Attached Link: http://www.hifisim.com/activesky5.htm

Yes, I think so too. I did a whole series of threads about a year ago on clouds- as some people here may remember... The main point -is/was- that the VAST MAJORITY of all these great looking clouds In Terragen 2 and MojoWorld are PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE-  work done by Universities that have researched clouds, cloud physics, atmospheres, etc!

A lot of other scientific data has been published by a number of U.S. Govt agencies- like NASA, NOAA, etc.-- weather models, cloud physics, etc.- it's ALL PUBLIC INFO!

Fans of Microsoft Flight Simulator and some of the really very REALISTIC MS Flight Sim Add-ons know that all sorts of complex, multi-layer clouds can be generated in MS Flight Simulator using CONSTANT and REAL TIME weather data fed into the software over an internet link. The data is supplied by the US Weather Service for FREE!... and in MS Flight Sim these highly complex conditions (including hurricanes) can be rendered at 30 Frames Per Second - Real Time- in MS Flight Simulator- as you fly through the clouds- at whatever level you choose! And you can add in your choices of atmospheric sunrises, sunsets, seasonal conditions, etc. etc...

So- getting great looking clouds is really a matter of people sitting down and doing the software coding. Matt Fairclough and Dmytry Lavrov have proven that basically a single smart individual can use this public data and program some extremely REAL looking atmospheres and clouds...

And this is why COMPETITION is good- because E-on wouldn't be making their own clouds a lot better if it wasn't for these other guys already showing how really GREAT it can look, heh!

What E-on should HOPEFULLY bring to the table is a new software version that allows creation of beautiful atmospheres and cloud-scapes without excessive GEEKY interfaces. This IS something that E-on is good at doing- so their REAL GIMMICK - which may be revealed soon- is not about making really impressive clouds- but about making Really Impressive Clouds that the average person can Understand How To Make... Like HiFi Sim's Active Sky...