True Sky, the new clouds in FSW

[Daube]

Hi guys,

As some of you may know, the newest update for FSW brings in a new technology for drawing the clouds in the sim: True Sky.
I have tested this a few minutes ago and I have to say this: I don't like FSW. But True SKy is the best thing I've ever seen when it comes to clouds in a sim. It puts ALL of the current products (REX etc...) to shame. Simple as that.
And I didnt't think I would ever say anything like that about FSW..

Here is a summary of what happened.
I updated the sim via Steam then launched it. The initial loading took forever, the loading of the small popup about "...shaders..." was not going forward... but finally it came to an end.
I set a flight by daytime in fair weather and took off.
The clouds were strange, kind of ugly. I don't know if it was because of my hardware, or settings, or because it was the first launch, no idea. The clouds looked blurry and moving like the smoke of the liquid nitrogen...
From the top, it looked like that. Don't be afraid and read the rest.



So, cloud is blurry, shape is strange, colors have banding... but then again... that shape ! Can you see how complex it is ? The clouds are FINALLY real 3D shapes, not a pile of 2D faces turning around you!

Then, I restarted the sim. That restart was fast, unlike the first one. This time, I selected the theme "major thunderstorm" at dusk, then when I got in the cockpit I trigger the slew mode and jumped directly to 10.000 feet. And boy what I saw there was simply amazing. Clouds finally lookeds like clouds. Shapes were so complex, sometimes very smooth. The lighting was just perfect. Look at that:

[Daube]

The important things to notice is that the clouds now cast shadows on themselves. So a big isolated cumulonimbus is going to cast a big shadow on the nearby lower clouds. I don't know how "complex" this shadows are but the global rendering of an overcast sky seen from above has nothing in common with what we can currently see in FSX, P3D or XPlane.
Also the rendering of the light around the clouds is beautiful, for example when a cloud is hidding the sun...

I'm not really a big fan of FSW, not enough planes, performance is so-so etc... but I really want that True Sky technology to be ported to P3Dv4 as soon as possible !!

[Daube]

And that's the theme "Fogged in" seen from above:

[Naismith]

Yes the last update made mine, not quite but almost, a slideshow and the loading time was ridiculous. Specs below so I'm guessing my NV660 doesn't have the grunt any more. So end of the line for me re DTG unless they do something clever.

[stansdds]

Yes the last update made mine, not quite but almost, a slideshow and the loading time was ridiculous. Specs below so I'm guessing my NV660 doesn't have the grunt any more. So end of the line for me re DTG unless they do something clever.

The Nvidia 660Ti video card is definitely a bottleneck.

[Montie]

Finally we got rid of the 2D clouds, I might get FSW just for this.