Here is Microsoft Flight Simulator, in the Lake District. I chose this place because it’s dear
to me, and so I’ve got lots of pictures there to compare with this simulation.
In these comparison shots, you’ll notice the AI mistakes a lot of shrubs and bracken for tall
trees, and so makes the tops of mountains a lot more forested than they are in reality. In a way,
I like this because it helps provide a sense of scale to these otherwise very featureless
regions… but it’s obviously wrong to place trees there. But on the whole, I think Microsoft Flight
Simulator does a brilliant job of simulating the crags and lakes of this part of England, and it
proved to be the ideal place to experiment with Flight Simulator’s extremely life-like clouds.
You can adjust the height, thickness, density and other things about the clouds in this game.
You can have several layers of them. You can make these layers overlap! And no matter what you do,
it looks realistic and it makes me think OOOHhhh so THAT’S why these clouds look
the way they do. So it’s definitely worth messing about with if you have even the
slightest curiosity about clouds- which let’s face it, you do- and it’s great to
experiment with it in a region where they get to interact with mountains and valleys and stuff.
In my time as a youtuber, I’ve gained a lot of experience alt-tabbing between different images
to try and line things up for comparison shots like these. But this project is the first time
I’ve got confused between which is which- because I KEPT trying to shift the camera
position on my real-life pictures, instead of in Flight Simulator, which I guess is the
highest praise when it comes to describing how life-like this game can look. The lighting isn’t
the same and the landscape evidently isn’t captured at the same time of year. But it’s
still got that realistic… ‘look’ to it that, at a glance, makes you question whether it’s real
or whether you’re being tricked. And then you hate yourself for having doubts one way or the other.
As you can see, I sometimes couldn’t get the clouds looking quite the same- but then,
they’re clouds, aren’t they- they aren’t known for doing what you want them to do. Certainly not here
in England. But still -the clouds really are the star of the show here- their impact is up there
with the first time I saw pixel shading in a game, or physics, or real-time lighting. Having good
clouds enhances how the whole image looks, and not just the clouds themselves. It sometimes amazes
me to remember that these aren’t hand-crafted- these are just general cloud presets which can
be applied anywhere in the world. But they look so dynamic and varied in their appearance that
they often look like they were designed for this particular spot, just for me. That’s how
nice I feel they look in Flight Simulator. I remember how static games used to look.
When a place would look the same, no matter how many times you visited. Then,
when games started getting real-time day-night cycles, it added VARIETY to how that same place
could look. But clouds add 1,000 times more variety again; no two moments are the same,
and it’s definitely something that could benefit a lot more games than just this Flight Simulator.
COUGH the next Elder Scrolls.
Setting the same time and date as when the pictures were taken revealed just how precisely
the sun’s position is simulated- to the point where you could work out, in advance, where to
stand and at which date to see the sun setting or rising, at a particular spot on the horizon.
As you can probably tell, I’m struggling to move on from these cloud examples because it’s
everything I didn’t realise I needed until now! But I must get onto more real-life comparisons,
because I’m sure this video is being watched by lots of normal people -some who live in
this area- who can’t understand my obsession with virtual clouds.
This is me, climbing the tallest mountain in England, carrying the group’s bags like a BEAST.
And here it is in Flight Simulator, with a lot more trees, but you’ll
notice I don’t really care much about this comparison because there aren’t any clouds.
This, is England’s second tallest mountain. It was our final morning in the Lake District
and we decided to speedrun this one because the storm clouds were approaching. Notice
I’m a lot more excited about this example because there are CLOUDS! And especially cos
Flight Simulator’s ones look more awesome than real-life’s pathetic-looking haze does. I mean,
increasing the humidity went some way towards helping, but it still wasn‘t the ‘same’ effect.
Turns out, humidity makes quite a difference to how things look! Especially to sunsets,
which benefit a LOT from this stuff. But maybe not TOO much,
or you risk it becoming one of those over saturated Instagram disasters.
