pingopete

I also noticed there's a seem in one part of the cloud map, not sure if it's a texture issue or just the texture tiles just aren't aligned right

KSP with BD Armory is basically ACE but you can build the planes

Screenshot album while getting the footage for the compilation video: https://imgur.com/a/Jmw2bTV

Here's a little compilation I made, stunning work again blackrack

Holy.. no way, I was literally just today realizing this could be done using a similar method to rain! Looks amazing Also got the rain shadows and mist working, just had to remove the BouldCo folder I have some screen coming soon!

Yeah I tried it at 1x and it is delicious, by my laptop 3060 wasn't too happy about it. Hopefully I'll be building a future-proof PC soon with a 3090 to start so that luxury will have to wait. Side note: Installed KSP again soley to run ray marched clouds and I forgot how CPU intensive KSP is just in general, especially with paralax and multiple parts in play (nothing to do with the clouds) but it reminded me it's time to upgrade. Also @blackrack been meaning to get back with some reports but honestly I'm still working on getting my head around how how incredible these clouds are, like it's not just the visuals, but how it changes the entire landscape being explored. It's truly stunning. I found it funny I remember thinking how amazing it would be for the in-VAB/SPH clouds to be that good in-game, now they're literally better..

Also to note: I found you can increase the upscaling on the clouds without much playability degredation but with notable increase to FPS and lower GPU demand, x16 still looks decent in my opinion.

2nd to last shot.. wow, can't wait to explore these atmospheric landscapes

Excellent, I think this is my first time seeing just the normal clouds from orbit and they look way better than I expected, I can't really see any patching/looping going on so you must have tuned the scale and noise real nice, the plumes are also great from space, especially over the horizon, one the haze gets integrated, I can't imagin how epic seeing some residual red sunlight catching the top of one will look at the terminators

Do these separate entities run at a higher size scale to the main clouds? I'm curious how these might render in scaled space if if it might be possible to scatter these like 3d anvil heads amongst the 2d clouds layer in orbit

Bro, now you're just flexing, unbelievable work here

So what if it is? He isn't bound to a contract to release this before KSP2 becomes available. I know everyone's hyped as hell for this, as am I, but let's all just remember that this is a free mod being developed by someone in their own personal time, for fun. As someone who has released mods I can say that having people expect and push for deadlines really turns the project into a job rather than a fun project, and this can put modders off working on the mod itself. Please be patient and let him work on this at his own pace when he feels like it; it's a personal project, not a job contract.

All of these make me feel like I'm accending into another plane of existence

That's great news! Glad to hear they'll still be included, cube maps are super important for RSS sized planets. Also loving what you were mentioning about how the 2d cloud maps can be used as a probability map for 'sub' cloud formation, I think this method should work much better on larger scales and give more control. Also that gif looks unbelievably good, I already thought the volumetrics looked amazing!

I guess I really only looked at DCS, MSFS and Star Citizen to be fair, but yeah MSFS just hard cuts them off before the horizon, and I guess as mentioned here Star Citizen just uses a massive noise scale. This makes sense, I guess you'd be running two cloud setups in paralel and switch between so at least double the performance cost. But I'm definitely keen to tinker around with the values once it's available! I was wondering; would these volumetrics be compatible with the older 2D cloud detail maps that include transparency that I had been using for RSS? And also with the 6x 8x8k global cloud cube maps? Jool should make a great experimentation area for larger scale and SS volumetrics for sure! Can't wait to see what you can come up with!

Ah gotcha, I spent some time looking at volumetric from orbit in other games and can see what you mean about the repetition. Probably won't be possible - but I wonder if one could gradually increase the scale you mention with distance, and how that might look? If it was possible that might allow you to have a smooth transition from high detail clouds when close to larger scale cloudlets on the horizon from orbit? Again I haven't the faintest clue how the system works under the hood so forgive my ignorance on this subject Assuming this would just be to complex or impossible to implement

Understood, yeah from my experience the switch to SS always seemed messed up visuals on most mods in one way or another. Was just imagining how incredible 3d anvil heads might look on the horizon from orbit, especially with shadows and sun light extinction. I'd be curious to see how the distance to render scales the quality of the cloudlets, I know you mentioned temporal upscaling and blurring. I'm assuming it just approximates from a larger sample of the cloud map, which I guess means the transition from 3d voluetrics to the 2d cloud layer could more or less be done by just fading our the voluemtrics into the 2d layer, I'd imagine this could probably look good especially at a distance.

Not gonna lie, as soon as this goes public I was gonna try loading it into RSS, I guess RSS is at my core and I can't help striving to pull visual mods into Earth. I had was wondering about the performance too, as typically doing this results in an equivalent performance hit, but having seen you images it looks like a ton of clouds already being rendered to beyond the horizon with great performance! Quick question: I may have seen a screen shot way back but wasn't sure if it was PQS or SS, just wondering if this method for volumetric rendering can pass over into ScaledSpace too while remaining 3d? Again, needless to say, amazing work dude

I'm loosing my mind, this is absolutely mind blowing man, like hooooolllyyyyy

So happy you have plans for rain! That's epic! Also yeah it'd be insanely computationally expensive and over complicated I think. Amazing work again, can't tell you how much I appreciate your awesome work here @blackrack

I have also been having a recurring dream where I imagine kerbal weather mod feeding into the Dev volumetric clouds creating global and dynamic clouds with wind, up drafts and storms all occuring naturally

@blackrack Bro I've been out of this game for years but just saw a Reddit post with the volumetric clouds and was thinking it had to be photoshopped, followed the links back here and my jaw is on the ground. Bravo sir, this is honestly mind blowing, Ive just been sat here waiting for ksp 2 to eventually drop not realize the pure wizardry you're doing

Hi there, if you haven't already gone ahead, you're welcome to do so! Sorry I've been very much absent from the modding game for a long time

Hi thanks, yeah i kinda gave up as there are so many features involved which have game breaking bugs without additions to the tools used to run this mod. I figured I'd wait until the next game to work on a similar mod

Bit late to the party, congrats on the release, glad to be of use