G'th

Yes and Yes

Alrighty folks, some hella progress. No updates on the dynamic clouds today as I needed a fully clouded Earth to work on stuff, but this will give an idea. Oh, and we also have some much better City Lights and new Earth Textures. While the land may not seem all that different, it is much more consistent in quality and responds much better to saturation effects from Scatterer and TUFX. The TUFX profile is also going to be a perpetual pain in the ass to tweak, as I'm trying to nail down a consistent quality, so as per usual don't expect it to be final. AND, we also have some daytime textures for Cities, which you can see occasionally in the other shots, but here's some more dedicated shots of them:

Hour and a half to go until Im off work, and then gird your loins folks. My weekend plans are to steamroll Earth to a more or less final state, as I'm pretty much done experimenting.

I second this recommendation.

Just B9 Procedural Wings for the Orbiter. Basically to get a nice clean bend you build a wing with the flat end as wide as the final stabilizer, and then make like, 5-6 wings on that end that are all flat. Then just gradually rotate each one in sequence by 5 degrees until you get the angle you want, then extrude the last one out to make the stabilizer and add your control surface. Clip the wing bits into each other to get rid of the gaps and there you go. You can see them in this pic if you zoom in on the bend. When viewed from directly above the bend looks janky but most other angles its super clean, and even cleaner if you opt to go Cormorant rather than SOCK, simply because then you can build the whole wing out of B9. For the LRBs it uses the Cormorant tanks (which I adjusted to have like, doubleish fuel for use in KSRSS. I cant remember what the final ratio was as I just kept adding more until it had the right performance) and decouplers. The nose is the LDC nosecone from BDB with the, IIRC, Photon SRB nosecone clipped into it. LRB Engines are just more vectors tweakscaled to ~1m. And then the tank is just a simple invert of the white texture from Redirect.

You know whats great about that link? It made me realize theres no reason clouds can't run opposite one another. Indeed. With old scatterer atmos were generally defined by what it calls config points, which basically adjusts the atmosphere at certain altitudes, and because of how old scatterer worked, I think a lot of configs are overcompensating for something that isn't much of a factor anymore. But using those same points is how I could get the atmo to be consistently realistic looking despite the planet not being in the right scale. Right now I have it set up at four points from sea level up to 7500km, and it looks best at higher altitudes where I have it set to more or less match real life. Its just the low orbit altitudes that I still need to tweak in tandem with cloud height to get it right.

Oh they absolutely can and thats going to be something I'll be working on. Won't be exactly as perfect as IRL as theres only so much to be done at 2.5x scale, but there is room for improvement for sure.

Much progress, very wow If you can't tell, we're also seeing the TUFX profile that goes with this coming along.

Here's my (literal) first attempt at dynamic Earth clouds, and despite the texture actually being distorted they came out, uh, well take a look. And the dynamics are working as expected, so its basically all just a matter of getting the visuals tidy (and finding a realistic speed for which the clouds to change as they traverse the world):

Yep something with stock got borked. replacing it with a clean install fixed it.

Hmm, somethings broken then. I'll play around and see if I can figure it.

A bit, sure, but I also feel that for a Canadian shuttle Rogers is probably the best name you could lend to one given what he often sang about. Plus, Rogers didn't really die in an airline accident per say, seeing as the plane wasn't in the air and he braved going back into the fire to save people, so I think the circumstances make for less of a grim irony.

Query, is the Mercury pod not supposed to have a working IVA atm or did I break something?

Neat!

Blackrack - Am I correct in interpreting that with the latest Scatterer that the half files aren't necessary anymore?

