In ,
"David G. Bell" wrote:

On Sunday, in article

"Mark Cherry" wrote:

So my basic point is, "who's to say what colour the sea should be?"

There's actually a relationship between sea colour and sky colour,

You'd have thought the sky would at least be the same colour everywhere,
wouldn't you? Provided it was cloudless, that is G
Then again, I wonder if the angle of the sun is a factor? Changes with
latitude, maybe?

I dunno if it's different film-stock, special filters, or a genuinely different
quality to the light but when I see film of places in the sates, the colours
always look a lot more intense than over here (UK).

which is partly why the Grey Funnel Line uses grey.

Nevererdovit. Whereabouts? Manchester ship canal? ;-)

In WW2 over the North Atlantic, the long-range anti-sub patrols used
planes painted mostly white, with only the top of the wings and
fuselage camouflaged. From a ship or a U-boat the white reflected
the sea colour and blended with the cloudy sky.

And it's not easy to see white against a clear sky.

I always thought that the upper surface camouflage was only meant to work when
the plane was parked up and thus vulnerable to air attack. Once they're
airborne, the movement will usually catch the eye anyway, whatever colour it is
and at quite a distance. I'll grant that the white underside cammo would make
the outline less well defined at a distance, due to poor colour contrast and
thus cause a crucial amount of delay in the defender identifying the type and
whether it is friend or foe.

I've never seen white paint reflect any perceptable colour other than white
before but I'll take your word for it. I was going to say that white underside
against the background of a high cloud deck would be quite effective but maybe
not.

You'd imagine a WWII U-boat crew on the surface would have *heard* the plane
coming, long before they spotted it and the general reaction was to submerge
immediately, rather than try to slug it out.

I think a big factor in sea colour is what's living in it, near the surface. In
the case of the crystal-clear waters (Caribbean, Med etc), there's next to
nothing living in the top layer. Less scattering of light and more refraction
going on. Red is absorbed more strongly too, IIRC. Out in the deeper ocean, the
surface layer is full of algae, contributing more green and blue-green shades.
The turbidity means more back-scatter, more light absorption and few refraction
effects, so less of the blue shade.

Whether they'll ever bother to put regionalized ocean colours into the sim is
barely worth much discussion now that 2004 has been released. I gather they've
just intruduced wave effects though, so they're obviously paying some attention
to the needs of those who find flying over long stretches of water a bore
(LBFOW). That leaves it down to the 3rd party scenery builders whether to tinker
around with the colour scheme.


--�
regards,

Mark