rbray89

Alpha 6 is available... Should add light detail and help the cloud weirdness at lower altitudes.

It is actually just the same texture with a tiled detail applied on the bottom. If the detail is applied to the top, it looks horrible and can be spotted too easily. you can see this by going into map view and view the clouds from within the planet.

Aww... Shucks... well hold onto your hats, cause I think I have another set of slight improvements coming.

From 100 KM, it's much less noticeable. Barely visible. And from 150 KM, I'm not seeing it at all. So, for a short period on ascent, the horizon looks odd, but other than that, this version is looking nice. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to cull a surface once outside it... apparently more difficult then one might think.

Haha, yeah... one idea I was toying around with was to essentially simulate a planetary weather system (wind, precipitation, cloud generation, light+albedo = heat, etc) but then that might be out of scope...

Are there any features not mentioned on the initial post that would be desired?

Yeah, it is often a trick used for rim lighting. I could probably pull something like that off later

I think I fixed it. I figured out how to calculate the vertex normals relative to camera position, and I use the dot product to fade the edges out. I will eventually expose the values through the config. I also was able to fix the diamonds in the sky and add a detail texture to the underside to make the clouds look more like clouds.

It also gives you an appreciation of how thick the Evian atmosphere is. OOOOH! Beautiful! I "figured out" the issue behind the sky diamonds, but I still want to try and make the edges less sharp.

hmmm... the cloud layer certainly seems better from the orbit view at those values, though it doesn't look as nice on ground. Mostly due to the resolution of the textures I'm afraid... Though that won't matter as much if I get the particle system in unity working to produce some nice volumetric cloud.

If you look just around the planet, you can see a darker band, with the clouds visible within it. It is most obvious where it crosses the brighter "galactic plane" area. Hmm... Ok, thanks. I'll look into how to fix it. On the otherhand, shouldn't there be some sort of atmosphere? Would it help if the clouds were lower? I don't like that as much as they would be too close to the ground.

Haha, yup. The radius can be altered to move them to any altitude. And thanks!

Can you post a picture outlining what it is you don't like? I think I know what you are talking about, and I am still toying with shaders to get everything to look as nice as I can.

Eventually there will be volumetric clouds that you will be able to fly through. Now that I have started working on this, I am thinking that I may want to add wind/rain/fog/ etc as weather patterns. But don't hold me to it.

Weird... I'll have to dig into this one.

Check it out... you will have to let me know what you think.

Yeah, and unfortunately there isn't much of a way around it. I will be working on having it appear in higher altitude, and having higher resolution lighting before, so it will look like you are actually flying above a city. Right now, I'm trying to get clouds to work "right" when on the ground viewing up.

*FEW*. I was worried I would have to put out a new emergency release. Juggling work/life/hobbies can be difficult sometimes.

Hmm.... It would be less of an animation, and more of texture replacement every minute or so... Neat idea, but I would hate to be dependent on an internet connection to a site somewhere. I'm working on making the cloud cover more realistic.

Nice. :-) attribute?

There should be lights on the "night side" of kerbin... You have to be at least 75km up or in map view to see it.

Yup. Should be really simple.

True, only one (Laythe?) will need a moon. As for memory, It shouldn't end up being too bad. I should be able to re-use some textures (at least the blending textures) and I think I found the cause of the blurry-close textures which I should be able to correct.

I'm running some tests with Jool, but all the plannets (except likely Moho) and even some moons will get clouds.

Haha, thanks! Never let anyone tell you something isn't possible when programming is involved. It might cost more money, perform poorly, or take forever to implement, but it is possible. It can be Fast, Good, or Cheap. Pick two