I know FSX has broken new ground when it comes to water textures. I was wondering how Microsoft decided to handle water textures for winter/hard winter? Does it look anything like ice? (or is it like FS2004, and still look like water?)

Felix/FFDS wrote on Oct 10^th, 2007 at 6:23pm:

Ask a stupid question I guess.....I should have mentioned that I don't have FSX, that's why I was wondering!

In FSX, bodies of water, regardless of location, remain ice-free year 'round. As I recall, this is true in all previous editions of FS.

I filed a bug report about it during FSX beta testing and they said it's a good suggestion for a future edition. My *guess* is, it's on the consideration list for inclusion in FX11.

At first glance it might seem a trivial thing but if you stop and think about, it could get pretty complicated to program, depending on the level of realism wanted. For example: frozen lakes would become landable with wheel/ski equipped aircraft but *not* for floatplanes -- just the opposite of what is *now* normal.

FS already includes seasonal affects on scenery (i.e., trees changing color) but freezing lakes depends on how far north or south of the equator you are. At a certain latitude, lakes are ice free year 'round. However, as you go further and further from the equator, the time of year lakes freeze over gets earlier and earlier until you reach the latitude where they're frozen year 'round. Again, the more realism desired, the greater the programming complexity.

Cal
CYXX

NickN wrote on Oct 11^th, 2007 at 2:40pm:


THAT is one of the major sort of "unseen" (so far) "breakthroughs" in FSX.  That ability opens up endless possibilities for add on developers.

best,

.................john