0.90 Kerbal Weather Systems! Alpha 0.5.3 WIP! (Jan 2)

[silverfox8124]

@Morthgal_Dwarf, you say you can't see my GUI? What mods do you have installed?

@xXIndestructibleEVAXx, Yes, it adds clouds to all the native planets with atmo, if you add your own planet, it won't have the clouds, as I haven't worked on an implementation for such yet.

[xXIndestructibleEVAXx]

Cool! What about wind? Like, does the wind work naturally, or do you have to set it, and does it happen on other atmo bodies?

[Morthgal_dwarf]

Thanks! Don't know why it doesn't work with me... I'll have to do a little checking around!

[silverfox8124]

Cool! What about wind? Like, does the wind work naturally, or do you have to set it, and does it happen on other atmo bodies?

Yes, wind happens on ANY body that has atmosphere.

@Morthgal_dwarf, I don't know why either, because you haven't told me anything except "it doesn't work" Can you please give me the information I requested?

[silverfox8124]

Update! New video added to show off the new features!

[Max.10.07]

Do the clouds do anything? Like I got Better atmos

[silverfox8124]

@Max.10.07, Nope, they are just for pretty stuffs, As we speak, I am working on making them move with the wind. I am also looking into getting Rain into the mix, and re-calculating how wind should behave in the atmosphere, (as it's quite tricky because there are values that I need to be able to change, but can't directly change them..) and plenty other things. And if you are more satisfied with better atmo's clouds, then use better atmo's clouds, but I do not suggest having both mods installed, as I don't think the clashing cloud layers would look good. And if you want more clouds, press ALT + N to bring up the cloud GUI, you can add your own layers that way.

[AndreyATGB]

Wind and rain would definitely make it better as a gameplay element. Wind right now is a magical force you can't see that pushes your stuff around, I'm not sure how this can be improved for KSP. Wind IRL is felt, but you can't feel in a game.

[ahappydude]

Nice to see your progress Whats this storm feature ?

[silverfox8124]

@AndreyATGB, well, wind is a magical invisible force that pushes your stuff around, I don't know how else I can make the wind better in regards to how you're thinking about it. I'm working on getting a formula down for proper wind speeds at certain altitudes, that will probably come in the next patch. Rain would be fun to have, but it's going to be a lot of work, and may be not happen for a few patches yet. But I can guarantee that rain will come.

[tofox]

" -Automatic wind? "

like random weather (wind speed/direction) ?

[silverfox8124]

@tofox, Like, In reality, there aren't people who set the wind speeds, it happens naturally, that is my goal with this, is for weather to happen naturally instead of the user having to set it.

[TavishThomas]

rain seems fairly easy to implement actually. all it really needs to do is hijack the gravity code and apply x amount of force in whatever direction the wind is headed+downwards. then the visuals could just be an overlay of rain effects and grayness at this stage of development.

mind you I'm just talking out of my bum to hopefully spitball some ideas.

[silverfox8124]

@TavishThomas, I've put a GREAT deal of thought into the rain, how it should be implemented, and how I'd like to go about it. Here's why you can't do an overlay:

-In basics, no matter the camera angle, the rain would always look like it's moving "down" relative to your camera, so if your camera is above the ship, rain is now moving sideways. A way around that would be to adjust the overlay depending on camera angle relative to ship, which would get overly complex, require several overlays, and would ultimately use more resources than reasonably wanted.

-To the above, it would be "better" to replace the overlay with a particle emitter above the camera, so you have the particle effect actually moving along a plane instead of textures, and there's a good chunk more I can do with particles than textures. But problem with this, is that you have the camera angle problem again, and to get around that would be overly complex and would end up wasting time to code when easier methods are available. Another problem would be that the rain should stop when it hits the ship, which if you have an overlay, or particle system above the camera, would require unnecessary ray-casting to see if the particle is supposed to be dead or not. A better idea than the overlay, but still not the best option so far.