So returning to the sunsets that I failed at capturing earlier,
let’s try them again… but with HUMIDITY! So here’s the best I can achieve with clouds
alone. Not too bad, but it lacks that thing that makes you so excited you reach for your trouser
pockets. And also for your phone. Wow! That’s much more like it!
Okay, too much. …wow!
…but it still doesn’t look like the sunset I’m trying to recreate.
I’m just going to waffle on a bit to buy this video more time to marvel at pretty-looking
clouds, and I’ll just say: I realise, I’m not qualified to do this sort of video. I
thought I was, I thought it was going to be a simple case of comparing 2 pictures from
the same location. It might be nice if I set the time and date to the same to aide in the
comparisons. But then all these other variables showed up as well, and it turns out you have to
be some sort of tech-literate rainman genius weatherman with a beastly PC to extract the
most out of comparisons you make between Flight Simulator, and reality. But until that magical
person comes along, you’re stuck with me, going off on tangents and learning as I go.
Right, let’s quickly show you some more comparisons before
I get sidetracked by something else. Langdale Pikes are fantastic mountains!
They’re not especially tall, yet can be seen from almost everywhere else in the Lake District. It’s
a shame that Flight Simulator rounds out their iconic shapes. These shots could benefit from a
bit more humidity, but… like I’m going to spend another few hours recapturing these clips again!
As a child, I have this memory of getting stuck half way up one of these. I scraped
all the skin off one of my fingers and was sat there on a ledge, grasping my bloody stump,
crying as lots of other people just climbed past me and carried on their way.
Those were the days!
Oh no, I’ve got side-tracked again! This example at Tarn Howes again demonstrates
how much prettier the clouds in Flight Simulator can look than the sort of clouds you may encounter
when being in the Lake District for real. This is Striding Edge. It doesn’t look like much,
but whenever I see it in person I’m like… yeah, let’s take the other route instead. I messed about
with different weather conditions up here and just had to show you the snowy one because it looks so
atmospheric! Especially with a storm approaching. Yup, one of the coolest features in Flight
Simulator -quite literally!- is the way you can cover everything with snow. This even
takes into account the distance from water and I’m sure many other complex variables
that I don’t have a clue about. I tested to see if it could snow
in the Sahara desert and it also worked, so it looks like it’s being automatically generated.
Then, I tested to see if it could snow in the Amazon rainforest because sometimes, it CAN
snow in the desert. But not here. And then I tried it to Greenland
too. Don’t ask why, but doing this delayed global warming so that’s cool.
Why am I mentioning snow? Did it SNOW when I visited the Lake District in June? …no. I just
thought it looked nice. That’s all. If you don’t care then we’ll get back onto relevant examples.
What does water look like? No, seriously- it has so many different forms it might not even
be on its final one just yet. …Although we’ve covered 3 already in this video.
Sometimes, real life water can look so clear that it’s surely got to be fake! Other times,
it’s as reflective as a mirror. And other times, it refuses to reflect anything at all,
much to the horror of videogames which know that, if they imitate that look,
they’ll be criticised for looking bad. Cos as everybody knows, water has reflections.
…but when the winds start blowing and the water’s surface gets choppy enough, every bit of it ends
up reflecting so many different directions that it doesn’t show any reflection at all! It’s like
the vanta-black of raytracing. So as if all the variables I’ve already had to contend with when
making these comparisons weren’t enough, Flight Simulator also lets you to turn the wind value up,
and as you do, the reflections gradually get less reflect-y until all you have are choppy waves.
…and crashed planes.
So there you have it: realistic-looking water that DOESN’T have a precise,
or pretty looking reflection. Note how real-life water retains
the colour of the sky, but not a lot else. Clearly, this water in Flight Simulator
is reflecting too much. That’s better! It still
doesn’t look quite the same as real life looks… but -well I’m going to go and say what we’re all
thinking- it looks better, doesn’t it. But you know what looks EVEN better? I
proudly present to you: Flight Simulator, if you turn the wind value up as far as it can
go. 77 m/s is 277 Kmh, or 172 Mph. Just ignore the plane stalling warnings. I’m sure that’s
irrelevant information, like that ‘check engine’ light that’s always on on my car’s dashboard.