Theres a trick to this, I think. Maintex from what Ive seen tends to not benefit as much from higher resolution textures as detail does, unless the specific content (ie, clouds) also must be as detailed as the texture texturing it. A flat circle isn't going to really change whether its 1k or 16k, and thats what most cloud shapes on a map tend to be. Unless you have really high quality captures that actually picks up real cloud textures without washing out to pure white, then using higher resolution maintexs I think should only be necessary to the point that the shapes involved are being conveyed appropriately. A complex shape, like a typhoon, shouldn't be blown up or distorted, and pinning down the minimum resolution needed is where you can buy back some performance with no clarity loss. I especially think this is the case because even in those cases where quality may drop, it might prove beneficial simply for naturally smoothing out the transitions. Ie, instead of the typhoon just abrubtly cutting off, it somewhat smoothly fades out along the blurrier, lower resolution edges of the maintex. But thats just for dynamics. For gas giant bands, which don't really fade like this, I question whether the maintex bands are genuinely benefitting from the higher resolution if you're also using a detail texture to overlay it. Something complex like the Great Red Spot you'd probably want to have both, but a basic cloud band, probably doesn't need that complex of a base shape if its detail texture ends up doing more of the work at getting it to look good. While I get how the RGBA cubemaps work and how to make them, are they really saving on the memory footprint? Ie, is the total memory cost dropping by using this or is it still the same? Because if it does happen to drop, then yeah, that would be brilliant for what would basically be lossless compression, but if it stays the same then I don't see much use in it for what I'm going to do. Like I talk about above, I'm thinking not every texture is going to actually have to be at 16k or whatever texture size. Yeah itd have to be at a scale of 1. Going above 1 shrinks the texture and dramatically speeds up the rate at which it fades in and out which can't really be compensated for by detailspeed. And, as Im sure you've probably tried at least once, less than one is basically just broken and shouldn't even be a valid input lol.

Yes, it absolutely would kill seams as a problem. Seams with cubemaps aren't terribly hard to deal with, with the simplest solutions imply being that each face of the cube just doesn't have anything that goes towards the edge, which is probably what I would have went for if I what I want to do instead wasn't an option, but they are still a pain and exceptionally small ones are easy to miss and even harder to track down. But with this method, each cloud pattern would be inclusive to the textures edges, making it impossible for seams to occur. (unless they're already was seams in my source map, but from what I've seen that shouldn't be the case)

Only took 6 years lmao

I could, though to be perfectly honest I doubt I'd be much help. These were made a long time ago and its just been too long since I last did them to really know the ins and outs of what may have broken and how it might be fixed. From what I do remember, most of what went into making the retro CRTs was in getting the MAS displays (OR RPM, I can't remember. Might be worth checking if those CRTs are actually looking for RPM) to display on them in a useful way, so if the MAS update MoarDV did fundamentally changed how the CRTs display what MAS or RPM are generating, then it would require knowing what changed to fix them. If I cared to I'd probably give it a go, but to be honest I don't at the moment. If I were to come back to this it would probably be to adapt the idea to SOCK rather than Cormorant/Stock, and thats its own bag of worms that already has a few people trying from what I know. However, if you, or anyone else, wants to adopt the mod due to my disinterest, you have my blessing.

