G'th

Still working on getting it right up close (and I'm really close), but I think we peaked on it looking right from afar. Pictures here with much brighter clouds to illustrate the for some reason coveted cloud glow effect that will be about this apparent up close.

That is indeed the intent yes.

Some minute improvements to City Lights. Its really not great at low orbits, so today we're gonna fix that, but it looks good from afar for now

I know I've said this before but its starting feel like I've peaked again.

Yep, the trick was hiding the land texture in the scaled space using the alpha channel. Easy enough to do, just never occurred to me to check that that was what it was doing.

Bit of a nightmare day for me when it comes to this whole modding thing, but its progress.

Query, because I am total confusion. So with Kopernicus, there's the option of using OnDemand textures, which is what gets displayed in orbital views and that makes sense to me. It follows that changing those textures results in changes in that particular scene. However, there is also the option of using VertexColorMaps, which to my understanding controls how the actual surface looks color wise, and that makes sense to me too, especially with the Blend option. So here's my issue. With KSRSS' Earth, it uses OnDemand to display the texture for the ocean, with the land textures alpha'd out, ie erased entirely. And that makes sense, as when it interacts with Scatterer, you don't have the land being unrealistically shiny. And thats cool, I'd like to keep that. But, the issue is, from what I can tell, the look of the land itself is thus derived from what is used for the VertexColorMap...or it isn't? Because when changing that texture, it does change the look of the actual surface scenes, which is okay, but for some reason on moving back to an orbital scene, it remains fixed to the original look. And I just cannot fathom what exactly is doing this or even why or how? Intuitively I would have thought it was something to do with the land classes, but looking at those settings, there isn't enough of them to be able to dictate the entire planet to look like it does, but even then none of the settings seem to be sophisticated enough to retain the look of the land completely differently from what the new texture looks like. I had thought that may be there was a second texture or some other config somewhere thats doing this, but I can't find squat. Essentially, what I'm wanting to do is change the actual color of the land (and thus texture itself) but without disrupting the the ability for JUST the ocean to be able to interact with scatterer. I do know to clear out the cache when changing things, so it isn't an issue of an old bin being loaded in. Also tagging @ballisticfox0 as he may be able to help shed some light on the subject. EDIT: I AM THE BIG DUMB. It occurred to me that I should have checked the alpha for EarthColor , and voila, there it is. Okay, easy fix! Disregard my confusion

It just keeps getting better. Vibrance Earth+Moon and an early look at nuMars. You may notice some...off things in the clouds but don't fret I'm aware. I'm making use of new techniques (IE, I found better ways to do things by experimenting at random for hours on end) so it'll take a few revisions to nail down all the oddities.

Today's inspirational imagery I'm going to slave myself to replicating in a pleasing way.

Initial Work with KSRSS Reborn + Touched up clouds:

So doublepost but here's the plans for this long weekend: 1. Reintegrating the mod to work with KSRSS Reborn as the basis (which has conveniently fixed a huge bug I was having when I stopped, so yay!). While most of the assets will be replaced outright, there's little reason to try and stay connected to a now deprecated version of KSRSS. Incidentally, I'll also note that the plan is still to push for that total replacement. While I am very happy to see KSRSS continuing, I think I have a specific style and goal in mind that is beyond the scope of what that mod should be focusing on, but as it was in the beginning I see zero reason to redo the base Kopernicus work that has already been done just to basically end up with the same files in the end. 1.5 Integration with KSRSS Reborn was apparently pretty easy and is already done. So now I'm going to get myself organized and start knocking some stuff out. The new Earth Clouds need some touchup work done, and Mars was pretty finalized terrain and atmosphere wise, so we'll be doing the clouds for that too, and Luna needs its new height map fixed IIRC, so those'll be the first things to chew on. 2. Beginning work on the Ad Astra revamp to update concurrently with SOL. I think initially we're going to just copy the SOL cloud assets and other settings in wholesale first, but I do want to source and extract a whole set of new clouds for that one. I'm also going to have to inquire about how or even if I'm going to be touching terrain in that mod. I would like to, but I've had (I believe unreasonable non-game related) problems in the past with it so we shall see.

Had to take a well needed break down Skyrim lane hah.

Artemis may be scrubbed again but this mod ain't.

That actually is already the case as part of the Dynamics techniques I devised, so cloud coverage will change at random intervals. Very few places on the surface, even at the poles, will have consistent cloud coverage. There's still tweaks to be had to get the average coverage right (as well as some tweaks to the textures themselves to remove some cruddiness that creeps in), but as you've seen, it looks great and is even better in motion.

Sure. SOL is in the same vein as my other mod Ad Astra. That is, it is a mod of another mod that adds better visuals to the planet pack its associated with. SOL is a modification of KSRSS, and through SOL (and to a lesser extent Ad Astra before it), I was able to develop a number of techniques for utilizing EVE and Scatterer in ways that result in very gorgeous visuals. As one can see from the screenshots above of Earth, not only are the clouds high fidelity, borderline 3D even, but they're also dynamic, meaning that they change shapes and disappate and reappear at random similarly to how real life clouds work. This means that, compared to other cloud packs, SOL's Earth never looks the same more than once. Seeing it in motion explains it better than I can, though be aware this is an older version: https://i.imgur.com/EWkUuJM.mp4

That shouldn't be used at all actually as that is the old scatterer method.

That is strange. It should resemble the later pictures. Not sure what would be causing that.

And some adjustments to the cloud system. Much better performance, though some old features are going to have to be redacted. Unfortunate but as they were tiny details anyhow not too much is lost.

Figured out how to get Mars' sunsets working correctly, and also tuned the atmosphere to be as close as I could get it to the real.

Something else to keep in mind if you're using the stock Delta V calculator that it won't display the right values if you don't set it to vacuum. The way it calculates things it assumes you're at sea level by default and naturally these engines aren't going to do much at the bottom of Earth's Kerbin's gravity well.

Okay yep can confirm that appears to have stopped the slowdowns. I couldn't begin to suggest why scatters would be doing that, as the settings I'm using are unchanged from stock KSRSS and to my knowledge it didn't have this issue prior. But I also haven't touched anything other than textures so IDK what precisely could have happened. In the meantime, any ideas on how to move up the horizon? I don't think this is normal behavior, and it seems like whatever it is that determines where the horizon is is way lower than my actual surface is, even when I'm at one of the lowest points I could land on..

I will try turning off scatters and see if that improves things.

If we can't tell, I am having just a grand old time with the new version of Earth.

Probably both. I mean, look at this bruh. This is Vibrance at 120km in height. This is just, bonkers lol.

A look at the two options for Mars: TrueSight Vibrance: Technically speaking, both are true color, as Mars has a peculiar annoyance in that the colors vary depending on how much dust is in the air, which is why Mars in "true color" photographs range from the bright Duna-ish red to the more pale yellow brown. And here's the new Earth, which greatly improved terrain, as well as the new Vibrance version of earth: True Sight: Vibrance: And here's some up close looks for True Sight. This is at 180km in altitude: