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  1. So I've decided to be "the next blackrack" and started working on clouds. I added fog and cloud layers, but they're a bit scuffed, any help on how to improve the layers and add *more* cloud "layers" would be nice! Do you like clouds? Me too. This mod adds cloud layers! And will eventually add weather too. Plans for future updates: Weather *Requires Patch Manager and Shoemaker* Get it here: https://spacedock.info/mod/3741/Cloudy https://imgur.com/a/ksp2-fog-q4VTv4F
  2. EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements - Clouds and City Lights EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements (a.k.a. EVE) is a mod for KSP that adds clouds and city lights. It is highly configurable and a number of other mods provide improved clouds not just for the stock planets, but for other planets provided by other mods. Go HERE for E.V.E. for later versions of KSP The mod works on KSP 1.8, and older versions are also available. This thread was a continuation of @rbray89's original EVE thread, please discuss on the REDUX version above. Installation The mod is distributed as two ZIP files, one small one which contains the plugin and shaders, and one large one which contains a sample configuration. If you are installing another mod which supplies EVE configurations, such as SVE, you should not install the sample configs. If you use CKAN, select EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements and then choose a config (if only one is available, that one will auto-select). If you are installing manually, download the latest ZIP files from https://github.com/WazWaz/EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements/releases and unpack them into your KSP directory. The zip files include the "GameData" directory and so this should merge with the same-named directory in your KSP installation, such that after installing, your KSP's GameData directory will contain the "Squad" directory shipped with the game, the "EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements" directory which you just installed, and, if you installed the sample configs, a BoulderCo directory. Configs for other mods are generally shipped in their own directories. It is strongly recommended that you use the 64-bit version of KSP when using EVE, especially with advanced configurations. Note that you will not necessarily see any clouds on Kerbin in the main menu, and they may flicker. Load a game to check if you've successfully installed the mod. If you wish to install for KSP versions prior to KSP 1.2, see the original thread, but note that there is little support for old versions. Compatibility with other Mods EVE is compatible with most mods, but in particular it is tested to inter-operate well with these visual mods: Scatterer - makes atmospheres realistically "haze". PlanetShine - makes the glow from planets/moons produce ambient light. Stock Visual Terrain - make the terrain detail of the stock planets much better quality. There are also a number of excellent mods that provide advanced configurations beyond the sample ones shipped alongside EVE: Stock Visual Enhancements (SVE) - high quality visuals, recommended for higher-end systems. Para-Sci High-Performance Atmosphere Pack - sleek but still beautiful visuals, even less CPU/GPU demanding than the basic configuration. Be sure to remove the sample configs (the "GameData/BoulderCo/" directory) if you manually install a mod that provides all its own configurations. If installing via CKAN, you will be prompted with what needs removing. If using the Real Solar System mod, you will need different configurations, such as: Real Solar System Visual Enhancements If using the Outer Planets Mods, you will probably want to add EVE for those too, such as: Pood's Outer Planets Mod Visual Overhaul Performance EVE runs fine on mid-range systems. See the alternative configurations above for different performance characteristics. The most expensive effect is currently the volumetric clouds. You can turn these off in the in-game configuration dialog, or by editing the configs with a text editor. Obviously the more cloud layers, the more costly are the effects. By default, only cloud layers within 10km of the camera can produce volumetric clouds. Note that while some outdated information online recommends using the -force-d3d11 option, this is not needed with 64-bit KSP (which you should definitely be using if using EVE), and has been reported to possibly cause memory leaks. Configuration The sample configuration includes a single layer of clouds and city lights for Kerbin and cloud layers for other stock planets/moons as appropriate. You can modify the configuration in-game by pressing Alt-0 (zero), though be warned that this is an advanced feature. If you save broken configs you will need to re-install your chosen configs. There is no undo. Documentation for the config files is currently pending, but note that since EVE-1.2-1, the _MinLight option has been changed. It should be set to 0 (the default) unless you want clouds to glow on the night side (eg. auroras). Also note the relatively new "UVNoise" setting, which allows adding noise to the texture look-ups, either for large animated cloud effects (see Jool), or to mask pixelization in fine detail (see Kerbin). Pretty Pictures and Videos For now, see the original thread for slightly outdated pictures and videos. If you have ones you wish to display here, provided they are short and contain no revenue-generation, just ask. Contributing If you have code changes you would like to contribute to the core plugin or shaders, please submit a Pull Request on the GitHub project: https://github.com/WazWaz/EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements If you have major config changes you would like to contribute, these are probably best supplied to users as an independent mod, in the same way as others listed above like SVE. If you can find a nice way to make use of the BumpMap config, let me know! If you'd like to donate, be aware that I'm only maintaining the great work of @rbray89, but you can donate from the CurseForge EVE page.
  3. So due to time restrictions KSC needed to launch a plane during fog. The flight was pretty uneventful, but I managed to do some cool tricks here and there and land in the fog! How cool is that?? https://imgur.com/BrPi3Ih
  4. Hello, Got bored and decided to document a new KSP science play-through, which I am dubbing Atmos (a portmanteau of Atmosphere and Cosmos). It's mostly stock with some visual mods, QoL mods, and Restock. A return to simple roots, I'd say. Starting with the Skybound program, Jeb preps for his first flight in Skybound I. Sadly, without a ladder, the entire rocket had to be rolled back to the VAB to fit him back into the seat. Skybound II was a good step up, resulting in an extra-atmospheric trip. Sadly, Jeb would die because the engineers forgot to attach a decoupler to the capsule, resulting in a "lawn-dart"-like phenomenon, flattening him against the surface of the ocean at 500M/S. Valentina was more successful, and with a decoupler-equipped space capsule, she made a gentler trip back to the surface after an upper-atmospheric flight. I would like to keep updating this as I go. Hope you enjoy my simple little journey. Oh, and if you'd like a closer look at my flag, here it is.
