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[PLUGIN][ALPHA-10] City Lights and Clouds on Kerbin/Others

rbray89

By rbray89
in KSP1 Mod Development

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XNerd_Bomber

XNerd_Bomber

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I finally tried this out, and I must say, it's pretty awesome. I have a few suggestions, though. First of all, make more clouds! The clouds look nice as they are, but the planet still feels very "bare." Also, make the clouds more white, right now, at a 150 km orbit, they still look mostly transparent.

The lights look cool, but right now, they just look like lots of dots scattered around. Once you get more of the technical stuff down, I would suggest trying to get it to look more like city layouts.

Besides that, everything looks freaking awesome. I'm glad someone's finally trying to get something like this going. And if you can add clouds to be seen even from the surface, you're going to have a ton of people thanking you!

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Superfluous J

Superfluous J

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This is done on purpose so that later, I can add higher res mapping for low-alititude flights.

This statement intrigues me. Are you thinking of taking the "low" res light map and doing something to it in-game to add jitter so in the game you can see structure in what is actually in the image just a blob of yellow and white? I ask for 2 reasons: That's a really cool idea, and the thought of loading a full-planet texture much larger than the 8k one I'm using now is a bit daunting :)

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rbray89

rbray89

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This statement intrigues me. Are you thinking of taking the "low" res light map and doing something to it in-game to add jitter so in the game you can see structure in what is actually in the image just a blob of yellow and white? I ask for 2 reasons: That's a really cool idea, and the thought of loading a full-planet texture much larger than the 8k one I'm using now is a bit daunting :)

Well, what I thought initially is that I would create the cities based off of the alpha of the lightmap. Read it in, then place cities based around that. Remember the "light grid" in the pre-alpha? it was a test for generating high-resolution lights. I flew rather recently, and saw that that is essentially what night time looks like from overhead. rows and columns of light arranged in a grid with some patches missing.

The other thought I had was to "chunk" the high-res map into sections and load them up as individual PQSCity blocks below the lower res mapping. Either way, the PQSCity method is good for high poly mapping with limited rendering distance as I found out when trying to make the global light map with it. I like the first method, as it would also get me to create a good algorithm for city block/road generation that I could re-use when creating cities.

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rbray89

rbray89

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I find the effect much better. Thank you.

Looking forward to see where this mod goes.

What do you think of Jool? It should have some sort of cloud effect now, though I'm afraid I'm better at modding then performing planetary transfers. I checked it out in the Map view, but I'm not sure if that is a proper test or not.

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razark

razark

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What do you think of Jool? It should have some sort of cloud effect now, though I'm afraid I'm better at modding then performing planetary transfers. I checked it out in the Map view, but I'm not sure if that is a proper test or not.

Can't say that I've ever been to Jool, so I'll have to leave it for others to say.

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CaptRobau

CaptRobau

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What do you think of Jool? It should have some sort of cloud effect now, though I'm afraid I'm better at modding then performing planetary transfers. I checked it out in the Map view, but I'm not sure if that is a proper test or not.

Download HyperEdit. Allows you to teleport your way to a Jool orbit. Very handy for modding purposes.

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rbray89

rbray89

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I feel I'm being made obsolete :P

If you want to use my cloud textures I'm completely okay with it.

Haha, not at all! The eventual idea is that people will be able to add their own textures and select different shaders (different blending mechanisms most likely), colors, texture sets for the various planets and moons. I was mostly just tired of floating above Kerbin thinking that it looked "wrong" without any lights or moving clouds.

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rbray89

rbray89

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I remember asking if this was possible when Universe Replacer first came out and I was told "NO!". I should really start charging for my predictive questioning :D Great work!

Haha, thanks! Never let anyone tell you something isn't possible when programming is involved. It might cost more money, perform poorly, or take forever to implement, but it is possible.

It can be Fast, Good, or Cheap. Pick two

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BFGfreak

BFGfreak

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Nice mod! I'll have to decide between it and the cloud pack. :(

Right now I'm actually using both. I imagine that once the clouds have more definition I might switch fully to this pack though, especially if rbray can make clouds appear on the surface.

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Insomn

Insomn

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I'm using somebody's cloud texture, and then just the lights from this mod. It's great!

Though I'm sure some brilliantly talented person will put all this together to create the ultimate Kerbin pack, I can honestly say that right now my Kerbin is looking rather realistic.

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rbray89

rbray89

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Any plans for clouds for other planets? How about Duna?

MarscloudsMarsExplorationRoverMission,Cornell_JPL_NASA.jpg

mars95-3.gif

Eve perhaps?

5097356173_0f4495eb35_o.jpg

044a7__Venus_Clouds.jpg

I think it would be cool if you couldn't see what Eve's surface was like without landing there.

I'm running some tests with Jool, but all the plannets (except likely Moho) and even some moons will get clouds.

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Tw1

Tw1

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I'm running some tests with Jool, but all the plannets (except likely Moho) and even some moons will get clouds.

..But I can only think of one moon that needs clouds. None of the others have any atmosphere last time I checked. Also, how is this going in terms of memory use? I imagine the same textures could be combined to achieve different effects. One of the drawbacks from universe replacer was extra lag, I always stuck with the lower res versions to keep things fast.

With Eve- please don't go for total coverage. My probes and soon - to be colonist would like the occasional patch of sky visible. (just tiny bits.)

I'll try out the current version soon.

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rbray89

rbray89

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..But I can only think of one moon that needs clouds. None of the others have any atmosphere last time I checked. Also, how is this going in terms of memory use? I imagine the same textures could be combined to achieve different effects. One of the drawbacks from universe replacer was extra lag, I always stuck with the lower res versions to keep things fast.

With Eve- please don't go for total coverage. My probes and soon - to be colonist would like the occasional patch of sky visible. (just tiny bits.)

I'll try out the current version soon.

True, only one (Laythe?) will need a moon.

As for memory, It shouldn't end up being too bad. I should be able to re-use some textures (at least the blending textures) and I think I found the cause of the blurry-close textures which I should be able to correct.

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