An advanced weather system

[Grease1991]

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. 

 

[Drew Kerman]

I've always believed baked weather is the way to go - have an external program crunch the heavy numbers and spit out a script of weather patterns for the game to load and follow. I can't think of anything player-driven in the game that would affect weather so there's no real reason to have the game itself simulate it in real-time.

I think our best chance of this happening would be someone who could work this project into their educational course or simply have an extreme passion for atmospheric dynamics. Which would be relatively rare I would think. Even on a small scale simulating weather would be a huge project to undertake, which is no doubt why no one has gotten around to finishing such a mod yet.

Beyond simulation, there's also the graphical aspects to consider. I recall someone was making a graphical mod that let you simulate rain and even that was dropped due to the extra work on the game engine. We have to question weather KSP is even capable of displaying the weather with a playable framerate even if it doesn't have to actively simulate it. People already have trouble with just clouds. Although I hear the newer Unity particle engine is pretty nice.

I'd love to see a weather mod, but I'm not surprised at all that we haven't yet.

[Grease1991]

The main reason why i would ultimately prefer a simulation is the possible build ups and quirks that would happen, not due to player.
and the idea that it could be implemented in with something like scan sat and you could watch weather fronts or thing and have to plan launches and landings due to weather. 

like you said a simulation would be a MASSIVE undertaking but if it could be done efficiently that would be preferred.

maybe a very basic low level and then bring the actual weather in the bubble around the craft.

I'm not versed in coding or programming but this is more to spark ideas for people that know what they are doing.

[hypervelocity]

I would really love to see someone taking the challenge, but my gut tells me it will be a huge strain for the KSP engine.

[sarbian]

13 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

We have to question weather KSP is even capable of displaying the weather with a playable framerate even if it doesn't have to actively simulate it. People already have trouble with just clouds. Although I hear the newer Unity particle engine is pretty nice.

I am tired of post that say that Unity is some subpar engine. You can do the same thing that you do in any other engine if you do it properly.

[Drew Kerman]

1 hour ago, sarbian said:

I am tired of post that say that Unity is some subpar engine

That's not what I said, nor what I was trying to imply. if you're going to correct me, fine - but please don't put words in my mouth while you're doing it. I'm not going to get into an argument about the graphical capabilities of KSP but I don't feel wrong in pointing out that they are an issue for a lot of people so it does in fact count as a consideration any developer of this mod will have to contend with

[Grease1991]

2 hours ago, sarbian said:

I am tired of post that say that Unity is some subpar engine. You can do the same thing that you do in any other engine if you do it properly.

while i won't say that unity is sub par, I will say that it was never intended to take on a project like KSP, and in a lot of ways unity has been the hold up in a lot of things with ksp, (look at the current wheel situation). but i'm getting of topic in my own thread.

[diomedea]

@Grease1991: if you really want to be involved, best would be to contact the author of Kerbal Weather System (don't stop at the version currently in the OP, I helped him make one a lot more complete for KSP 1.1.3, it's a realistic simulation of weather running on the base of KSP, though without graphics effects and currently takes a good chunk of CPU cycles). Last I knew he was still looking for someone to help get weather right. But be prepared for a lot of work and having to learn an enormous amount about thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, chemistry, and many other fields. In the end I couldn't afford to keep spending every hour of every day on that, more so while having other more important personal issues.