Does FS4 has 3D water?

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The flight simulator FS2 is certainly based on the program code of IPACS' RC simulator aeroflyRC, which still supports 3D water.

I have to correct my own statement. aeroflyRC supports 2D water, not 3D water. The surface of 2D water is flat and the waves are simulated by animated textures. 3D water has real 3D waves.

The 2D water of aeroflyRC is transparent. You can see the ground in the shallow water. The animated textures are nice.

X-Plane 11 has 2D water. The water is not transparent, but the water surface is also animated.

MSFS has 3D water and simulates 3D waves.

For me, 3D water is not necessary. 2D water is good, especially if the performance is better. I get annoyed when the whole lake has the same texture. It's not real and looks unnatural. The rippled surface depends on the wind and is different in different areas of the lake.

Default AFS4 have zero Amphibian aircraft (not even with floats). BUT all included aircraft needs to deal with weather (so real weather is a must have), almost all requires ATC for a more realistic flights and many needs pushback to go out from a gate.

About real weather, will be cool if weather can be changed by an external software to enable external 3rd party app control it, like some do with other civil flight sims

Quote from stavka

About real weather, will be cool if weather can be changed by an external software

2 different weathers (origin / destination) could already be cool. For example, takeoff clear sky & windy, landing heavy fog & calm. Wind orientation could also be automatically set (with a certain randomness) in function of the runway I have chosen for takeoff and the runway I have chosen for landing.

If weather could be changed in-live by an external app, and if AFS could send/broadcast the aircraft position, that external app could inject the real weather on the AFS using the Metar files auto downloaded + interpolation of them on the aircraft position. This technic is what many 3rd party weather apps do in other sims. With these you could have almost real weather through all your flight...

Summary of the whole discusssion 3D Water and Weather?

Quote from Schnuffelduffel

And how many flight simulators do you know with real water that have the performance of FS2? Or FS4 ( probably )? I do not know anyone.

Shaders on water does not so significantly impact performances on modern hardware. You can have water that looks amazing from the sky (even if not true 3D water) for a cheap price performance-wise.

The main problem (I assume) is not the shaders themselves but the fact that the engine has to "know" where water is, with a high precision. The limits between water and not-water have to be globally defined, which is not obvious if you use raw aerial photos.

Quote from haltux

The main problem (I assume) is not the shaders themselves but the fact that the engine has to "know" where water is, with a high precision. The limits between water and not-water have to be globally defined, which is not obvious if you use raw aerial photos.

Is that catered for with some pre-set fixed colour in sceneries similar to green screen in video? For example the Netherlands add-on scenery has an unpleasant crude oil spill like blue-black flat texture for all the waterways. The jarringly ugly colour canals and rivers put me off buying that scenery, was that designed to be replaced by a simulated water surface in some putative FS2 realism upgrade?