papics

Ok, here is a comparison between old and new method and a few shots with the new method. Let me know if the general consensus is really towards the new. It is clearly much whiter and less grey, but with more cloud transparency over land for the not totally white clouds. Night-launches (too) are much cooler with clouds

Aw, crap, now I tried this, and it gives way better results, how did I not think about this before??? I will redo it like this... (Thanks for the suggestion!) Ps.: rbray89, sorry for taking over this thread for the weekend

Hmmm, I see the issue. Although I like the clouds as they are now, I will try the other method to create them (alpha on white), and if that works out then I will share that version too. I will keep you posted. (But give me some playtime too, so not tonight anymore )

Actually, after experimenting with how to get the best results, I did it in a completely different way. There is no alpha channel here, because all my versions with alpha gave too little cloud volume - clouds were too transparent. In real life, most of the clouds (with the exception of thin cirrus clouds) from orbit are not transparent at all, they are either there, or they are not. Even denser cirrus clouds might seem fully opaque because of the high intensity difference in the reflected sunlight and the reflected and scattered light from below the layer. Also, low level clouds might seem more grey (or bluish/yellowish) because of the smog/dust layer they are in. So for this release, I did it by just cutting away everything below a given black (grey) level (thus those areas have a 100% transparency, while the rest 0%), then rescaled the rest to be a bit lighter. (Plus some editing here and there.) This preserves much more detail and volume. The more grey areas (usually along the cloud edges) provide depth (height) to the clouds. What you see in the images is that the colour of the lover cloud layer in the config file is not white, but around r,g,b=0.9, if you do not like that, you can change it to r,g,b=1, then that layer will also be brighter, but in game, I really think it gives a nice depth (low/high level clouds - although I know morphologically both layers - layer 2 is just a 180 degree rotated version of layer 1 - contain both cloud types here) to the layers. So it is all about personal preference. I do not like transparency in Kerbin clouds, since also images of Earth show mostly non transparent cloud structures.

"Alt+n" in-game

If you just leave the original config file and copy the provided next to it (without any name changes), then KSP will load the custom one, but you will still be able to load back the default in the GUI of the Clouds and City Lights mod. But both ways you get it working

8k NASA Blue Marble clouds for Kerbin Ok, I put a (not so) small package of the 8k Clouds together, you can get it at: http://papics.eu/8k_NASA_Clouds_Kerbin.zip I did not really manage to convert the .png files to .tga (if I do it with photoshop, the files do not load into KSP for some reason...), so if someone feels the need, and it would really make things better, please do (and let me know how I should have done it on a Mac with photoshop or without ). In the package there is also a custom config file with tweaked cloud rotation rates and some small colour changes, which I strongly suggest to use. Read the included Readme.txt for more info. Have fun, and if your KSP crashes because of this, it is not my fault. But since I managed to run it on my MacBook Air, I guess things should be all fine Ps.: If Kerbin is "too cloudy" for you like this, just disable Layer2 on Kerbin

Just a little bit more time, I am doing some tweaks here and there

It is 50 MB more (right now) than the standard Kerbin clouds from the http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55905-0-22-Release-5-3-Visual-Enhancements-Clouds-City-Lights, so yeah, not too light, but pretty I will share it after I am back from work in that thread.

NathanKell: Give me ~8 more hours so I get back from work, then I will make it available!

Ok, I managed to make my 8k cloud maps, and they look awesome even from a 100x100km orbit Also, from the ground it is also a bit more busy now Such a shame it is 4AM now... :S A few pics below, sorry for not putting them in a gallery...

Ok, I managed to make my 8k cloud maps, and they look awesome even from a 100x100km orbit The only thing which bugs me is that the clouds do not block the city lights on the dark side (is that possible to implement somehow?), and I get this strange thing that in the map view they do block the orbits sometimes... Also, from the ground it is also a bit more busy now Such a shame it is 4AM now... :S A few pics below, sorry for not putting them in a gallery...

Thanks, I will try it

Hi, I really like the plugin, with some tweaking (like putting the night side cloud brightness from above to 0) and a proper skybox (I am an astronomer, and I say this is the most realistic: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/44135-0-22-Universe-Replacer-v4-0/page28?p=574333&viewfull=1#post574333), it really gives a nice look to the Universe. However, would it be possible to use a higher resolution cloud layers for Kerbin? Currently it is a 2k X 1k texture, but I was wondering if I could implement a 2x or 4x higher resolution map myself, so Kerbin looks nice even from an LKO trajectory. Could you tell me if 1) this is technically possible, and 2) what exactly is the format of the cloud maps (starting from a BW image like http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=57747) if I wanted to do the work in Photoshop myself. Thanks, and keep up the nice work!

I needed something new in my life, so I started using mods. Mostly visual changes, and lots of new rocket parts, but no autopilot or such I like how my space looks and feels now. Went to Duna and Mun in the past days (and also returned, needless to say), all routine jobs, but I like to do it.

Beautifully executed Apollo style mission, on low Mun orbit I noticed that I put the lander legs upside down... Still landed without using them

Did a 3 Kermanned, Apollo-inspired mission to the Mun with "similar" staging and a buggy! Visited a nearby crater and the first probe I had sent to the Mun some time ago which was only a kilometre away from the landing site. Then put the whole story together and posted it as a kind of review on my blog http://papics.eu/?p=2993 It was fun!

Reading these will help very quickly: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:Advanced_Rocket_Design http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Cheat_Sheet http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28352 Have fun

After a few interplanetary probes, now I am back to business with the Kerbals. Started building my KSS (first station was deorbited already a long time ago), which will be nice and symmetric, and serve as a refuelling station for interplanetary Kermanned missions of the future. 3 launches and 2 dockings later the core is ready and Jeb is happy I was also fed up with putting so much garbage at 100x100 km, so put the station at 125x125 (126.5x126.5), and also implemented a deorbiter phase on top of the last stage to avoid too much space junk near the orbit (see first pic with junk deorbiting and solar panel stage going for an encounter with KSS). Also, although I like to keep it stock, I started using Navyfish's docking mod, because it is impossible to get perfect angles without (and I like my solar panels in line). I will probably work on this station this week.

Damn it again... Everything went fine with my Jool system explorer Hermes 2 mission (Hermes 1 crashed into Laythe a few days ago), nicely passed (gravity assisted) by the two outer large moons before getting onto the final approach towards Laythe, but apparently my approach trajectory was too close, and my ion engine was not powerful enough to make the necessary correction by the time I figured out there was a problem... Hermes 2 consisted of an orbiter (which was supposed to travel further around the Jool system with plenty of fuel to visit all moons) and a small Laythe lander part, so at the end I tried saving the lander... Unluckily I could not avoid atmospheric entry, so while the lander survived and nicely descended using the main parachute with 5 m/s, since I had no control on the landing area, I splashed down into water :S The instruments survived, and the lander is still floating on the sea, I can not really put this as a lander into my logbook... Maybe next time.

Keep in mind, that out of those moons of Jupiter, only a handful have size large enough to actually land on it. After the four Galilean moons, the four inner moons are <5% in radius compared to the largest four, and the rest are only a few kilometres in diameter, thus the Galilean moons easily have more than 99.99% of the satellite system's total mass. This also means, that the smaller 55 is useless in terms of gravity manoeuvres. But maybe after they figure out how to implement asteroids, they can throw a few around Jool too, just for the cosmetics.

It would be great, and possibly not too difficult to implement, to have the shadow of different moons show up on their host planets if the planetary alignment is appropriate, just like it happens in real life at many places of the Solar system. This is the most interesting on Jupiter, and could be similarly nice on Jool!

"Jeb" must have been messing around with the design of my Hermes-1 probe to the Jool system, since upon arrival it turned out, that the capacity of the Solar panels is way lower than what is necessary to continuously operate the ion engine... Anyway, with 5 sec burns and half minute charging times I managed to get a gravity assist from Tylo and get on orbit around Jool, then after some aerobraking get on a trajectory towards Laythe, establish a stable orbit around, and then try to get on a nice low orbit with some aerobraking... Unluckily while my main panels were folded away for safety I managed to rotate into such an unlucky position that after the first pass through the atmosphere I did not get any Sunlight anymore (since I could not even rotate without any current), which of course resulted in a few more passes through the atmosphere, then a crash landing into the ocean :S Now it is almost 4AM here, so... next time: larger Solar panels, and better coverage of small panels/more batteries!

One of my favourite features is how differently some Kerbals react during flight Makes me feel much more connected to them

Awesome feature! THX!