  5. According graphics EA dev post, they plan to bring the game up to Unity’s modern renderer, HDRP. Except for the features stated here, which probably suits for KSP2 graphics, like immersive lighting and enriched worldbuilding, I think one of the most notable could be a spectacular atmosphere. Just look at those These clouds can suit for Kerbin or Laythe, it would be interesting to see how it could be implemented for Jool, other future gas giants and Eve Do you think the introduction of HDPR (in common meaning, not only clouds for example) will happen in the medium term, parallel to the CBT, or a little earlier/later? Even if we pretend that the most important bugs were fixed
  6. Download Here EVE is bundled, but be sure to check EVE page for updates as i will not be updating this mod often. Pics: (some may be outdated, will get updated as i get good screenies) Features: *Minimalistic design with focus on performance and full scatterer compatibility (not required to run mod, best to not use it when performance is an issue). *All planets but Gilly and Bop (geometric limitation) have atmospheric scatter or glow effects rendered via EVE cloud layers. Colors are generally highly saturated to give a more sci-fi universe feel compared to the more white and washed out realistic style used in most other mods like SVE. *Kerbin, Duna, Eve, Jool and Laythe have cloud layers. All volumetric layers (Kerbin, Laythe, Eve, ect) are kept minimalistic in thickness and useage to maximize performance while still creating as good an effect as possible. *Some airless bodies have fog/dust effects. Color choice is fairly varied, with some planets having highly colorful fog while others use a more greyish color. Duna has dust storms and Eeloo has blizzards. Moho has something akin to burning air. Particle density is kept to a minimum to keep performance up. While i cannot speak for everyone, my mid range laptop is capable of handling this mod as well as 2 1000 part warships in low orbit around any planet. *Designed to work with scatterer mod, provided you remove the "atmospheres" of SciFiVE since those look janky with scatterer enabled and should not be used together. Changelog: V-1.6 *Vall redesigned from ground up, 2 layers of floating ice in 2 different layer patterns, deleted the ground particle effect as I dont want too much perf hit from 3 particle layers rendering simultaneously. *Minor tweaks all around to layers to try and make things more consistent. Nothing major, but a few things specifically Duna's dust have been slightly improved overall. V-1.5 *File structure redone to make it easier for people to choose which effects they want or do not want without having to go the extra step and remove or edit configs. Currently split into: atmospheres: kerbin, eve, lathe, jool, duna, consider disabling if you use scatterer for a very minor frame boost clouds: renders clouds on planets that use atmospheres effect glow: similar effect to atmospheres but applies to non atmospheric planets dust: renders all the 3d particles near the ground, very cinematic but eats much more frames then the other effects so if your GPU starts crying try disabling this 1st *Overhaul of every glow layer. Edges of almost all planets have a distinctive and noticeable glow effect. Considerably improves contrast, light side actually looks like its reflecting light, dark side is truly dark. I did my absolute best to minimize artefacting present from stock EVE bugs, but a few rare cases still exist... *Many tweaks to particles to both improve visuals and cut down on needless lag (some effects like laythe rain is only visible right next to the camera, as its very hard to notice it far away in the 1st place given how light it is). Altered axis of many particle fields to make them move in different directions and not always east. *Improved laythe rain fx, now only visible at very short ranges, smaller particle size, slightly increased particle density to compensate (performance net increase). Also changed laythe clouds a bit *Added fire effect to moho, high velocity clouds occasionally zip past craft on the surface. Tried not to overdo the effect so the particles are rather thin and spaced out, will look into improving this for later versions. Also, removed moho's aura effect as it adds performance cost and is barely even noticeable during normal gameplay (you only really see it in very very high orbit around moho). For those that really liked it use glow.bak instead of glow.cfg. V-1.4 *Optimized to work alongside stock scatterer (download and install this separately, not packaged with this mod), *Redone or tweaked textures for Kerbin, Duna, Eve, and Laythe. Some new textures, some altered previous textures. *Added uvnoise feature to all major cloud maps to help eliminate jagged edge problems. Not a perfect solution, but it allows lower resolution detail textures and still keeps the cloud layers looking decent. *Few alterations to colors, particle density, ect. *Rain fx added to Laythe. *Mod now broken up into 3 separate files, the base mod (required dependancy), with optional cloud and dust addons. All come in a single zip file, but you can easily pick what features you want. V-1.3 *Huge overhaul of Kerbin, Duna, and Laythe. Completely redone textures (cloud maps, detail textures, particle textures). Detail textures are vastly improved with 2 of em being 4096x4096 to allow a good variety of cloud styles within a single layer without creating obvious tiling issues. *Brand new particle sprites for all planets with a bit more focus on overall quality. *More varied particle maps which makes each planet have a different thickness and level of particle coverage, no more reusing the same detail textures for half the planets. *Many other alterations too minor to bother mentioning, try it out to find out. V-1.2 *New custom cloud maps in 4096x2048 (8192x4096 for Kerbin), unique to every planet. Styles vary from purely sci-fi to semi-realistic depending on the planet for variety's sake. *Three new higher resolution detail textures which are both high res and do not give tiling issues when viewed from far away. Currently textures are for cumulus, cirrus, and a sci-fi one. *Seven new particle textures. Three are for clouds, all of which are wispy in nature and optimized to look good with very low particle density. Four are for the surface effects which vary from some particulates floating around to full blown dust storms. *Few minor color adjustments to improve looks with the new cloud textures. V-1.1 *Improved detail textures. *Minor changes to atmosphere and glow colors. V-1.0 *Initial release. Support: Due to a lack of time in my life i am not offering support of any kind officially. I may or may not update this mod when/if i get time on vacations or whatnot, but i currently have a full time job, family to take care of, and what little downtime i have available i cannot really spend on videogame modding. It was a pleasure working on this mod (and a few others), but for now im officially on hiatus, and as such ive modified the licensing to allow anyone to do anything with the mod or resources solong as it remains freely available for everyone to enjoy (that means no using any of my work to make money without my explicit permission). If you are having trouble installing, please post on the thread, and someone with technical knowledge on the forum should be able to help you. You may use all art assets and parts of this mod as you please, credit is appreciated but its not like im gonna chase anyone down if they dont. You are free to redistribute identical and modified copies of this mod. Also, absolutely no commercial use without explicit permission period, im not making any money on this free mod and neither will anyone else. And liscense for EVE itself which is packaged alongside mod:
  7. I think the KSP2 team was waiting for the 2021 LTS release for Unity so they can lock features into a stable product. Now we can expect some very cool features in the game related to environments and like it was designed with KSP in mind (I wonder if there was some collab between Intercept and Unity): "HDRP performance upgrades and features like NVIDIA DLSS for desktop, Volumetric Clouds, and Static Shadow Caster." I've seen some pre-LTS environment videos, everything looks absolutely amazing. Some of them even show storms with wind, rain, lightning and snow. There's also Expanse with some impressive demos, I don't know if the KSP2 uses this or their own tools. Wonder if we'll also have Ray Tracing..
  8. Through my efforts in developing the mod Sol, I developed two different techniques for different visual needs that I believe uniquely distinguished Sol amongst other visual mod packs. Though that mod is now canceled due to still ongoing issues with the community, I do still want to see that these techniques make it into other mods, and rather than having people trying to reverse-engineer them through copies of my mod that, regardless of licensing, I still do not approve of being redistributed, I figure I may as well lay out a proper tutorial on these concepts so that people can just simply do as I did, and create their own mods. As part of this tutorial, you will want to have a photo editing software such as Photoshop or GIMP that can export to the .dds file format. I personally recommend GIMP because its free and relatively hassle free. I also recommend becoming familiar with NASA's Visible Earth website, found here, as the website is a treasure trove of not only inspiration, but extremely high quality visuals from which your work can be derived. All of the imagery of Sol was derived from the available imagery on the website, and through this tutorial you'll see how I translated the raw satellite imagery into workable textures for the game, and how the Dynamic system works. I will also acknowledge that this is a beefy post; I am a very verbose and thorough person, and through this reading I would hope it should give some idea as to how I think through things. DYNAMICS Intro: Dynamics is my term for a method of inducing EVE's innate layer functions to mimic the way in which Earthbound cloud systems form and dissipate over time. While EVE is not quite sophisticated enough to provide a true simulation, it does have the tools necessary to provide an uncanny approximation IF one puts in the effort to realize it. The How: How Dynamics works is fundamentally dependent on the nature of the detail texture. In EVE, two primary textures are responsible for the look of a cloud layer. These are listed as Main Tex, and Detail Tex. Main Tex to put it in simple terms provides the macro shape of a cloud, meaning that even if your texture is just flat Microsoft Paint drawings, it will take to the shape of what was drawn. Detail Tex is an additional texture that is overlaid on top of the Main Tex, and as its name implies, is meant to provide additional detail to the texture, and depending on the modder, most examples have used Detail Tex as a means of pushing the fidelity of the overall clouds. However, the key thing about Detail Tex is that it is sensitive to transparency, meaning that if your detail texture is transparent in any part of it, that transparent section will also translate to its application to the main texture, rendering that part of main tex transparent as well. This is the fundamental key to how dynamics works, and I discovered that this worked some years ago during development for the mod Ad Astra, and my early attempts with it are still viewable through that mod by looking to the planet Lindor and its Dark Spot, which forms and dissipates regularly over time. Originally, however, this technique for me was only meant to serve as a means of providing just specific macro level cloud systems, like the Dark Spot, or the eventual Typhoon that featured in Sol. Until I had an epiphany, I was still very much married to the idea of global Cube Maps being the key to higher quality visuals, but Cube Maps have their short comings. For one, the global coverage means that quality is hard to keep consistent across the entire texture (without painstakingly hand-painting it), and this only gets worse depending on the quality of your source and the method with which the cube map itself was generated, and for two, its very static; the clouds will always look the same no matter what, with only the underlying terrain changing. To put it short, cube maps are a pain to work with and unless you are very fortunate, or have the patience to paint it by hand, they still ultimately have shortcomings that leave one wanting. But Dynamics provides another option, and in fact, provides an option that is much better suited to the sort of game Kerbal Space Program is, where memory is of vital importance. Using Dynamics to create global cloud coverage can not only provide much higher quality and far better consistency, effectively allowing one to have texture qualities as high as one wants without any quality loss from downscaling, it also allows you to do so without an egregious impact to the memory footprint of the mod compared to what would be necessary to replicate the same visual fidelity using other methods. And as a bonus, you get the Dynamics effect itself, allowing your global coverage to never look the same twice. So, with all that explanation aside (though there's still quite a bit more), lets get into the nitty gritty. To start, we need to identify and locate a source cloud map that we are going to derive what we will be calling cloud patterns, or cpats. For this, I utilized (and prefer) the Blue Marble imagery available at Visible Earth. I took the highest resolution that was available, and in GIMP, I combined both the E and W files into one, which should provide you with something looks like this: While the large file size, 43k in this case, can be rough to work with depending on your computer's specs, do keep in mind that you only need to work with it long enough to extract a cpat. To do this, the process is quite simple. For this purpose, we are going to assume that we want to have our cpats be at 16k, which is the maximum resolution that KSP can support. To mark out a strict 16k selection, we are going to select our selection tool, and set it to Fixed with a resolution of 16384 x 8192; your settings should resemble the below: Once you have this, you can click and drag anywhere on your image, and a selection box should appear that you can then drag around. We want the image to be rectangular, as this will prevent our final cpat from being distorted. From there, all you have to do is select some part of your source map that you think looks good or interesting to have as a potential pattern. For this, I selected this section: Next, copy the selection, and create a new file in the same resolution (16384x8192), and paste in your image. Add the pasted image as a new layer, and either merge it with the extraneous background or layer, or simply delete that layer. ========================================================================================================================================================== What this process does is allow for the higher resolution image to be translated to a lower resolution image, without any real loss in quality from more traditional down-scaling methods. We do lose the additional data from the rest of the map, but this on purpose, as we do not want all of that extraneous data anyway, and because we can always just make more cpats. (for Sol, I settled on three primary cloud patterns, with a fourth intended for noctilucent cloud formations) Next, we will need to extract the clouds themselves from the black background. First, ensure that the image has been set to “RGB”, by clicking on Image > Mode > RGB. Then, click on Colors > Color to Alpha. The Color to Alpha tool will automatically render your selected color transparent. By default it will have selected White, but naturally we want to change this to black. As a first pass, we can click okay once this is completed, and now your texture should look like this: However, we are not quite finished with this step yet. Due to the nature of satellite imagery, a lot of artifacts may be present that you do not want, and this is especially true if you are extracting clouds from images that also include terrain. To sus these artifacts out, make a new layer and fill it with some color; I typically use a dull blue as it gives me some sense of what the clouds will eventually look like. ========================================================================================================================================================== Once you do this, zoom in and inspect your texture, and essentially you are looking for anything you don't quite like. While my example texture was already cleaned up, I was able to find this section in the upper right: Without the blue background, details like this may have been easy to overlook until you've already gone through the process of getting the cpat into the game. To correct this particular issue, its simply a matter of erasing the offending details. ========================================================================================================================================================== A helpful tip if you are extracting clouds from images that feature terrain or other artifacts (such as sunlight reflecting off an ocean; a common occurrence in satellite imagery), is to merge your cpat with your color layer, and then repeat the Color to Alpha process, this time picking the blue color. You may have to click around on the offending spot, and play with the Opacity and Transparency thresholds (which adjust how strict the software is in erasing the chosen color), but eventually you will find a sweet spot that largely, if not completely, erases the artifacts. Any additional artifacts you find beyond that, simply need to be erased. ========================================================================================================================================================== Now, yet again, we are not finished. Zooming back out, you'll notice that your cloud texture likely extends off the bounds the image. This naturally, will not do for our purposes, unless you're for some reason wanting to do Minecraft clouds. To correct unfortunately requires sacrifice. We will need to erase and blend the clouds in such a way that they stay within the bounds of the image, but also still look like clouds. For this purpose, I recommend locating a quality brush pack for GIMP (utilize sites such as deviantart) that specifically provide brush shapes that mimic clouds or smoke. While I cannot say what tools I have (as I acquired them long ago and their names in my system lend no clues to their origin, other than I know they came from deviantart), the important aspect is that you want cloud or smoke shapes to work with, as they will naturally lend themselves to forming the shapes you want. ========================================================================================================================================================== Once you have one, experiment with the settings and see what results you can get. Ideally for Dynamics, we want the clouds to comprise around 50-60% of the total image, with a good mix of both smaller and larger cloud formations, as this ratio is required to allow for Dynamics to function as expected. I recommend prioritizing the lowest quality or least appealing areas of your image first, before tackling the edges or removing large macro elements from the pattern. With enough experimentation, you should end up with something akin to this image: As you can see above, you may also find it advantageous to flip or mirror the image. There is no hard rule to whether or not that is desirable; your artistic eye simply needs to guide you, and remember that there is no cost in experimentation here. If it ends up looking bad, start over and try again. Now, to prepare the image for use in KSP, we need to actually turn it into two different textures. One will be our main tex, and the other our detail tex. The eventual randomized interaction between the two textures, which we will set up once we are in-game, is what enables Dynamics to do what it do. ========================================================================================================================================================== Now, the transparent image as we have it is already set up, and this will be our detail texture. First, insure you have save this as an .xcf so that you can always come back to it, and ensure that your background color layer is set to invisible, so you are left with just the layer with the clouds. Then export the image as a .dds. Ensure your settings match this: For this, we name this as cpat1_d Once that has completed exporting, we can move on to to the main texture. To generate this, I do not recommend just doubling up on the detail texture. The reason for this is because the interaction between the transparent sections of both textures tends to not look that great in my experience, so instead what we want to do is create a texture that captures the macro shapes of the pattern, but “fills in” some much of the transparencies, allowing for the detail texture to define those alone. ========================================================================================================================================================== The process for this is simple. Duplicate the layer multiple times, and as you do so you'll notice the pattern become progressively bolder as the stacked layers fill in transparencies. I recommend doing this around 4-6 times. Once you have them, merge the copied layers together into one, and you should result in an image like this: The difference here may appear to be subtle, but that is ideal. You do not want it to be too bold, but the pattern should be considerably fuller than its detail counterpart. Export this as a second .dds, this time simply as cpat1 With these two textures in hand, you have all you need to make Dynamics work. Add them to your mod directory, and load up the game. In the EVE Gui, accessed by Alt-0, or within the tracking station by clicking on the EVE Gui button, create a new layer and name it cpat1. ========================================================================================================================================================== From here, the settings you choose are more or less up to you, your tastes, and what you want to do. I can, however give you some general tips going down the line of the options you have available to you. Altitude – Generally speaking, you don't want clouds to be too high up in the atmosphere, especially at lower scale Solar Systems, as this will look very off from what it should be compared to real life. While achieving the realistic is not completely possible without moving up to Real Scale, you can approximate it, and for this, I recommend a cloud height around 7-10km, and I recommend that for all of your cloud patterns that you make the altitude identical, or only with slight variances. Kill Body Rotation – This generally is only recommended for things meant to stay stuck to the polar regions. Speed/Detail Speed – Speed governs how fast Main Tex moves across the world, while Detail speed, as you can imagine, governs how fast the Detail Tex moves within its application to the Main Tex. For these, I recommend keeping them relatively low, no more than 20 or 30, but ideally closer to the 2-10 region. You can use negative numbers, and this will help to vary up the directions the two textures move in, which is highly useful if you want to use the same cpat twice, saving both on memory and allowing for a more fuller globe. Offset – This setting appears to move the texture away from a particular center point, however it is quite limited and typically only works well if you specifically need something to hang, with no movement, in a specific location on the planet. This is useful for providing things like lava flows, algae blooms, smoke clouds, meteors, etc. Rotation – These settings naturally govern how the layer itself rotates as it moves. You can use these to set up singular cyclonic storms, however do note that due to shortcomings in the Offset setting (namely that it doesn't allow you to offset where the center point of a layer is), you may not be able to get your cyclone to behave properly except on one location on the planet. Hopefully in future versions of EVE these settings can be expanded on to allow for greater control. Arc – I've never seen any reason to use this. It controls how much of your texture displays over one half of the planet, but the effect does not seem to be entirely useful. Color – This is more or less self-explanitory, though I will note that you can exceed the 255 numbers, as well as go negative if you wish. This is useful for balancing EVE's interactions with scatterer, enabling you to get clouds that do not look too starkly white, but while also still getting the vibrant terminators that settings in scatterer can provide you. Detail Scale – This is a critical setting for Dynamics, and it must be set to 1, otherwise dynamics will not work as intended. Using scales higher than one will shrink and repeat the detail texture, which is not what we want; we want Main Tex and Detail Tex to be 1:1. Detail Distance – This setting affects how the layer appears at various zoom distances. A setting of -2E-07 is recommended here. DistFade – If this setting has an effect, I have not been able to identify it. DistFadeVert – I recommend using the same as Detail Distance, though like DistFade I am not certain what effect this setting has. UV Noise Settings – If you have a useful UV texture, I would recommend following the advice of others who have dealt with these. I have not, so I will not speak to them authoritatively. ========================================================================================================================================================== Finally, you also want to ensure you have enabled Layer 2D. Most of the settings in here should be left alone, other than MinLight and ShadowFactor. Minlight when set to a positive number will cause your cloud layer to appear on the night side at various brightnesses. This is mostly used for Auroras and other lighted effects, but as I will cover in the City Lights section, this also has use for enabling an effect that I find is stupidly called “cloud glow”. Shadow factor is up to personal tastes, but it is good to note that higher values will induce unnatural darkness on the ground, so be wary; it may look good in orbit but you may second guess the value if your rocket launch in the sun is being cast into darkness by a tiny speck of cloud texture. Once all of these settings are ready, you're done! Apply the layer and save it to your config. Once you change scenes, or press the Map Eve Clouds button in the Scatterer GUI, you can enter time warp and see how your new cloud pattern periodically forms and dissipates at random over time. By adding additional cpats, repeating them, and varying their settings, you can achieve global cloud coverage that is always dynamic, and seldom boring. Performance wise, it is fully dependent on how many repeated cpat layers you have going at once, and naturally the resolution you created the textures at. For Sol, I settled on a repetition of four, with each of the three main cpats being repeated four times with varied speed and detail speed settings to achieve a global coverage that I was satisfied with. With smaller resolution textures, you could potentially push this number to greater heights, though I will note that it is possible to have too much layered over top of one another at once, so be wary. ========================================================================================================================================================== As an added bonus, I am also going to, much less thoroughly, explain how to achieve the apparently lost “art” of cloud glow, an effect that was apparently quite popular in older visual mods prior to a change in EVE that changed how the Minlight setting worked. The solution, incredibly, to bringing the effect back was astonishingly simple and brain dead. Are you ready? Use two citylight configs. Its dumb, it shouldn't work, but it does. In order to achieve the effect, like we see here: What you want to do is take your CityLights texture, and apply a substantial Gaussian Blur filter to it. It shouldn't be so high that it becomes indiscernible where the lights were, but it shouldn't be so low that the lights are only slightly blurry. Once you have this, you will also need to create new detail textures for what we will call CityLights_G As a result of how the CityLights feature works in EVE, you will need set your day texture to a blank, nothing texture, as small as you can get it. This is necessary to prevent the glow from appearing on the day side of the planet. To maintain consistency, I recommend taking your night texture, and applying the same gaussian blur filter to it; you want most of the details to vanish in the blur for this one. I call these dayglow and nightglow respectively. Now, due to EVE being unable to support the creation of two simultaneous CityLights for the same body in its GUI, this will instead have to be done through the configs directly. Simply take your CityLights config file, copy and paste it, and rename it to CityLights_G or whatever other name you would like to give. In the settings, change the texture paths to your new textures. Once you're done, save the config, and it just simply works. While you will not be able to toy with the _G layer itself in-game, it is relatively trivial to make any adjustments to its config. To achieve the final piece of the cloud glow puzzle, you simply need to enable Minlight on your cloud layers. For this, I recommend a setting between 0.2 and 0.4, as this will allow the clouds to still show up on the night side, but will prevent them from being starkly visible even on the Moon, which is a shortcoming of the old method to this effect. The _G layer will shine through the now visible clouds (provided the texture is transparent) and, with some possible adjustments to the _G texture, you can achieve a look that mimics the real life nature of lights being scattered and dispersed across a cloud at night. @ballisticfox0
  9. At its core, the suggestion to add weather and clouds is simple. Clouds, wind, perhaps even storms. Its easy to imagine how interesting it could be. But before we can really delve into the suggestion, we need to consider different ways weather could be implemented, and figure out what the best way would be for KSP. But first, lets talk about the elephant in the room: The fact that it can adjust difficulty: Weather and Difficulty: The way I see it, there could be a number of basic settings for weather. -Full disable: Weather is disabled. It is always clear. -Visual only: Weather does not actually effect you. -Storms only: Weather only effects you when you are in a "storm" like scenario. -Full: Weather, winds, etc, will effect you any time. Depending on the level of simulation, there could also be toggles/sliders for things like wing icing, damage from dust storms, or "gustiness". Also interesting would be a Sandbox option to add a weather system of your choice to a location (presumably your current one). Core Mechanics and Weather Simulation: The first question to ask is simple: How do we design the weather with regards to the game? I do not speak of merely how wind works (it would presumably be a form of modifier to the current aerodynamics), but rather where it comes from. KSP is a physics heavy game, and adding some full-blown weather simulator to it would not be very good for gameplay purposes. So what, then, is the best way to add weather? Three options come to my mind, and perhaps you can imagine others. I'll start with my ideas on the matter: 1. Exceptions to Standard. In this setting, the all-clear weather on Kerbin is still the "standard weather", and any other weather events are things that generate randomly, move across the planet for some time, and then disappear. For other planets, the "standard" could also be clear, or it could be a set windspeed and direction (i.e. if you wanted to give Jool a saturn-like atmosphere) or just being cloudy instead of clear (i.e. if you want to make Eve a little more Venus-like in appearance). These events would be storms, areas of wind, perhaps even benign weather like partly cloudy and drizzles. Whenever one disappears, a new one would generate at a semi-random location, and would randomly generate its path based on some planet-defined directional preferences. Some weather events could also follow a pre-determined pattern of changes over their path (i.e. a "hurricane" might have a building phase, an main phase, and then just be a normal storm on the last leg of its path) This results in a reasonably viable set of weather mechanics that shouldn't require too much processing power to simulate on a global scale. Values worth noting would include the max number of weather events per planet (a value that can change based on the planet), which weather systems can generate on any give planet, and perhaps "seed spots" which are the only region on a planet that can generate certain weather events (i.e. maybe only weather events that generate in certain sea areas have a chance of being generated as a Hurricane event, and only storms that are generated in northern areas have a chance of generating as snow storms). If two weather events overlap, one of them can simply take priority over the other as they pass through each other for simplicity sake. 1b. Permanent weather events: It would be good in this case to have a permanent type of weather event possible. These events would be designed into applicable planets. They would be used for things such as Jool, where you might want to have an equivalent to Jupiter's Great White Spot. 2. Extremely simplistic, low power weather sim. The idea here is to split a planet into a set of "cells" and have the simplest, easiest simulation you can that still causes a reasonable variety of weather, perhaps intermittantly "seeding" it with an effect to get things moving if need be (or to simulate seasons). One option would be to take the "exceptions to standard" idea listed in 1, but just replace weather events with randomly generated air masses with semi-random values for speed, humidity, and temperature (semi-random because they could be influenced by the location they are generated). Any time two of these masses meet, they are replaced with some weather event, based on the values of the air masses. By themselves, these air masses would generally just have some wind, temperature, and humidity, and some form of cloud cover ranging from zero to full. 3. Pre-decided weather patterns. Rather than worry about dynamic weather in this scenario, the developers simply "design" the weather on Kerbin (and each other applicable planet) for a set amount of time, such as a period of 1-4 of that planet's years, and then run it. When it reaches the end, it loops back to the start. The upside is that you can have some good weather variation without actually needing to simulate it. The downside is that the weather is predetermined and thus will repeat. You can get around this somewhat by starting each planet at a random point in its weather "track" upon starting a new career, so you at least don't find yourself seeing the same couple days of weather every time you start a new game. What effects can weather have? The first and most obvious effects are the visual ones. There will be clouds. You can fly through them. They may be simply rendered, but they can still be clouds. Also, there can be rain, snow, and lightning. When you are in space above a storm at night, you might see some occasional flashes from the storm from lightning. There would also be a simplistic fog effect too (perhaps most notably on Duna, where it could be used for sandstorms). If the weather isn't impressive enough visually, then I imagine mods will help fix that. Next we have mechanical effects. -Wind can, of course, cause some ruckus during launches and take-offs. It might be a good idea to add another runway to KSP, and to allow you to choose which one to launch aircraft from (and which end of the runway to do it from). You could display this choice while in the aircraft hanger when you click launch, along with the current direction and speed of the wind. -Wind gusts are another potential one. For simplicity sake, I assume that rather than worrying about what causes such turbulence and attempting to model it, that some weather systems or air masses may simply have a value indicating a chance of encountering gusts of somewhere between X and Y strength intermittently, and that when this happens the wind affecting your vessel rapidly changes for a couple seconds. -Icing could be something that occurs in fairly water-heavy worlds such as Kerbin and Laythe. If whatever Eve has can also freeze and snow, you could perhaps have it there too. -Being a Mars analogue, Duna could of course have sandstorms. These could be windy, reduce vision, and could be at risk of damaging some equipment if it is not protected or put back into its stored configuration (Engineer astronauts could fix them if you forget). -Planets with active volcanoes could have a permanent weather effect near them with an ash-plume storm, and wind direction matching the plume direction. The priority could be set such that this effect disappears whenever another weather effect is in the region, resulting in the volcano appearing to sometimes be erupting, and sometimes not (when in actuality, not erupting just means another weather effect is overriding it). -Given how weird Eve is (its SORT OF a venus analogue, but not really), you could probably imagine some interesting things for it. Dense but slow-moving and harmless fogs (insert Purple Haze joke), small tornado-like storms that look almost more tornado than storm (but which actually only have a small "real" tornado in the very center). -Weather effects could have their own science equipment associated with them. This equipment would gather science based not on location, but rather what kind of weather they are in (for these instruments, all vacuum areas would be considered the same "weather" pattern, unlike the current thermometer and barometer). -Some more major weather effects could temporarily override the biome in the region they are affecting for some instruments. These would generally be major things like hurricanes, or permanent weather systems like the "Great Jool Blot" (has a nice ring to it, actually). -Planets without atmospheres (and maybe those with really, really thin ones) would of course not have weather. Misc other thoughts and comments: -If the SUN is granted some weather, it could have "sunspot" events, along with rare "eruption" events. The sunspot events could just act like a biome for purposes of near-sun spacecraft science gathering, but eruption events could have other effects too. If one of these happens to be pointed towards a planet, you could generate an aurora effect around the poles of that planet. It could also cause a notable additional heating effect when a spacecraft near the sun is above its "biome." -Meteor showers are not weather (and should not be considered such mechanically), but could potentially be an interesting visual effect that occurs on planets with atmospheres at set points in their year, independent of weather. -I wonder if Jebediah Kermin has any type of weather he especially enjoys. Knowing him, probably hurricanes. While in an aircraft he designed himself. With an exterior pilots seat. During re-entry. With boosters ignited. And poor Bob in the cockpit screaming in panic about how horrible an idea this was.
  10. Hi there fellow Space Explorers! Recently I wanted to boost the looks in my KSP 1.11 install as many do. I already tried to follow the guides for things like EVE, Stock Visual Ench.. and scatter. However there must be something I am either doing wrong or is wrong with my installation (btw, uninstall and re-installed yesteday the game). So at the moment I find myself with just scatter as visual mod, I read the page for the mod and tryed to change a couple of parameters but still the planets with atmosphere look nothing alike the ones i see on YouTube... Below links to some pictures. How my Kerbin Looks Mod List Thanks a lot in advance, Nik
  11. This is a topic to discuss things about weather in KSP2. For example, we know there will be clouds but will there be rain, thunderstorms, wind, Hurricanes, etc. Any questions or things you want to mention about weather can go here. Reminder: as always, please be respectful to other members, refrain from badmouthing other people, and spread kindness. That's all.
  12. So I have installed AVP, along with all the dependencies, yet the clouds are not showing up in the main screen. Scatterer appears to be working, but that's it. I have the up-to-date versions of AVP, along with the 4k texture pack, scatterer, eve and TUFX. Please if anyone knows what the problem is can you let me know.
  13. How do I add custom static clouds in the sky without using eve? Like, clouds actually in the sky that you can fly through.
  14. Installing visual mods for myself was very frusturating, because they often were outdated and didnt work on CKAN. I would install the mods, and then they just didnt work. Because I know the struggle, I thought I would save it for others wanting visual mods by compiling all of the mods and necessities (other than ModuleManager) in one zip file. This file contains the following mods: PlanetShine: Adds a reflection to ships near a bright planet Scatterer: Adds atmospheric scattering, sunflare, eclipse shadows, etc. DistantObjectEnhancment: Enhances distant crafts and celestial bodies, and adds dynamic skybox dimming Environmental Visual Enhancements and Stock Visual Enhancements: Adds auroras, city lights (only on Kerbin), clouds, and a better Jool texture on bodies with an atmosphere. Real Plume: Adds much better engine thrust visuals SmokeScreen: Allows Real Plume to work Pood's 8k Milky Way Skybox: A beautiful skybox of the real milky way based on NASA data TextureReplacer: Allows Pood's Skybox to work I have left out ModuleManager. Make sure to install it to allow Module Manager before installing these mods. Module Manager is a necessity for most mods anyway. https://github.com/sarbian/ModuleManager Here is the zip file containing the mods [snip] Instructions for install: 1. Download and unzip the .zip file 2. Copy the contents of the downloaded GameData folder (NOT the folder itself, the CONTENTS within it) into KSP's GameData folder. (Remember you need ModuleManager) 3. Open KSP and enjoy! I chose to use the medium resolution textures for stock visual enhancements, which are best suited for average systems. This works good on my pretty weak laptop. If you want to change this, follow these instructions: 1. Visit this website https://github.com/Galileo88/StockVisualEnhancements/releases/tag/1.0.8 2. Download your desired texture resolution (Low res for lesser operating systems, high res for good operating systems) 3. Unzip the file 4. Go to the StockVisualEnhancements folder that you have installed in KSP's GameData folder and delete the "Textures" Folder 5. Drop the new "Textures" file you have just download into the "StockVisualEnhancemets" folder If you have any questions, feel free to reply.
  15. So I installed the mod eve with sve configs, but I cannot seem to get clouds for the planet Eve. I have clouds for all of the other planets, any suggestions?
  16. I'm looking for a good atmosphere/clouds mod for a relatively low performance laptop. I just thought it would be nice to touch up the textures while being friendly to my i5. If there aren't any that work decently, then I guess I'll just save for a gaming pc.
  17. Hi readers, I was wondering how all these amazing environmental people made their clouds, as I wanted to try to make my own 2D clouds.
  18. How do I add custom static clouds in the sky without using eve? Like, clouds actually in the sky that you can fly through.
  19. Inspired by this video: Watch the video first: I thought what about making cloud cities in ksp? Doing this requires any cloud or atmosphere effects* mod. For balloon mods i think using hooligan labs,procedural airships or heisenburg seems to be the mods, for cities maybe kerbinside or habitat module or just making out of structrual panels. And there a few things that are not possible or with another mod like growing trees,or extracting water from clouds or having domes full of oxygen. In the title I wrote Venus,because also you can do this RSS and RSSVE. *Atmosphere effects= *Atmosphere effects= *Atmosphere effects=
  20. Good morning everyone. I have started a new 1.22 game (going to wait for teething trouble observations before 1.3) and as expected EVE just slogs my potato PC to a crawl, so I am playing without clouds. However, before I try to get to Eve I thought I would ask; has anyone heard of a mod for ONLY Eve? Landing on Eve (the OPM Triton analog too I guess [name escapes me]) would be so much more mysterious and exciting if there were dense clouds there, but I can't abide the slow down for Kerbin operations that come from EVE, Is there a possibility for an Only Eve EVE?...
  21. [1.2.X] Mod's Cloud Configs: Custom made EVE configs that add clouds to planets in the stock game or to planets from mods. How can I help? -Just ask me to make a cloud configuration for a certain planet pack (must be kopernicus planets) and specify what you want the clouds to look like and I will see if I can make it. Once posted I will mention who suggested the cloud config. Currently posted configs: Outer Planets:https://spacedock.info/mod/1219/Logan's OPM Cloud mod V1.0 (this was my first ever mod, it is pretty shoddy so might take it down once I put up a better one.) OPM: complete visual overhaul(coming soon)
  22. City Lights for Kerbin and Clouds for Any planet you wish! The config file can be modified to add any number of cloud layers to any planet. Going forward, I will no longer even RESPOND to posts that don't have a good description, a screenshot (if applicable) and a log file. If you don't do this I know you haven't read this, and if you don't read this, I can't really spend the time to help you if you don't attempt to help me. HOW TO GET HELP: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/83212-how-to-get-support-read-first/ FAQ: Is this where all the awesome cloud Reddit photos are from? Yes. Does it confilict with Universe/Texture Replacer? No. What if I only want lights or clouds? You can delete the folders you don't want in GameData/BoulderCo/ How do I install? Dump the contents of the two zip files into your KSP install folder. Make sure to delete any old GameData/EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements or GameData/BoulderCo folder before install. What do I do if I don't get clouds/lights? Probably installed incorrectly. Double check this first. If still nothing, go into KSP_Data and send me the output_log.txt file via pastebin, dropbox, or google docs so i can narrow down the issue. But PLEASE double check that everything was installed correctly first. (you should have BoulderCo and EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements folders in GameData) Going forward, I will no longer even RESPOND to posts that don't have a good description, a screenshot (if applicable) and a log file. If you don't do this I know you haven't read this, and if you don't read this, I can't really spend the time to help you if you don't attempt to help me. HOW TO GET HELP: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/83212-how-to-get-support-read-first/ 1.1-1: Bug fixes, Celestial Shadows. KSP 1.1! 1.05-4: Main Menu clouds, Misc. Fixes, cubemap support, etc. 1.05-1: Reboot. 7-4: License update. 7-3: Fixed RSS compatibility. I still recommend different configs. 7-2: Fixes the config mechanism, adds better support for multiple config files. 7-1: Completely re-did configs, much more accessible to modders. Rename. Added volumetrics. 6-8: -2: Fixed "fadeDist" config problem Moved to new rendering mechanism, changed configs considerably. Slightly better performance. 6-7: Moved to PNG, force mipmap generation. 6-6: 8K texture Fixed texture seam. 6-4: GUI fixes/improvements 6-3: Added choice in shader/spheremapping (default is non-cubic). Back to normal memory usage. 6-2: Memory fixes, Bump map fix. 6-0: Completely re-did the sphere overlays and associated shaders. Textures are now applied via procedural uv inside shader. Main textures are converted to cubic textures and detail and bump are applied as tri-planar. This means poles look perfect. Altered config file format slightly to fit new texture method. Main textures MUST now be 2nXn (width must be twice as long as height). Removed test cloud generation from gui. 5-3: Fixed loading bug for shader params Improved volumetric cloud generation 5-2: Fixed Cloud Save & load Added More Load functionality to clouds Compress textures at load to save an additional ~20MB 5-1: Cloud Config now has entry for GUI hot-key GUI has option for reset. 5: GUI! Access it by ALT+N. UV "Fix". Poles pinch, but it is better than the swirl. Thanks to: @5thHorseman for the lights texture @CaptRobau for the kerbin cloud texture @Lack for the config and additional textures for Eve, Duna, Laythe, and Jool @Tw1 for the new city lights detail texture @therealcrow999 for config updates @NathanKell for Even MORE texture updates @Majiir for overlay examples and hints. @Waz for the UV perturbation code Attempt: Planetary Aurora Planetary Rings! Thick atmosphere/fog for locations like Jool Procedural Cloud Cover Possibly: Actual Cities/Towns/Farms/Roads/etc. Weather Going forward, I will no longer even RESPOND to posts that don't have a good description, a screenshot (if applicable) and a log file. If you don't do this I know you haven't read this, and if you don't read this, I can't really spend the time to help you if you don't attempt to help me. You might think you don't have to post a log or maybe someone has already reported the issue. Doesn't matter. Still need the logs. HOW TO GET HELP: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/83212-how-to-get-support-read-first/ Download: https://github.com/rbray89/EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements/releases/tag/EVE-1.1-2-1 Going forward, I will no longer even RESPOND to posts that don't have a good description, a screenshot (if applicable) and a log file. If you don't do this I know you haven't read this, and if you don't read this, I can't really spend the time to help you if you don't attempt to help me. HOW TO GET HELP: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/83212-how-to-get-support-read-first/ This is done in my spare time, and any contribution helps! Source: https://github.com/rbray89/EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements License (MIT): https://github.com/rbray89/EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements/blob/master/README.md
  23. I been wondering how an advanced weather system mod would work in ksp" I know there was a weather mod a while back but i don't think it had the overall scope of my idea, I would like to either be involved or inspire someone (that knows how to) make a weather mod that simulates the weather that would happen based off the landscape of Kerbin and possibly the other atmospheric planets. Even if preset 'conditions' were just baked in to the mod based off location that would cool too but i would rather not have seemingly random rain fall in deserts for instance. So with that said does anyone know how you would go about simulating the wind currents and stuff like that or how you would go about predicting that.
  24. Revamped Kerbol System Atmospheres This is an EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements and Scatterer configuration for use with @GregroxMun's Revamped Stock Kerbol System mod. Greg asked me to help him create this for his mod, and I was happy to help. He and I discussed the changes to be made for the Revamp, and I've done my best to implement his vision for this mod. EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements 1.1-3 or later is required! Scatterer v0.0246 or later is required! To install, first download and install EVE and the standard EVE configs, and install Scatterer and any additional Scatterer sunflare as you desire. Then download and extract the RevampedKerbolAtmos.zip file. Copy the GameData folder into your KSP install, and overwrite the existing Scatterer configs. Currently it is not possible to implement Scatterer configs via a ModuleManager patch, and custom textures for Scatterer are in use with this mod. However, the MM patch in the "Cetera" folder will make the necessary changes to the BoulderCo > Atmosphere >clouds.cfg. This file must exist for module manager to update in order for this mod to work. Download License: GPLv3, primarily due to using the Scatterer config tool to create the textures and the configurations, and that is the license Scatterer is released under. Special thanks to @GregroxMun for making the Revamped Stock Kerbol System mod, @rbray89 for creating and supporting EVE all these years, and @blackrack for the Scatter mod. KSP just wouldn't look nearly as good without the efforts of those two gentleman, and you should each thank them personally. A huge thank you to @Raptor831 for coaching me through writing the ModuleManager patch, and explaining to me like I'm five how module manager works. His patience was instrumental in making this mod happen. Details: Jool has a more yellow cloud color, and a very pale green atmosphere in Scatterer. Lathe has a more blue-ish gray atmosphere, adding an additional cloud layer. Duna has very light, wispy, high-altitude clouds. The clouds are a light brownish-orange. Eve has been reworked to keep the stock EVE textures, but turn them a very nice pink, almost salmon, color. The atmosphere in Scatterer still has a purple highlight. Moho has a very thin, gray atmosphere. At higher elevations on the planet, it will not show up at all, as you are above the majority of the atmosphere. At lower elevations, it will provide a gray highlight to the horizon.
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