Clouds in stock KSP

[Castille7]

When I first started playing KSP I wanted to see thunderstorms in the distance and maybe a passing comet in the sky. Water effects and a flag flying is really nice but I am with you I would like to see some more action in the game. Even a tumble weed would be really cool to see once in a while.

Edited April 24, 2016 by castille7

[Deizelpunk]

4 hours ago, castille7 said:

When I first started playing KSP I wanted to see thunderstorms in the distance and maybe a passing comet in the sky. Water effects and a flag flying is really nice but I am with you I would like to see some more action in the game. Even a tumble weed would be really cool to see once in a while.

Hell yeah! I could totally see tumbleweeds! (one on duna would be funny as heck!)

[Vanamonde]

Weather suggestion threads have been merged. 

[Windspren]

This would be great, especially with lightning and auroras. To the people saying that this would affect performance a lot, I have an 8 year old laptop that I occasionally use for KSP, and with EVE with AVP Interstellar and 24 other mods, I get about the same FPS as without EVE.

[John FX]

One thing is though, some form of radar scanning would also need to be implemented so that on the planet Eve for example, I would imagine the clouds would be so thick you could not see the ground so you would need radar to know whether you would land on land or in explodium.

[pandaman]

19 minutes ago, John FX said:

One thing is though, some form of radar scanning would also need to be implemented so that on the planet Eve for example, I would imagine the clouds would be so thick you could not see the ground so you would need radar to know whether you would land on land or in explodium.

Yes, with EVE installed Eve looks like a ball of lilac clouds.  I haven't tried it yet, but I think you could use the orbital and narrow band scanners to highlight areas of dry land as there isn't any ore in the oceans.

[John FX]

1 minute ago, pandaman said:

Yes, with EVE installed Eve looks like a ball of lilac clouds.  I haven't tried it yet, but I think you could use the orbital and narrow band scanners to highlight areas of dry land as there isn't any ore in the oceans.

This would work although some form of radar would be nice with an overlay like the one you get with Scansat.

[pandaman]

8 minutes ago, John FX said:

This would work although some form of radar would be nice with an overlay like the one you get with Scansat.

Yes, I agree with that, a stock scansat equivalent would be nice.

I hope, at some point that the seabeds get a few more features to explore, and ore as well, and if that happens then my above idea won't work anymore. 

[Deizelpunk]

Oh yeah! Stock submarine things would be super nice, like a fillable ballast tank! (maybe even on eve you could use the ballast tanks to make a sort of airship!)

[JedTech]

On 1/7/2016 at 6:57 AM, sal_vager said:

As long as they don't affect performance much that is.

^This

Clouds and Weather conditions are bells and whistles. Please don't let them get in the way of me flying my rockets.

[Deizelpunk]

1 minute ago, JedTech said:

^This

Clouds and Weather conditions are bells and whistles. Please don't let them get in the way of me flying my rockets.

Just have it be an option, pretty simple fix really...

[JedTech]

1 hour ago, Deizelpunk said:

Just have it be an option, pretty simple fix really...

Not necessarily. It it takes months or years to work on, then it will most certainly take the developers away from making my rockets cooler. I would prefer that they put in something simple and leave it open to modders to do the fancy stuff.

[Deizelpunk]

39 minutes ago, JedTech said:

Not necessarily. It it takes months or years to work on, then it will most certainly take the developers away from making my rockets cooler. I would prefer that they put in something simple and leave it open to modders to do the fancy stuff.

90% of the work is done and a button to toggle it on and off does NOT take years to code...

[Grumman]

5 minutes ago, JedTech said:

Not necessarily. It it takes months or years to work on, then it will most certainly take the developers away from making my rockets cooler. I would prefer that they put in something simple and leave it open to modders to do the fancy stuff.

It would not take months to implement wind. The game already uses a variable frame of reference to prevent kraken attacks on fast-moving craft, so now you'd use -(velocity_x,velocity_y,velocity_z) + (wind_x,wind_y,wind_z) instead of -(velocity_x,velocity_y,velocity_z) to calculate aerodynamic effects.

The wind velocity vector for an Earthlike Kerbin would be something like:

Westerly component = -cos(2.5*latitude) + random component
Southerly component = -sin(3*latitude)*cos(pi*altitude/max altitude) + random component
Updraft component = cos(3*latitude) + biome modifier + random component

[Dire_Squid]

Hmmmm... Clouds? Yeah.

Weather? Maybe NOT!

I mean if Squad were to implement storms and weather that genuinely affected your crafts, that would make flying to, say, Eve (which I'm sure we here all know is analogous for Venus), even less likely than currently desired (and few are ok with flying to Eve, as is... I'm one of those bizarre few who do like Flying to Eve).

[Knaapie]

1 hour ago, Dire_Squid said:

Hmmmm... Clouds? Yeah.

Weather? Maybe NOT!

