Just wondering if we will ever get visual interactive clouds in the sim. Currently, clouds do not interact with the body of an aircraft. For example, when flying through a cloud, it does not break through the wings. Or if flying through dense clouds, and looking through a plane window, the wing is fully exposed, sometimes bright as day, instead of fading out through the dense clouds.
It may just be a limitation of the current technology used to render clouds, but I’ve been wondering about this for some time.
I have seen one or two PC games with particle physics for smoke and fog, but if I remember correctly, that feature was usually a FPS killer. Those were old games though, and I don’t know if the tech has improved since then.
For this to happen all aircraft have first to receive the CFD simulation which is in place on the Cessna 172 for now. The MSFS team talked about this in one Q&A some time ago.
The CFD simulation simulates the airflow around the fuselage and wings as well as vortexes created which can be used on effects and probably also clouds. So chances are there but it will take some time - I don’t think we gonna see something like that after we have helicopters.
When I think “interactive”, I think of the plane causing the cloud particles to move as you fly though them. I think that is a different (and more computationally expensive) problem than the cloud density at the end of a wing.
Volumetric lighting works, but I haven’t noticed any light bouncing back to illuminate the plane, with the exception of screen space reflections which can create the illusion of global lighting.
What I remember seeing is the clouds around me being briefly lit up by the strobes, but I don’t remember viewing that from the outside to see if it lit the fuselage.
This is what I got in the C172 with all lights on, from the left side. If I view the plane from directly behind however, when the red tail beacon goes out, my entire screen/plane is nearly pitch black.
Oh wow imagine having parts of the clouds and fog illuminated by the nav lights and the aircraft windows, and when having the landing lights on under 11.000 feet these lights illuminating the clouds when flying over them. This would look absolute fantastic.
