He also said there were a lot of masks already in place thought too - so if they publish a full list/map that would be great
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The few water masks we had until the USA update like them at Nassau or north of Haiti are missing now. Does anyone else has this problem since the USA update?
Seems you’re not alone, I haven’t tested yet myself
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Watermasks too sharp.
Extending mask to 50-100 meters and increasing water transparency down to 30 meters would
reveil the underwater landscape as known from real life. This refers to all areas of the world, and
would highly improve the southern florida, caribbean and other geographical areas where wide sandbanks are mandatory part of the landscape.
# Request #52484 Water transparency
water masks are currently very sharp.
Flying along Miami Beach for example would not show the wide sand banks underknief the water surface,
while in real life it would stretch three times the dimension of the beach sand above water itself.
Same in the bay. Waters are not very deep there in real life, and as seen from the air the whole area should show
as some slicky greenish sand bank area, fillled with beatiful sparkling waters.
As a consequence of current method, the FS world does not reflect the underwater landscapes which are a considerable part
of the carribbean sceneries (indluding south florida and the keys, and the bahamas and australia).
Bing Maps as well as other providers do have underwater imagery available, as seen from above the surface.
The main cause for this inaccuracy for FS is the water masks and transparency levels you chose when designing the world initially.
Masks should go further away from land boarders (use 300 meters), and altitude transparency (below zero alt) should be drawn deeper (use 30 meters).
This mix creates the right look for all areas on the world.
I consider this as a highly appreciated feature adding to the FS world experience and i hope this will be
corrected in the near future.
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That’s not a thing I don’t think. The water masks are simply horizontal gradients and the water has no actual depth. The deepening effect is just an illusion as the water texture blends with the aerial imagery.
I agree this is an important feature, and I’ve pretty much shelved flying in the tropics until it’s addressed. I don’t expect that to happen until a major world update, months or years from now, however. There are too many other major components in line first.
And instead of just tweaking the masks, my vote would be the overhaul the water entirely and make it volumetric, giving it real depth. You should be able to beach your A5 on a shallow sandbar, or taxi the bushplanes on the water’s edge. Right now it’s pretty much just a binary 0 or 1, you’re on the water or you’re not.
there is in fact what we call “water depth transition” definitions, and the mask is in fact relevant to what extend away from the the landmass is continued to show top-down underknief the surface, provided by the satellite photos used by bing or google. masks define the border between land and water, while transparency rules how deep under the surface it would gather and show that information. i am kind of a specialist there for this topic, and i think it can also help FS2020. Using these proper methods consequently reveal sandbanks across the bay, including those you can park on and run a party. If you are familiar with e.g. Key Biscane, that’s one of the places i am talking about. if asobo gets to read this, they will know.
But yes, volumetric water is nice, despite i think it is already implemented. Just draw your surface wind slider up and you have those giant waves. What it needs however is animated beach waves, these start developing a mile before the coast and throw their foam towards the beach the closer they get. This is caused by the relative depth of the land underknief the surface which gets thinner and thinner the closer it gets toward the beach.
The technique is known, but asobo decided to provide a more efficient singular solution that covers the entire globe without risking discrepancies at certain places, which would require manual correction. The downside is that you don’t see under water landscapes in FS2020 like in real life.
i can upload some of my x-plane pictures if you like, they help understanding. I am sure asobo will rank priorities according their resources and overall market effect. I would not call this a top priority, implementing palm trees and vegetation diversity is certainly further up on the list. But nevertheless, my posts help pointing on issues they need for priority planning abroad from mainstream community requests.
I learned that my contributions always had great impact, so i do it. for the benefit of the users and the developer. and myself 
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There is no water depth in Flight Simulator as far as I can tell. There’s no transparency to the water either. The water surface is completely opaque, and there is nothing there when you peek underneath:
See how none of the aircraft is visible in the portion that’s underwater:
When you look underneath, you just see an empty void with graphics glitches:
This is right at the beach where the transition occurs. Depth is faked using masking, so up close and on angle (rather than looking straight down) the water looks like a painted surface, not a real body of water. The water texture and aerial ortho are simply being blended together and painted on the opaque water surface.
This method of masking between land and water is pretty antiquated to be honest, based on platforms from 10-15 years ago. X-Plane is not a great example to compare against decent looking graphics.
Ideally, the mesh should continue below sea level (in fact cover the entire sea floor), aerial textures color corrected and drawn on the seafloor, and the water should deploy a fully transparent surface with subsurface scattering. Maybe they tried that and it was too much work for them on an initial offering? I hope they revisit this idea though, because it looks archaic compared to other modern games.
sinking below surface is not the matter of my described issue, this relates to physics definitions.
the water overlay just builds the envelope of where it applies.
Behaviour of an airplane model against land or water is a completely different topic.
It is not just about sinking, it is a modeling environment of its own, and it has to
be applied to any type of object, indluding seaplanes, which don’t sink obviously.
thanks for your resistance, but no, the described techniques are not antique at all
I want to see the shallow water scenery improved greatly too. The masks in the Caribbean are insufficient and make sight seeing flights there quite dull. Maybe there’s a communication issue here and I’m not understanding, but you’re talking about adding depth information to improve the water masking? Or you’re saying depth information is already there, it just needs to be tweaked? I haven’t seen any real evidence that water depth is actually there. There’s a mask horizontal distance, but not a depth. The wind driven waves change the topography of the water surface, but there’s still no actual “depth” under that water. The masks just extend out a fixed distance from the shoreline everywhere on the planet (unless there’s some manual fix in one location), which as you point out, isn’t far enough to reveal details in areas with clear, shallow water. Adding that depth information would help improve the water masks a lot. If they’ve got that info though, I think they’d just go the extra step of drawing a transparent, reflective water surface, absorbing some of the light underneath to make the water depths blue, and drawing a seafloor.
Sorry if we’re just spinning wheels and getting nowhere here. As a graphics developer, the water interests me a lot, and I’m not particularly impressed with how it’s done in this game compared to other modern titles. The water would be totally fine if this simulator was just about pushing buttons in tubeliners that fly thousands of feet above any water. But when you throw in seaplanes and bushplanes that have to look good in and directly interact with this water, the illusion is broken.
we have 2 topics here:
- making sandbanks visible
- physical behaviour of an object in waters
my request was making sandbanks visible.
despite 2. is the obvious next.
and 3. shore waves the obvious overnext,
and 4. sand type and colour the overnext (varies from region to region).
not sure why you are spinning around, if you are not familiar with the techniques.
it’s fine if asobo knows, i just try to push them into the right direction.
thanks.
Not a bug, they just haven’t implemented that water mask yet. Move your thread over to Wishlist if you want to bring attention to it.
The devs will keep manually updating watermasks all over the world. The AI implementation of it sadly didn’t look correct, so they have to add them in manually.
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ah… this is meant… might be a good wish to make the flying more beautiful…
so, you’re going to make a new post about this every day that it’s not changed? In that case I hope you have some stamina.
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Hi @Nickel123,
This was discussed in the last Q&A with an answer:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/state-of-water-masks/322710/9?u=hester40mt
Yes and no, I know that there was a difference between the trailer and the current released version of the game but I’m talking about reefs and underwater worlds what were allready visible in the public game. Now these areas are “sunk” aswell. In my opinion its a step back and not forward like they explained in the last Q&A. Nevertheless, I know it’s a lot of work and I appreciate the job, the team does.
Sure hard to believe that when they were showing watermasks in promo videos before release that showed watermasks that still have not made it into the game.
I just tried Witsunday Islands. It’s absolutely gorgeous, though I don’t think it’s anything other than the “stock” water.