I mean if Squad were to implement storms and weather that genuinely affected your crafts, that would make flying to, say, Eve (which I'm sure we here all know is analogous for Venus), even less likely than currently desired (and few are ok with flying to Eve, as is... I'm one of those bizarre few who do like Flying to Eve).

Wind shouldn't affect your craft too much. You basically fly in a pocket of air, so the forces on the craft would be the same as regular flying. Only the pocket of air would drift in a certain vector, not affecting the craft.

It would only become a problem when the speed of this pocket is much higher than your landing speed. I'm sure that if it were to be implemented, Squad would find a way to land your craft, perhaps decrease airspeed close to land, like irl. I don't believe it will be though. It is a bit impractical due to exactly Eve (wind topping over landed craft.. no ty), and that players would need two velocity meters: airspeed / groundspeed. It needs a lot of thinking and programming to make this work and tbh, I dont see how this added "problem" would enrich the feel of playing the game....  

Clouds however... are pretty as hell... YES !

/edit:  Perhaps not only clouds... I'd prefer to have all planets with an atmosphere to have a unique weather pattern (unaffecting the craft). Dust storms, (mini) cyclones, hurricanes, auroras, vulcanic gasses.. make it pretty !

Edited April 27, 2016 by Knaapie

[Dire_Squid]

39 minutes ago, Knaapie said:

Wind shouldn't affect your craft too much. You basically fly in a pocket of air, so the forces on the craft would be the same as regular flying. Only the pocket of air would drift in a certain vector, not affecting the craft.

It would only become a problem when the speed of this pocket is much higher than your landing speed. I'm sure that if it were to be implemented, Squad would find a way to land your craft, perhaps decrease airspeed close to land, like irl. I don't believe it will be though. It is a bit impractical due to exactly Eve (wind topping over landed craft.. no ty), and that players would need two velocity meters: airspeed / groundspeed. It needs a lot of thinking and programming to make this work and tbh, I dont see how this added "problem" would enrich the feel of playing the game....  

Clouds however... are pretty as hell... YES !

/edit:  Perhaps not only clouds... I'd prefer to have all planets with an atmosphere to have a unique weather pattern (unaffecting the craft). Dust storms, (mini) cyclones, hurricanes, auroras, vulcanic gasses.. make it pretty !

I wasn't talking about just wind on Eve. I also meant lightning (THAT was what worries me the most. Last thing a player needs is that their craft/base getting blown up, because of being struck)!

[fireblade274]

On 1/7/2016 at 8:57 AM, sal_vager said:

Clouds would be nice, probably not enough on their own though (need wind, storms etc)

This. Exactly.

[Deizelpunk]

20 hours ago, Dire_Squid said:

Hmmmm... Clouds? Yeah.

Weather? Maybe NOT!

I mean if Squad were to implement storms and weather that genuinely affected your crafts, that would make flying to, say, Eve (which I'm sure we here all know is analogous for Venus), even less likely than currently desired (and few are ok with flying to Eve, as is... I'm one of those bizarre few who do like Flying to Eve).

Good thing they have a button for all the other difficult things in the game...

[NoMrBond]

Unity released (for free) a significant atmospheric and environmental shader package for Unity 5, which includes terrain and atmospheric effects

Now KSP's camera/rendering system is also spectacularly non-standard to deal with the scales in play, but maybe they'll provide good places to start?

Edited April 27, 2016 by NoMrBond

[planet-creations]

I am starting to feel like I want a cloud option in the Debug Toolbar cheat section, so here is what it looks like if it happened; (I am using a quote cuz)

Quote

Debug Toolbar

| Cheats | Debug | Database | Progress |

[  ] Pause on vessel unpack

[  ] No Crash Damage

[  ] Infinite Fuel

[  ] Infinite RCS

[  ] Infinite EVA Fuel

[  ] Allow Part Clipping in Editors

[  ] Biomes visible in map

[  ] Atmospheric clouds

Who agrees? Tell me in the poll.

Also you could've added the biome cheat in earlier versions....nevermind

On 6/1/2016 at 5:18 PM, planet-creations said:

Can someone remove this useless quote?

 

Edited September 3, 2016 by planet-creations
Edit on one of the quotes

[Geschosskopf]

Having such an option on the Alt-F12 menu implies that the clouds are already in the game and that, for some reason, aren't ready for primetime yet.  But AFAIK, the only clouds in stock KSP are those you see out the VAB door.  So no, this won't work.  If you want clouds, use EVE.

[ZooNamedGames]

If they'd add it to the game, they'd simply make it changeable in the settings menu like ground scatter. This is the prime reason is hasn't been added yet, testing, implementing and taking the time a more beneficial feature could be added.

[qromodynmc]

I really want clouds and as far i remember squad wants to add some graphical enhancements in 1.2.

I hope they can find proper way to generate clouds because current cloud mods unnecessarily force gpus.

Edited June 2, 2016 by qromodynmc

[sal_vager]

Sneaky clouds suggestion merged with the clouds thread