to Pete Dowson: FSUIPC 3.50 visibility problem

[panda56]

Hello,

Having used FSUIPC for years, (by now: registered version 3.50) I'd like to express my sheer admiration for that wonderfully helpful programme. I'm sure it is one of the most important contributions to FS ever.

Unfortunaltely, an issue occurred yesterday, all of a sudden, which I don't understand and can't get fixed.

In FS 9.1, above a certain altitude (approx. 8000 ft) the haze disappears to a great extent (abruptly, without any smoothing - see screenshots), and another 10000 ft higher, totally. No matter whether I use FS customized weather or downloaded real weather (freeware programme FSMetar).

The strange thing is that this didn't happen before; I always had a more or less continuously changing gradual visibility, as intended. The only thing I changed with FS was the installation of the new Canarias Project freeware scenery, but I doubt this could be the reason.

I use an ATI graphics board with X800 chipset and 256 MB RAM, P 4 3,4 GHz, 1 GB RAM, Win XP.

I'd be very grateful if you had an idea what I can do, because as it is now, there is no realism any more in the visibility appearance.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Rainer Bartl (Frankfurt, Germany)

FSUIPC Rainer Bartl.zip

[Pete Dowson]

Unfortunaltely, an issue occurred yesterday, all of a sudden, which I don't understand and can't get fixed.

I think you'll need to remember what you changed.

I'd also appreciate it, please, if you could always make sure you are using the current supported version of FSUIPC, before asking for support. Please check the announcements above. Version 3.50 is three versions and about 6 months out of date now. Version 3.53 hase been current since Jan 1st 2006.

However, in this case I doubt that anything has changed in this area.

In FS 9.1, above a certain altitude (approx. 8000 ft) the haze disappears to a great extent (abruptly, without any smoothing - see screenshots), and another 10000 ft higher, totally.

Some actual figures would be useful. Some folks "haze" turns out to be the drawing distance for scenery textures, which isn't actually a visibility option.

The graduated visibility option is enabled in your FSUIPC options, but you've not enabled the visibility smoothing, so abrupt changes are still possible between the areas FSUIPC is managing gradually and the FS visibility layer (tops out at various altitudes, could be 8000), and between one local weather area than another. Possibly this is what is happening and it is confusing the issue?

Regards

Pete

[panda56]

Thanks for your immediate reply.

It is true, I had forgotten to activate the visibility smoothing, but even now the basic problem I tried to describe (maybe not precisely enough due to the fact that English is not my mother tongue) hasn't really changed.

I am aware of the difference between the drawing distance for scenery textures and haze, and the latter is what I meant: various grades of visibility caused by different intensities of haze.

The main thing I don't understand and which, in my opinion, is unrealistic in the way I see it in FS at the moment, is the following: if, for test purposes, I use the slew option to move up und down, I have a few scattered clouds and certain amount of haze when on ground level and, say, at 1000 ft. Then, at approx. 6000 or 8000 ft, the clouds remain the same, but suddenly the view downwards and towards the horizon is a lot clearer than before, i.e. the greater the distance to the ground, the clearer and "crispier" the ground appears - as if you could merely touch it. On real flights, I rather observed the opposite: the ground being covered or made less clearly visible by haze with increasing altitude - whereas the view towards the horizon usually gets more and more clear.

Is this effect of the ground getting more clearly visible with increasing altitude a standard effect in FS we have to put up with or is there something wrong with any kind of settings or hardware in your opinion? I'm really getting confused and uncertain in which direction to think and to

experiment.

Regards

Rainer

[Pete Dowson]

I have a few scattered clouds and certain amount of haze when on ground level and, say, at 1000 ft. Then, at approx. 6000 or 8000 ft, the clouds remain the same, but suddenly the view downwards and towards the horizon is a lot clearer than before, i.e. the greater the distance to the ground, the clearer and "crispier" the ground appears - as if you could merely touch it.

This is a well known deficiency in FS, and isn't new in this version. The way the hardware-assisted fogginess works is universal, i.e. operates on the whole view, whether up down or across, so as the visibility is gradually extended, it does so downwards too.

Microsoft did try to rectify this for true fog (less than a few miles visibility), but they did this by adding a thin cloud layer on top of their visibility layer. That sort of works, but it looks even worse in my opinion, once you get higher, because the edges of that cloud are clearly defined at the cloud drawing cut-off distance.

I'm hoping things will be better for visibility matters in FSX. In my opinion the best were in FS2000 -- FS2002 was dire, worse than FS2004 in this area.

Meanwhile the only way to prevent it would be to have restricted visibility all the way up -- i.e. limit your maximum at altitude to the same limits as on the ground. That can result in even less realistic effects.

Regards

Pete