is enabled in my setup, so that can not be an issue for the problem I’m having. You say that the haze is there to reduce contrast, and looking at real pictures from above the clouds, I notice it is indeed there, but what I also see is that there’s obviously a lot more detail in real life than in BMS (as is known, I’m sure). Since the BMS overcast cloud layer is (almost) just a flat surface from clouds to haze instead of something clear and cut like this, let alone this, maybe BMS needs to trim the haze down slightly or find another way - if possible of course - to enhance contrast until we get a more realistic contrast from cloud relief?
$0.02
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No idea if it is technically possible but it could work rather well to apply
“fair” fog above the inclement cloud base and “inclement” fog below the inclement ceiling. Inside the cloud the hardcoded value
“sunny” fog above the poor cloud base and “poor” fog below the poor ceiling. Inside the cloud the hardcoded value -
I didn’t make the TE myself, but I’m 95% certain it was a “poor” weather map made in WeatherCommander and loaded in BMS (maybe the default one included with BMS, but that, I’m not sure). To my knowledge, aside from that, all settings were default. I’ll ask my team mate to confirm ASAP.
Also, smart scaling is enabled in my setup, so that can not be an issue for the problem I’m having. You say that the haze is there to reduce contrast, and looking at real pictures from above the clouds, I notice it is indeed there, but what I also see is that there’s obviously a lot more detail in real life than in BMS (as is known, I’m sure). Since the BMS overcast cloud layer is (almost) just a flat surface from clouds to haze instead of something clear and cut like this, let alone this, maybe BMS needs to trim the haze down slightly or find another way - if possible of course - to enhance contrast until we get a more realistic contrast from cloud relief?
$0.02
well yeah OK this is a 15 years old engine, i think i have made the maximum our of it …
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Did some more tests today, to see what the cause could be. First of all, I did a check in BMS 4.32, to make sure I wasn’t just imagining things.
I made sure the Falcon BMS.cfg was untouched, then reset all weather tabs to their default settings and built a TE with “poor” weather settings. Then, to make sure I used uniform settings to check visual in both BMS versions, I used the “FOVToggle” command to zoom in.
This is in 4.32, at a range of approximately 35-40NM. We definitely can’t distinguish what it is yet, but we can quite clearly see “something” is there.
So BMS 4.32 has it at 35-40NM. With that information, I repeated the process in 4.33. Given the more advanced cloud settings, I tested it twice at 5%, both at max scattered and max thick.
At Max Scattered, I got a bare visual at 10NM.At Max Thick, I had the same result.
In order to find out what could be the reason, I tested BMS 4.33 Sunny weather. I took a TGP with me, so that the moment I thought I saw something, I could check it out.
A little over 30NM away, I got my first visual.Next, I took another look at this screen in BMS 4.33:
As you can see, the visibility for SUNNY is 30 and ±10NM for POOR, which were the approximate values I got in my tests. So what would happen if I set POOR visibility at 30NM?
Tanker visible at 27NM. EUREKA !! Except …
Setting the visibility to 30NM gets desired results above the clouds, but below the clouds, it now looks like this:While it should look more like this:
Considering all of the above, and assuming it’s not possible in the current engine to create a visibility setting that is not universal from SFC - UNL, maybe we can put our heads together to find a proper good-for-all visibility, that works above, as well as below the clouds, for a certain weather condition?
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yeah. different fog settings are needed above and below the clouds.
Another feature request.
Give us a way to change the weather instantly (either timed or throúgh a console, text commands in the txt chat). This could be very helpful to do certain training scenarions. Yes it will not be realistic but it could be seen as a training in the RL simulator. -
i will try to make visibility above layer correpond to sunny visibility setting
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Bug found and fixed
visibility above layer shall be maximum
that was a change done for FPS saving…but i found another way to save the same FPS amount without loosing the visibility above layer