> I was talking about the 16km value (sorry for not being more clear about > that) and see below for the huge value.
Let me get this straight. You state that the 16 km are a pretty sane value. The proposal being discussed is to load terrain to 20 km no matter what the visibility is. Vivian has concerns about memory on 32bit systems. I have test data showing that I can do 250 km visibility on a 32bit system and 50 km with trees and buildings and custom scenery. So as far as the topic of the discussion is concerned (which up to this point had nothing to do with what visibility Advanced Weather may or may not set) - can we agree that 20 km (or 16 km) of terrain loaded no matter the visibility is a sane value even for a 32 bit system? Or do you have different test data? This > There's no warning/statement about what that selection implies, nowhere. > The average user doesn't know what that will do to his system, or how it > will change behaviour of other parts, that seem unrelated, nor has he > control > over a simple thing that might improve his experience, while enjoying both > high detail scenery+objects and advanced weather. has nothing to do with the question discussed (which is how much terrain we load when the visibility is small). It is a quite different issue which you bring here for no discernable reason whatsoever (the thread title is 'low visibility issues' and you're suddenly switching to high values...). Your statement as made above is pure hypocrisy. 1) There is zero warning given what increasing the visibility with z might imply (I just tried that to be sure). If you're concerned about the correlation between memory usage and visibility, you should not care how the large visibility is obtained, you should warn whenever this happens. 2) Last time I checked, there was no warning given that the IAR-80 uses a large chunk of memory. If you are genuinely concerned about users filling up their memory, why don't you start here? 3) In order for Advanced Weather to reach the really large visibilities, you actually need to check a box labelled 'Realistic Visibility' This may also provide a hint that we're not doing rendering for a 3d shooter where fog is a device to hide the edge of the scene, but that visibility is an essential and very relevant property for the environment we're trying to simulate - it makes the difference between IFR, hard VFR and easy VFR. Even leaving this argument aside, I would argue that a user who has a) set LOD bare to a high value and b) checked this box can be assumed to have the intention to render a high visibility. 4) I actually brought up the very same issue on this list - the correlation between memory, choosing highly detailed options and getting a large visibility delivered. There was a discussion and a decision was made to attach the warning to the random buildings options, not to Advanced Weather and to try to decrease memory usage of buildings. Strangely enough, things didn't bother you then. I wonder what's the use of me bringing up points for discussion if havign discussed it doesn't mean that it's settled. > Sorry, but for me, forcing your usage-pattern on the user just because > you think you know better what he wants is bad_design by definition. Advanced Weather specifies the visibility as a 4-dimensional field vis(x,y,z,t), i.e. it changes laterally, vertically and in time. In addition, Advanced Weather knows the correlation of weather phenomena and visibility - it knows that rain implies low visibility, it knows that visibility deteriorates when entering a cloudbase, it knows that visibility stays poor in a warm sector pretty high up and similar things. Basic Weather does not know these things, it's purely descriptive and has no concept what the weather is. You can either micromanage visibility as Basic Weather does and give up on all these details, or you can hand control to the simulation. There is no GUI you could fill in less than 30 minutes which gives you a visibility model as detailed as what Advanced Weather runs. If you see visibility as 'just a device to hide the edge of the scene' rather than an important property of the environment we're simulating, my advice is simply not to use Advanced Weather. What you're asking for is equivalent to 'Can't I just _set_ the airplane velocity to any value I like without the FDM computing it? I want more direct control.' Doesn't make any sense, sorry, if you don't like using FDMs, use the ufo. Trying to dumb down an FDM because you want direct control over the airspeed is not the way to go, and trying to dumb down the environment simulation because you want to micro-manage visibility is not the way to do, sorry. Please note that this will be my only response to this topic, because a) it has already been discussed and b) it's not related to the discussion of the thread. * Thorsten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_feb _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
