"Rain Effect" in FSX ???

[JamesChams]

TOPIC MOVED HERE:

Staff,

Am I seeing the "rain effect" (in FSX) in this shot???  I thought that this was not possible with custom textures... (Although, Virtuali and Mr. Martin Brunken (FlyTampa.com) did explain to me that it is somewhat "possible." but with consequences/trade-off's).  

Are you "playing" with the Z-depth (height) of the polygons to make this happen???



Just curious!!!

PS: Nice Shots!  

Are you "playing" with the Z-depth (height) of the polygons to make this happen???

No, playing with the Z value in real time would create side effects indeed.

We are just using the same method as with Geneva, which is a blending between the backgound gray color given by the AFCAD to provide the rain effect, and the photoreal scenery on top of it that will give the customize-ness for the area so, even if it's an hybrid between FSX native code and FS9 code, the rain is there, but the side effect are not.

[JamesChams]

Virtuali,

I had a few more questions and moved this topic here...

I tried the "Rain Effect" test in all of your released airports.  However, with the exception of LSGG, I can ONLY get this effect on the runway(s) (eg. at KORD) but, NOT on any of its taxiways, aprons, tarmac's.  I also tried this with KJFK and LSZH; but, NOT GreyStone.

Is there something that I'm NOT setting correctly or has this AFCAD feature, you've mentioned, NOT been implemented in those airports?


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[JFKpilot]

James,

It seems you have great difficulty understanding how this works. Martin explained this to you pretty well already...?!

The default apron textures in the afcad provide the rain effect.  When custom textures are placed on top of this, the rain effect no longer becomes visible. So over 2 years ago cloud9 and flytampa began making their custom textures slightly transparent, so that the ground appears all custom, but you can still see a little bit of the default apron and thus the rain effects.

Fsdt sceneries and rain effects:
ZurichX: Photoreal background provided by fs2002 ground polygons. No transparency in the textures, so no rain effects.
KORDX: Photoreal background providded by fsx-native photoscenery. There's no way to do rain effects on this type of ground (unless default aprons are used, but that would ruin performance and appearance) 
KJFKX: same as Kord
GreystoneX: same type of photoscenery as Kord, kjfk, but has default aprons, so has full rain effects
LSGGX: same as Zurich, but with transparency in each custom texture, so rain effects show.
KLASX: same as LSGG

So it's not your settings, you have to take into consideration how each scenery is made. You might ask, why didn't they make KORD and JFK like LSGG? Reason: performance. There have to be some trade-offs, unfortunately.

Regards
Ron

[JamesChams]

Virtuali,

Is it possible to get this "rain effect" added now with a modified AFCAD?  Or, would that just not work for technical reasons?

[virtuali]

Is it possible to get this "rain effect" added now with a modified AFCAD?  Or, would that just not work for technical reasons?

No, because it's not the AFCAD alone that makes the effect ( if it were so simple, we would "modified" the AFCAD ourselves, don't you think ? ), but it's the top photoreal layer on top of it, that has been DESIGNED in a way to merge with it.

You should accept the fact that, if a scenery has been made in a certain way, there are very good reasons why it hasn't made in another way and what works with a scenery doesn't necessarily work with another one. The use of the larger textures with alpha channel takes more video memory, and the use of the alpha blending mode requires a more costly shader, which is why, incidentally, we haven't used this method for the larger sceneries.