So, what’s the Lake District like in a hurricane? First, all the trees start having a disco. Clouds
begin to race across the sky. And then the storms begin! Big, TERRIFYING clouds,
racing overhead. Lightning streaking around being all scary and stuff. Torrential
downpours blob over the landscape like dark… blobs. And it all looks really really scary.
The wind turbines love it.
We’re witnessing a category 5 hurricane where, I quote:
‘Catastrophic damage will occur: A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed,
with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate
residential areas. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.’
…but at least the clouds look nice.
You thought I was going to end the video here, didn’t you. Just with ramping up the wind,
making it all look silly and calling it a day. No. I’m beyond such cheap gimmicks.
This simulator has more significance to me than that. Look, here’s me, child Philip,
exploring the Lake District! It looks like he’s enjoying the walk but what he’s really thinking
about is how awesome it would be if computers could someday, simulate this! In real-time.
And here he is later on in the day back in the cottage playing Driver 1 on the Playstation. No
wonder he dreamed of better world simulations. One such advancement was teased back in 2007,
when Microsoft demonstrated the benefits of Flight Simulator using DirectX 10.
Look at the waves! The increased lighting contrast! The improved clouds and those
pretty looking crepusculars pusculing everywhere. An artist designed this, depicting how it COULD
look. Obviously, it didn’t. …But it might do now.
I’d love to say this was shot in the Lake District. Clearly, it wasn’t. So I took a virtual
trip to where it REALLY is, which is… somewhere in America, right near the border with Canada.
And… it’s nothing too special to look at, really,
is it. Though I can see why they didn’t feature THIS monstrosity in the original
image. There’s even an artificial line running along the water- the older flight
sim didn’t even have this problem! But we’ll do what we can to recreate this location.
If we adjust the direction of the sun… …and then, of course, add some clouds,
Up the humidity… …I mean, the reflections are a problem,
because we’ve already established that you can’t have both the reflections of mountains AND splishy
splashy wishy washy waves. So I’ll go for the choppy water and show you how it’s SUPPOSED to
look in this situation. And there we have it!
…No, I’m not that impressed either. So either this shot shows Flight Simulator X at its best,
or this one shows Flight Simulator 2020 at its worst… or the artist was just full of bullshit!
Maybe all 3. And to add to injury, this is a place that Google has 3D-scanned- which
IMMENSELY increases the detail on the mountains- making Grinnell point less like a point and more
like the proper, jagged mountain that it is. It looks so different it’s difficult to believe
it’s the same place as is in Flight Simulator- evidently, there’s still a long way to go before
this program looks truly photorealistic. Now, there ARE ways of importing Google’s
3D scanned data into Flight Simulator. But… maybe I’ll do that another time. This video was intended
be a simple little comparison video but it’s already bloated into a week-long megaproject.
So I’ll cheap out here, turn on the storm clouds, ramp up the wind and call it a day, and hopefully
some awesome rain-man weatherman with a beast PC can carry on from where I’ve left off.
I was caught staring into space the other day. What I was actually doing was figuring out the
height of the clouds were so I could recreate them in Flight Simulator later on. But I was in company
I’d rather not confess these things to, so I’ll just confess them to you instead. Is it sad that
I obsess about virtual worlds so much, when we’ve got a perfectly good real one sitting just outside
our windows? Sometimes, even I feel guilty for doing it. But I think I gain more appreciation for
both when I take the time to experiment with one, and to draw parallels between the two. So thank
you, Flight Simulator, for giving me more fun with your clouds than I ever thought was possible.
So here we are, at the top of Helvellyn, and over there…
is Fairfield! And that’s an important one, ‘cos the next one along, the smaller looking one,
is Great Rigg, which is the same height as the tallest mountain in Skyrim!
This one’s better.