Pioneer dev forum

Cloud rendering is hard, like PhD research topic hard.

It's not even easy to do one kind of cloud :/

Links for reading:
- this ones not practical for us but it is pretty
http://reset-game.net/?p=284
- this is a collection of links and further reading
http://vterrain.org/Atmosphere/Clouds/
- Niniane Wang - Fast and efficient cloud rendering (PDF)

NB: if you do checkout my "clouds" branch (coders only) then just load up the modelviewer with "-mv wave" or something and you'll get some clouds rendered, zoom out and you'll see the ones that are billboarded, it's a straight copy of the code from the Mark Harris 2003 source code and I won't be using it, this was just for research.

I have no idea if this is of interest to you. I just noticed that there were some files "GLCloud1", "GLCloud2" etc.
https://github.com/logzero/sandbox/tree/master/

Aweful screenshot, of not a single cloud, but this is part of what the code can do apparently:
http://i.imgur.com/oD8H4lW.jpg

The Intel samples look interesting too and have GitHub sources.

I think the Intel thing is specific to their hardware... I don't know if there's much chance of translating it to work on anything else. The web page says "demonstrates high quality cloud rendering technique which uses Pixel Shader Ordering, a DirectX extension available on Intel HD graphics hardware". Still, I guess there must be useful things that can be learned from it, even if the method isn't directly usable for us.

Yeah but it runs without that at reduced quality and that's mostly the rendering side of things.
The other thing is that it appears to mostly be a method for order independent transparency and there's plenty of other options for that including just doing depth sorting.

FluffyFreak wrote:Yeah but it runs without that at reduced quality and that's mostly the rendering side of things.

Oh, ok, I didn't realise it had a fallback option.

I didn't forget, I just ran out of time/patience with this for bit :)

On my cloud-sphere branch however you can see my work-in-progress hacking based on AndyJ's description of what he's doing to FFED3DAJ's cloud rendering.

They're using a selection of static cloud textures which, in the long run, won't really fit with Pioneers procedural universe, however for testing they're interesting and useful.

This will only produce a cloud "layer" at a fixed height but it can look quite nice from space and the surface. Passing through that layer it becomes painfully obvious that it's a single polygon thick :( also watching it for any amount of time shows that it's static.

So, lots to do but it could be good.

Before:


After:

Nice!!!

Looks really impressive!

nozmajner posted this vimeo video, (with narration by Carl Sagan) on IRC the same day it came out, I think. Awesome inspiration. Checkout the 3D clouds 00:35-00:45, and see all your ambitions crushed. But maybe some day, in the distant future we'll have something like it as well. Nothing wrong with a little day dreaming.

But static 2D clouds are far better than none. I'm not sure I even remember how clouds worked in FFE.

I really hope your awesome looking clouds make it into master branch (when ready)