So I feel considerably better now, particularly after getting inspired by certain things, so we're back on. But with that, I want to get some feedback on what Im going to be doing. Now, the main idea that inspired the mod was to eventually culminate in my vision for a dynamic Jupiter that recreates, to what extent EVE and Scatterer allows, how the real Jupiter looks and behaves, as seen in the video and pictures linked a few posts ago. And Im pretty confident in my ability to do this efficiently. Unlike conventional cloud packs, that use a single texture to depict the entire atmosphere and cloud bands, my method would involve using a number of textures, dedicated to each individual element that run independently from one another. While that sounds like a lot, nature is on our side given that much of Jupiter, and the other giants that are done in the same way, often have densely repeated features. One set of cloud band textures (there would be two for each element) could easily cover almost every band in Jupiter, with EVE settings enabling the necessary variations in those bands. The ones not repeated meanwhile, would only represent just the additional sets added, like the Red Spot or the polar hexagonal storms. So while a planet like Jupiter could nominally have, lets say, 20 individual elements, the number of textures required is may be half of that, if not less. So more than the typical method, but thats the trade off for the dynamics that I'm shooting for. Now, I explained all that to contexualize what Im actually asking for feedback on: Extending this concept to Earth, Mars, Venus, and Titan. Obviously my efforts thus far have been on Earth, and through my experimenting and tweaking something Im fundamentally taking issue with is the clarity and consistency of the clouds. While my source map for the Earth clouds hits these marks adequately, when scaled down, the consistency drops dramatically with some parts looking fantastic while others are rather disappointing. Ive noted before that I dont want to go nuts with 64k textures and all that other stuff that has to sacrifice gameplay fidelity to accomplish, and given I can't even process textures that big anyway, the solution for me is, as said, in using the same method Im intending for the gas giants to govern the other cloudy worlds. How it would work, to use Earth as an example, is more or less similarly to how the typhoon does. Cloud patterns will be isolated into smaller individual textures and will populate the body, and will fade in and out and change shapes as they cross the world. The benefits are rather obvious even beyond the dynamic clouds. Each individual cloud pattern (which could be one giant system, individual spurts, or some mix) would be easier to control for both clarity and consistency, and in turn it allows for me as the modder to actually make use of the source texture I have that my computer just simply refuses to break down, which is understandable and I don't blame it, shes trying her best. And naturally, having clouds that are no longer static and fixed across the entire world meets a personal want for me, as while I enjoy the first time seeing a specifically nice section of clouds, I kind of don't like it when Ive seen the exact same thing for the 193785th time. The cons, though, are that each texture level (from 2k to 16k) will be progressively more punishing to a users memory requirements beyond that of cloud packs of a similar resolution. My philosophy is is that I don't like single serving visuals that only function in one specific scene in the game. This is why I'm not a fan of hyper exposed nonsense that are so common with TUFX profiles, and why when I did Ad Astra that getting good looking volumetrics (within reasonable performance) was so important, because the transition from launchpad, to flight, to orbit, to deep space for me all too often loses a lot of consistency, even if in a few places it looks really really good. Thats why when I post screenshots I try to pick ones from a variety of orbits and situations, as that reflects what Im trying to synchronize and going for in general. So with all that said, does this sound like the right direction? I dont actually need reassurance per say, as I'm not the self-doubting type even in the throes of depression and toxicity induced defeatism, but even so, I think Id like to just hear some opinions. While it would be a heavier memory footprint, the alternatives just don't sit right. Higher res maps are difficult to work with, static, and ultimately the variation tools just don't work as well on global maps as they do on smaller ones without distorting them in unpleasant ways, nullifying the point of higher res. And plus, as part of what inspired me today, I believe I have a good method to enable something that the above technically loses me out on. Dynamic clouds in EVE all revolve around the detail texture setting, which basically takes a second texture and overlays it on top of the main texture, literally texturing the first one. This has the benefit of making clouds appear to have more depth to them, and is half of what makes the clouds as they are now look like they do. But, to do dynamics, you lose this. However, I've found that this doesn't necessarily mean you lose the depth, and the typhoon is an example of that. The detail texture for it is essentially just the exact same texture, but what makes it look good even while next to the other clouds is the quality of the texture itself. It isn't flat and while I still think I could do with a second pass at isolating it, the textures own quality shines through. So, taking that knowledge, I think we can get the best of both worlds if I front load the texturing that EVE does on the fly into the detail texture itself, allowing for much of the same visual effect, but while also still allowing for dynamic clouds. I don't know what all EVE does as part of detail textures work, but if it works as a relatively simple overlay then if anything I should actually be able to get even better quality out of it, just because I can leverage gimp to do a more comprehensive job at it, and directly touch up where it falls short. But anyways, thats my long rant. Let me know what you think, and I appreciate the words of encouragement from you all. It was definitely needed and I have since all but abandoned discord, and I'll just have to deal if any more garbage tries to filter through Reddit.

I can deal with petty toxic dumbasses trashing my mod, thats whatever. What I can't deal with is random ass users on reddit and discord accosting me about being a thief over excrements that happened three years ago, that I myself not only completely forgot even happened, but had also thought to be a relatively private incident. It was over two textures, one of which was a complete accident and the other which I had no reason to suspect violated anything given what I was doing with it, and both were rectified within an hour of a moderator here messaging me about it. So the fact that more than a few people even know about this at all tells me certain people have been saying a lot of nasty and unfair excrements about me in my absence, and as a result Im being harrassed, which after everything Ive been through Im just finding difficult to handle. I left discords of very popular modders over excrements like this and I had hoped a couple years to grow up would have cleared this but I guess not. Like I said, this may or may not continue. We will see.

Welp, I've had pretty much all motivation to do anything for this community completely killed. This may or may not continue idk. I can't deal with the toxicity and I can't motivate myself past it at this point. Sorry for wasting everyones time..

See that cockpit was what was throwing me off, as I could tell it was clipped in but I had no idea what mod it was from. And given how incredibly clean the entire thing is I was doubting if it wasn't a fully bespoke mod rather than a kitbash. Impressive stuff for sure.

What did you make this Orbiter out of? I think I can tell how some stuff was done, but there again if this is a straight up mod I'd love to know what its name is lmao.