The best rain in a game?

[Cooper42]

It occured to me that to get the proper British countryside feeling right, Sir, You Are Being Hunted is gonna have to get rain right.

Few games do this. Even the XRay engine for Stalker had pretty crap rain...

The only game that comes straight to mind is Morrowind. Something about the audio for the rain and the fog effects along the Balmora coast that got it really right. There was something about that kind of dull, gently oppressive rain along that coast was really evocative.

Any other suggestions of games that have done rain well?

[rossignol]

Yeah, there is seldom rain done right. Arma II does okay, I suppose.

[shrewdlogarithm]

Problem here is that when games do 'rain' - they tend to do the sort of rain you see in movies, which invariably means storm rain or monsoon rain and the UK doesn't get that (well - apart from this week, perhaps!!).

UK rain is drizzle with the odd downpour - you can't actually see the raindrops, for the most part, it's like a light fog at worst. When we look out of the window to see if it's still raining, we look to see if water is hitting the puddles or the cars have their windscreen wipers on - it's really a feeling of dankness, a sheen on other objects and not the silly 'hailstorms' games tend to portray it as.

and the sky - grey, dull, flat...

So, UK rain = drizzle and mist and reduced view distance and shiny surfaces (you're groaning at the thought of that, I know) - oh and the things you REALLY can't in a game such as that feeling of water creeping down your neck or dripping from your hairline

And one MAJOR thing - do NOT put raindrops on the screen because that doesn't happen to people's eyes and is THE most annoying thing in any game which features rain (unless the game is purposely selling itself as a 'TV Camera view' perhaps).

[Phil_XG]

Rain is indeed very tricky to get right. I did like what they did in Stalker with normal/displacement movement so you could see it running down surfaces and splashing on the ground, but what shrewdlogarithm is spot on, most games go for the full on down poor style - I can't think of a game that has done drizzly rain well, in fact I'm not sure I can think of one that has even tried it!

This could be your chance for a 'bullet-point-worthy' feature Jim! :P

And one MAJOR thing - do NOT put raindrops on the screen because that doesn't happen to people's eyes and is THE most annoying thing in any game which features rain (unless the game is purposely selling itself as a 'TV Camera view' perhaps).

As a wearer of glasses, I have to refute this claim - it does happen and it happens a lot

[rossignol]

Still haven't found a really good rain, after some searching. I suspect Arma 2's atmospherics get it closest for overall fogging/downpour for it to be English.

[tomnullpointer]

Personally I reckon Red Dead Redemption has pretty nice weather, iirc it has some quite subtle rain effects too.

[Cooper42]

The very early part of Silent Hill 2 does fog surprisingly well. They manage to hide "fog because we couldn't get the playstatin 2 to render very far" as quite well done "fog because it fits the atmosphere of the game".

[YourMessageHere]

I quite like the Saints Row the Third rain. The sound of rain hitting metal when you're in a vehicle is a big part of it, and I think sound is a big part of the success or failure of rain in games generally. I certainly enjoy being at home and listening to rain on my kitchen roof. It's never nice to be in, but rain in forests also sounds incredible.

shrewdlogarhythm: it depends where you are in Britain, though, doesn't it? The whole reason the rest of the world thinks the British are obsessed with talking about the weather is the sheer variety, unpredictability and changeability of weather that we experience all year round. British people often don't realise that weather can be really predictable in other parts of the world. My wife's from China, and in her home city they can basically predict what the weather is going to be like for any given week of the year with near-perfect accuracy. She's been in the UK for ten years and still finds the changeable weather difficult to deal with, even though it's never as cold or as hot here as it gets in China.

I live in Newcastle, and before that I lived out in Northumberland. Northumbrian rain can be pretty damn heavy. It's less severe here in town, but can still be a lot more than what I'd call drizzle. And of course, there's the odd super-cell storm...that was fun to watch. Not so fun when I got to work the next day and found two of my colleagues had their houses flooded to waist level. It's probably impossible to do, but some sort of super-rare condition for SYABH where it rains constantly and starts to flood villages would be really good.

[Novel]

I quite like the Saints Row the Third rain. The sound of rain hitting metal when you're in a vehicle is a big part of it, and I think sound is a big part of the success or failure of rain in games generally. I certainly enjoy being at home and listening to rain on my kitchen roof. It's never nice to be in, but rain in forests also sounds incredible.

shrewdlogarhythm: it depends where you are in Britain, though, doesn't it? The whole reason the rest of the world thinks the British are obsessed with talking about the weather is the sheer variety, unpredictability and changeability of weather that we experience all year round. British people often don't realise that weather can be really predictable in other parts of the world. My wife's from China, and in her home city they can basically predict what the weather is going to be like for any given week of the year with near-perfect accuracy. She's been in the UK for ten years and still finds the changeable weather difficult to deal with, even though it's never as cold or as hot here as it gets in China.

I live in Newcastle, and before that I lived out in Northumberland. Northumbrian rain can be pretty damn heavy. It's less severe here in town, but can still be a lot more than what I'd call drizzle. And of course, there's the odd super-cell storm...that was fun to watch. Not so fun when I got to work the next day and found two of my colleagues had their houses flooded to waist level. It's probably impossible to do, but some sort of super-rare condition for SYABH where it rains constantly and starts to flood villages would be really good.

Seconded you wise man. Put in all the British natural turmoil! After all, the island may have been flooded .

[brkl]

I can still see through my glasses pretty well even when they are speckled with droplets. The droplets are so far from where my eyes are focused that they are only a blur. Actual sharply drawn droplets don't even happen when taking photos. Only when driving a car, really.