Water Rendering Discussion Thread

Have a look at few of these images of view of the ocean and notice that you can't see reflection of the terrain and even clouds on the ocean surface... when water is set to high settings in DCS it actually does not look realistic at all

in this photo is it very clear there is not visible reflection of the land... there is difference is "tone" of the blue which is due to different streaming of the water in regions and water level have different levels of "disturbance".

This one has different seabed colours due to coral but again you cannot see reflection of the land or even trees.

Can you see any clouds reflection on this photo? nope....

How about this one?

And another one... everyone get my point?

so instead of developers "wasting" time in coding such effects which in game does look nice at time and makes your jaw drop on the floor... but it's not actually realistic feature at all... only of very calm waters like of the lake can you see such reflections... and Black sea is not such so I think it should not be represented like that... and what's worse... the effects are using CPU/GPU cycles... I personally would like to see only slight shadowing of the clouds but it should be very uneven... not like a mirror.

And few more... this time from higher up... aircraft perspective :)

Here, the cloud shadows are only nicely visible when over bright light of the sunset... but looking to the sides shadows are hardly noticeable

One more :D

I just had an idea... can we have different water "quality" depending on weather... because... here's few shots of the Adriatic Sea which is fairly small and calm sea

ok... again, there is no reflection of the land visible at all

here the water is fairly calm and again there is no reflections as water surface is still too disturbed

but as it gets really calm, normally its like this in the evening hours, water surface gets flat enough to start acting as a mirror and then you do get reflections

can we have these effects pretty please? :D (a man can dream)

These pictures no, but it is easy to find pictures with DCS like reflections:

yes but you are missing the point... pay attention how level water is in these images... where will you find an ocean or sea with that kind of surface? I know even ocean can be very calm but never like that... lakes and swamps yes, rivers near the estuary also... but not open seas and oceans and we are flying in this sim over Black Sea right?

Black Sea

this one looks like as if its reflection but its actually a shadow

fairly calm sea (Black Sea) and again... no reflections

Yes It's correct, the black see is not clear enough (has too much plankton in it) to get clear reflections. Realism is sometimes FPS wise!

Yes true, but in first post you said not realistic at all. But I think over sea it is also possible to see reflections. This is actually some pictures from black sea region:

Black sea is almost a lake. A very big one but it only has one narrow connection to the mediteranean.

Found a pic of batumi coast:

this one is definitely shadows

the 3rd and 4th one do have some but are not very distinct... that 4th photo with 2 rocks does show it more clearly... so what I'm thinking is can developers make such distintions in water level under different weather conditions... simulated of course?

First off you cannot get reflections unless the light source is behind the reflectee..and in the first group..land is 10 miles from the photo!!!! And in another group, you need angulation to get reflections..a level seaslevel shot will not show relections cause you need an angle for the light to bounce off of....and seriously..does the water quality in the sim need to be much better? I'd ratehr they spent time and resources elsewhere...

I like how most of these are taken about 20 feet above the water:huh:

Hi Kuky, I don't know about the feasibility of this, but I can definitely tell you that there are no resources to complicate water representation to that point right now.

I always use med water in lock on/DCS series for the reasons you pointed out kuky.

But those don't look any different than DCS' from afar.

I'm not at my machine, but maybe someone can post a low, med, and high setting water pics from in-game for comparison?

First off you cannot get reflections unless the light source is behind the reflectee..and in the first group..land is 10 miles from the photo!!!! ..

ahem... EVERYTHING you see with your eyes is a light source, otherwise you would not see it which would mean no light is comming from that object (be it direct or indirect source of light - reflecting it):book:

and Glowing Amraam... those shots are very close to reality... especially the first one...that's how the sea/ocean should look like

I like how most of these are taken about 20 feet above the water:huh:

look little more careful... I purposfully picked some images where camera is very high up, either on the hill or from aircraft perspective.

Also to describe why disturbed water cannot have reflections on the seasurface think of a sine wave curve... and a flat line...

with a flat line every point of the line is at the same angle to light/reflecting light object and the observer eye... the reflections of each point is in parallel and when reflected if the even flat surface meets the observer eye in right "order" so the eye gets to "assemble" all the reflected light and get a fairly close image of the object... but when water is disturbed its surface is like a sine wave... not exact a sine wave but iregular... but point is only the peaks of this sine wave are at this same angle and those peaks are distanced fair bit leaving very scattered and distanced points of the light that is reflected and all other points are scattered all over the place... so the observer eye does not have enough points of the original object to "assemble" its reflections.

Kuky, totally agree! Far too much reflections on high, you very rarely see the sea looking like a mirror!

Wether the reflections in DCS are exaggerated or not...

Regarding any of the here shown real pictures: Think about that most of semi-/professional photographers (obviously most of the pictures here are taken by those) have polarisation and some UV/IR-filters attached to the cameras objective lenses.

Pol-filters will reduce any kind of reflection, some more or less, depending on the lights angle of incidence and type (polarized/non-polarized/natural lightning...). UV/IR-Filters changing the contrast in pictures and can dampen reflections to some degree.

What I was driving at? You can't use photographs as comparision for reflections (as well many other topics), unless you know that no above mentioned filters were used!

Regardless of the fact that they are over the top, if you do not like the reflections you can put water on medium or low. How about that.:thumbup:

UV and IR filters are not in visible specturm right, so why should they change how camera captures visible light of the image... those filters are used to filter out things like lensflare I believe.

@ Geskes... that's what I had it set to already

Anyway, I just wanted to share this and maybe developers will one day make changes for the better representation, you can hate me for bringing it up, I don't care, fact is a fact and it shouldn't hurt to get the ideas out even if they seem to be critical in nature

UV/IR has influence on sensors of digital cameras. Through interference it can dampen or amplifying sensitivity for other wavelengths.

But what I've twisted was, that UV/IR in most cases amplifies "reflections" from intense light sources, which can result in unwanted reflexes. But they're unlike water reflections.

The objective itself has an influence aswell. High focal distances damping, low focal distance objectives, like wide angle ones, amplifying reflections. Because wide angle ones are capturing more light of different angles, so the area for capturing reflections is wider.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this[...]you can hate me for bringing it up, I don't care, fact is a fact and it shouldn't hurt to get the ideas out even if they seem to be critical in nature

It's okay to mention that and think about. But aswell you (one...no offense intended ;)) need to think about how to proof your assumptions and keep aware of influences on your proofs. It's the same with video proofs. In most cases too many facts are unknown, so it's not a reliable source at all.

oh you think I have no proof? No offence but I have been on the sea many times and I have seen what it looks like... and so have others and it looks pretty much like in those photos and my eyes are not using any UV/IR filters... also I tried to explain that rippled water and with waves cannot make those reflections as can be seen in game when water is set to high, but maybe you missed that... that is pretty basic optics geometry

You can't argue with preference. Some people like red, some blue. Are people with high end cards seeing an FPS advantage going from med to low water?

so instead of developers "wasting" time in coding such effects which in game does look nice at time and makes your jaw drop on the floor... but it's not actually realistic feature at all... only of very calm waters like of the lake can you see such reflections... and Black sea is not such so I think it should not be represented like that... and what's worse... the effects are using CPU/GPU cycles... I personally would like to see only slight shadowing of the clouds but it should be very uneven... not like a mirror.

So set it to low or medium, problem solved. I like how the water looks on high realistic or not, personally i dont care. :pilotfly: