[1.8] EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements [1.8.0-2]

[Drew Kerman]

Just now, msnbcorp said:

I certainly don't get it, i have little experience. But i imagine this is due to the fact that in low orbit it render too much cloud or things like that when the cloud system is running yet and have not let place to the big cloud texture ?

Or it's no that ?

to understand, just go to low orbit and see for yourself. If you still like the way it looks, keep it that way. If it looks ugly again, change it back to SVE default when you are in low orbit. Again, you're dealing with subjective matters here so you need to just see how things look. I haven't tried your changes yet and I may not like them

[msnbcorp]

I will test

[Galileo]

1 hour ago, msnbcorp said:

I certainly don't get it, i have little experience. But i imagine this is due to the fact that in low orbit it render too much cloud or things like that when the cloud system is running yet and have not let place to the big cloud texture ?

Or it's no that ?

No, it's doesn't render too many clouds it just tiles the detail texture too much resulting in very obvious repeated textures, taking away from the immersion. Yes, it looks good from the ground with your adjustments, but this is a game about space, so I have done my part to adjust the settings to look from that perspective. 

Unfortunately, you can't have both. But the way I have it set up, it is as close as it can get in my opinion.

Edited May 17, 2017 by Galileo

[Drew Kerman]

I see people asking every now and then about removing the city lights or ground textures and the popular answer is to delete the DLL or folder containing the config files. Instead just use this MM patch

@EVE_CITY_LIGHTS:FINAL
{
  !OBJECT,* {}
}

Which makes it easier to re-enable them if you want to at some point

[msnbcorp]

12 hours ago, Galileo said:

No, it's doesn't render too many clouds it just tiles the detail texture too much resulting in very obvious repeated textures, taking away from the immersion. Yes, it looks good from the ground with your adjustments, but this is a game about space, so I have done my part to adjust the settings to look from that perspective. 

Unfortunately, you can't have both. But the way I have it set up, it is as close as it can get in my opinion.

Isn't it possible te just do it in many steps ? Like a cloud layer visible from KSP but which fade quickly and can not be seen from low altitude ans an other layer in high altitude only here to have good rendering from high altitude... for example.

 

I don't understand well the melting of PQS system and EVE. Release me of my doubts, the fading between the big general texture and the particule are not related right ? It's juust fade, but the generation of the cloud have nothing to do with the distribution of the cloud on the big kerbin1 texture, wich is only here for scaled space ?

Am i right ?

 

[Phineas Freak]

@msnbcorp As @Galileo said, changing the detail texture level ("DetailScale") will improve the "local" detail but will make the "global" detail suffer from extreme tiling (something that you really don't want to see from orbit). But, you can make the detail texture appear from larger distances by playing with the "DetailDist" and "DistFadeVert" parameters until you can see the details from the ground level.

[msnbcorp]

I got that. Reading reading the code of EVE were very interesting ^^

[Waz]

7 hours ago, msnbcorp said:

Isn't it possible te just do it in many steps ? Like a cloud layer visible from KSP but which fade quickly and can not be seen from low altitude ans an other layer in high altitude only here to have good rendering from high altitude... for example.

Sure, that would be possible, but it would further increase the cost of the shader.

 

7 hours ago, msnbcorp said:

I don't understand well the melting of PQS system and EVE. Release me of my doubts, the fading between the big general texture and the particule are not related right ? It's juust fade, but the generation of the cloud have nothing to do with the distribution of the cloud on the big kerbin1 texture, wich is only here for scaled space ?

Am i right ?

 

The PQS system has nothing to do with clouds. Clouds are generated on a flat sphere (which happens to be implemented via a PQS, but it's not really procedural, just CPU-side tessellation).

But the main cloud map does determine clouds visible at ground level. It has to, since the transition from ground to space is entirely continuous as you fly.

Basically, what happens is:

• All (2D) cloud layers are always visible, and determined by their main texture
• At close range (eg. 100km or so), the detail texture for a given layer is multiplied by the main texture (or "ANDed", if you prefer)
• At very close range (default 10km from a layer) volumetric clouds are turned on, and then fade in - still multiplied by the main texture though (so the fade-in distance should be less than the visibility distance to avoid popping)

Sorry it's not documented better. Always happy for contributions.

[tallon43]

How does one install the configs? I cant seem to get EVE working

[Waz]

3 minutes ago, tallon43 said:

How does one install the configs? I cant seem to get EVE working

Use CKAN, search for "EVE", click it, choose which config you wish to use.

[msnbcorp]

13 hours ago, Waz said:

Sure, that would be possible, but it would further increase the cost of the shader.

 

The PQS system has nothing to do with clouds. Clouds are generated on a flat sphere (which happens to be implemented via a PQS, but it's not really procedural, just CPU-side tessellation).

But the main cloud map does determine clouds visible at ground level. It has to, since the transition from ground to space is entirely continuous as you fly.

Basically, what happens is:

• All (2D) cloud layers are always visible, and determined by their main texture
• At close range (eg. 100km or so), the detail texture for a given layer is multiplied by the main texture (or "ANDed", if you prefer)
• At very close range (default 10km from a layer) volumetric clouds are turned on, and then fade in - still multiplied by the main texture though (so the fade-in distance should be less than the visibility distance to avoid popping)

Sorry it's not documented better. Always happy for contributions.

Thanks, in fact i figured it out myself before reading when experimenting.

The strange point appear to be the repartition of cloud when you go from main texture to detail texture. It seems that the tiling effect come from here. I think you use kind of perlin noise for determining where goes the detail texture.

(but i'm not sure of that point, in my memory, perlin noise have nothing to do in it's simple expression with the merging of 2d sub-texture in a coherent thing, how do you process this aspect ? I have view several conf about algo that does that but i don't think that you use modern imaging science for that ^^, like "image quitting")

Or, maybe you just "and" the texture repeatitivly and apply perlin noise after ?

 

If you use perlin noise for repartion of the texture, you should not have the tiling effect. There are good solutions for avoiding that without extending the subtexture.

If it's the second case, it make more sense. Beside, the repetitive pattern seems to be too much repetitive, even for a bad tuned perlin noise.

 

Even though, i manage to have good resolution from the ground without repetite pattern in your actual system. But it's hard ^^. And can not be done at low altitude (so my cloud layer is high ^^)

Edited May 18, 2017 by msnbcorp

[Drew Kerman]

idea: allow the shadow layer to have a volumetrics element? Would be great for fog or dust rolling across the terrain. Bodies w/o atmosphere could use a transparent cloud layer?

[Galileo]

41 minutes ago, Drew Kerman said:

idea: allow the shadow layer to have a volumetrics element? Would be great for fog or dust rolling across the terrain. Bodies w/o atmosphere could use a transparent cloud layer?

How would that be a benefit over just using the current volumetrics? 

you can already have "dust" or "fog" with what is currently available in EVE. 

maybe I am not understanding the suggestion, but I don't see a logical reason to give cloud shadows a volumetric element. 

Unless you are talking about the volumetrics being able to conform to the terrain like the shadows do? Even then, it would only look good in certain situations, no? All I can imagine is watching a patch of "fog or dust" climb the side of a mountain.

 I think to get it right, it would take a lot of work. 

 

[Drew Kerman]

2 minutes ago, Galileo said:

All I can imagine is watching a patch of "fog or dust" climb the side of a mountain.

Which looks really freaking cool IMO, so yes, I am talking about volumetrics that would follow terrain, even tho the particles themselves would still clip...

[Galileo]

2 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

Which looks really freaking cool IMO, so yes, I am talking about volumetrics that would follow terrain, even tho the particles themselves would still clip...

You and I are picturing two separate things then lol. I think it would look awful. 

Especially when a small area of shadow, like a very small patch, rolls up a hill, looking like a ghostly snowball defying gravity. Or a cotton ball being blown up hill by a strong wind

Your concept is good, I just don't think shadows would be the way to do it. I would love a conforming, rolling fog.

Edited May 19, 2017 by Galileo

[Human Person]

Hi fellows. I really like the mod. I just added it (with the configs provided here) as well as Scatterer to a fresh KSP install and I'm very pleased with the result.

However. I just landed on the planet Eve, plunged through the beautiful clouds and suddenly: it's dark. Way too dark and for some reason, the darkness doesn't apply to everything. Fairings are still illuminated and the ground seems to be illuminated, but only in the distance.

Is there a way to make i brighter on Eve's surface, maybe with different configurations?

 I read they the brightness on Venus' surface is comparable to the brightness on Earth's surface, so I think this should apply in the Kerbol System as well.

[Galileo]

1 minute ago, Physics Student said:

Hi fellows. I really like the mod. I just added it (with the configs provided here) as well as Scatterer to a fresh KSP install and I'm very pleased with the result.

However. I just landed on the planet Eve, plunged through the beautiful clouds and suddenly: it's dark. Way too dark and for some reason, the darkness doesn't apply to everything. Fairings are still illuminated and the ground seems to be illuminated, but only in the distance.

Is there a way to make i brighter on Eve's surface, maybe with different configurations?

 I read they the brightness on Venus' surface is comparable to the brightness on Earth's surface, so I think this should apply in the Kerbol System as well.

You can disable the shadowMaterial for Eve's clouds in the EVE GUI. That will help, but unless you are willing to install Kopernicus and edit the cfg for Eve, it will never be as bright as kerbin for a couple reason. 

1. Eve is purple. It's too dark to reflect as much light as Venus does in real life, so it could never be as bright as kerbin.

2. It's darker than kerbin by default. That's just how Squad set it up.  Like I said before, you would need to edit the configs with kopernicus in order to adjust the brightness and contrast.

try disabling the shadow material and see how that turns out.

[msnbcorp]

Maybe he has Scatterer installed too, that could play with cloud shadow...

 

edit : i have made some experiment about the processing of EVE. It's a bit tricky ^^ but i managed to play with ^^.

My question remain the same though. I didn't manage to understand where did the perlin noise apply. From the ground it's like there is no noise at all (replacing texture by an assymetric one make it clear that it's just a tiling of the detail texture) . But from space playing with UVnoise parameter seems to change the global repartition but don't know hoiw exactly. It play with transparency ? Position of the detail texture ? I guess it's the first one ...

If i guess right is it like that ->

main texture -> Multiplication with perlin noise -> Multiplication with a tiling of detail texture defined by detail parameters.

 

Am i right ?

 

 

At this point i succeed to make a thin layer of Cirrus using the Cirrus of old version or SVE for details and raw satellite data that give cirrus distribution upon earth in a day. The result is pretty good but the main texture is not very detailed (satellite data L3 pixelized), not a problem in space with large detaildist but ugly in the main menu .

 

reeedit, and well, as i like (and works) in this domain of science, i have read some interesting thing to modelise beautiful cumulus. (like this : https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00537462/file/BN04_clouds.pdf).Pretty easy to implement ^^. In fact it could be very simple to use pre-generated 3D cloud if we simply make a loader in eve that load simple config file with position information inside as an improvement parameters for layervolume and then use it to display pregenerated cloud made by hand rather than implementing complex algo. Of course after that it could be necessary to have a very wide range of drawing particle but .... well, still an idea though.

Just asking myself if it could be possible to have the same effect with multiple layer of 2D cloud that cut the pre-designed cumulus in several layer as there trigger the particle generation ...

 

Edited May 19, 2017 by msnbcorp

[Waz]

18 hours ago, Galileo said:

I would love a conforming, rolling fog.

The sphere upon which clouds are painted is a PQS (for non-modders: that's what KSP terrains are made of - a "Procedural Quad Sphere"), so it could have bumps, and instancing the volumetric clouds at that height would be no problem either. I'm struggling to see the use case though - fog tends to form at a height, with bumps in the terrain poking up through the fog. If we can find a use-case, defining the bumps would best be done somehow leveraging Kopernicus rather than duplicating that code, but inter-mod calls isn't a big deal, and surely anyone using SVE is also using SVT :-).

Edited May 19, 2017 by Waz

[tallon43]

Hey guys, great mod! I was just wondering, are the clouds supposed to be reforming within the atmosphere? For some reason, my clouds will just stay static and rotate around the planet. Also the auroras do not form/reform, and kind of spaz out. I could have sworn that on an earlier install of EVE, my clouds were forming/reforming.

[Galileo]

1 minute ago, tallon43 said:

Hey guys, great mod! I was just wondering, are the clouds supposed to be reforming within the atmosphere? For some reason, my clouds will just stay static and rotate around the planet. Also the auroras do not form/reform, and kind of spaz out. I could have sworn that on an earlier install of EVE, my clouds were forming/reforming.

Wait, so you have been talking about the UVnoise effect on clouds this whole time in the SVE thread? SVE does not use the UVnoise feature, the default EVE configs do. I think you were getting BoulderCo and SVE confused.

For future reference, when you say that clouds are "static" that makes me think your clouds aren't rotating around the bodies. Had you worded your question differently in the SVE thread, I would have been able to tell you it does not use UVNoise and never has.

[tallon43]

Just now, Galileo said:

Wait, so you have been talking about the UVnoise effect on clouds this whole time in the SVE thread? SVE does not use the UVnoise feature, the default EVE configs do. I think you were getting BoulderCo and SVE confused.

For future reference, when you say that clouds are "static" that makes me think your clouds aren't rotating around the bodies. Had you worded your question differently in the SVE thread, I would have been able to tell you it does not use UVNoise and never has.

I'm sorry, I don't know what UVnoise effect is. The reason why Ive been talking on both threads is because I tried it on both SVE and EVE, and both times, the clouds stay like as I mentioned above. Sorry for my bad explanation as well, it is quite hard to explain.

[Galileo]

4 minutes ago, tallon43 said:

I'm sorry, I don't know what UVnoise effect is. The reason why Ive been talking on both threads is because I tried it on both SVE and EVE, and both times, the clouds stay like as I mentioned above. Sorry for my bad explanation as well, it is quite hard to explain.

The UVNoise is what makes the clouds "change shape"  and look almost procedural. 

If you are expecting clouds to actually form, dissipate and reform, it's not possible and has never been in KSP. The UVnoise effect is the closest you will get and is probably what you are talking about. The cloud texture never actually changes but the UVnoise creates the illusion of movement. The default EVE cfgs use this effect but SVE does not.

Edited May 21, 2017 by Galileo

[tallon43]

4 minutes ago, Galileo said:

The UVNoise is what makes the clouds "change shape"  and look almost procedural. 

If you are expecting clouds to actually form, dissipate and reform, it's not possible and has never been in KSP. The UVnoise effect is the closest you will get and is probably what you are talking about. The default EVE cfgs use this effect but SVE does not.

That's Odd, I could have sworn a week ago that SVE was doing that. By any chance, do you know what values will give the UVNoise effect?

 

Sorry for being acting brain dead, I really just didn't know how to explain it

[Galileo]

1 minute ago, tallon43 said:

That's Odd, I could have sworn a week ago that SVE was doing that. By any chance, do you know what values will give the UVNoise effect?

 

Sorry for being acting brain dead, I really just didn't know how to explain it

Not off the top of my head. Give me until tomorrow and I will throw something together. I intend to update SVE this weekend anyway

Edited May 21, 2017 by Galileo