-The option I'm taking, and what I see as best fit, easiest to implement based on current systems, and functionality and the vast things that it can provide, is to have the particles that make up the clouds, emit the rain particles, through a sub-emitter system. The cloud particles give me the inherited velocity that would be imposed on the rain particle, the location for the rain to spawn from, the actual effect of the rain coming from the clouds, make the rain look like it does IRL sorta, and it can affect the surrounding terrain and vehicles, even buildings. Using this method also allows way for other weather stuff to happen, such as snow, lightning, tornadoes, and anything else I come to think of that can utilize it. Since I'd using the cloud particles to obtain the inherited properties from (horizontal speed from the cloud's momentum imposed on the raindrop, height of the cloud particle, and location of the rain to spawn from, as well as a few good other properties), this makes it all the much easier to pass information on to the raindrops, and even give way to having splashing effects when the particles hit terrain or other objects. The rain could also affected by wind in this scenario, which would be simulated as an external force via the wind at the particles altitude as it falls, which wouldn't be simulated in the first two methods. This method however, would most likely be the most tasking, resource wise, but that all comes with playing around with values and the such. It'd be similar to how Minecraft's framerate drops when it starts to rain, just because of all those particles being spawned. It's a different situation with the snow however, as it falls slower (do to it's flat surface imposing drag on it) and there can be less of it to cause the same effect, with lasting longer, there are less calls made to draw new particles, and this shows vast performance increases when compared to rain.

TL;DR Overlay would be too stupidly complex to implement, particles above camera can't orient properly, Rain comes from clouds, period.

[tofox]

Ok thanks ya that what i was wondering, btw this is so very cool and it has so much potential i can't wait to see what happens.

[Spacepetscompany]

Hmmmmm........ I was thinking...... How about sound, proportional to the speed of the wind..... That would make this feel SO much more authentic!

[silverfox8124]

@Spacepetscompany, Hrmmm... I'll look into that, that may be seen sometime soon. Depending on how easy it would be to implement.

[CDK]

Can you add lightning and storms? Plzzzzz?

[tofox]

OK so on kerbin the weather i would assume is not too extreme in comparison to say eve or jool, and how hospitable the environments are.

suggestion - wind, air pressure, temperature highs and lows, and etc... vary planet to planet?

In sort different weather on other worlds.

[silverfox8124]

@tofox, that's planned to happen, however KSP isn't really made out too well for the whole weather thing as it may seem so far. I'm still working on finding a good way to go about setting/ changing the temperatures in given places, and going about daytime heating/nighttime cooling, as well as high fronts and low fronts for pressure systems. Also, yes, they will be very different from planet to planet, Probably not in the near future, but in due time harsh winds will blow through jool and the such. Implementing weather is quite the challenge I must say.

[Shad0wCatcher]

I can only imagine silver. Best of luck to you. Will be watching this thread intently. Will be an amazing addition the likes of the n-body integrators will be when they're finished.

[Voculus]

This mod looks very promising! Going to have to install it tomorrow, and launch a plane that simply hovers above the runway, thanks to super hurricane force winds!

[tygoo7]

Can you add lightning and storms? Plzzzzz?

I would guess that may be planned but it would take a while to implement.

[silverfox8124]

Lightning and storms shouldn't be asked for at the time, seeing how my mod even lacks the basics to start lightning, or thunderstorms. So put plain and simply, I put anywhere from 6+ hours on a weekday, to over 12+ hours on a weekend day, EVERY DAY into this mod, I've been dedicating a lot of time to pump out updates and features at the speed I have. And yes, this mod has tons of potential, which is something that might end up killing the mod some day, simply because it will be too overwhelming to handle when you have so many feature requests and things to try and keep track of, not to mention when you try and implement features that aren't really given the best options available (Like how I don't see any way to set the temperature at a specific location, so I'll have to do lots of magic to try and get that to work) that can be very hard to work with and implement.

All in all, I'd like it if we all kept our dreams and inspirations to a time where the mod shows that it can move that way. Yes, I have a hopes and dreams section, but it's there for hopes and dreams, something to aspire to, not to be accomplished right away. I know how ansy you guys are to have all these cool weather features, but even with the bare "basics" I have now over 4 thousand lines of code, that's 4000+ lines of code to make it work, and it's only doing so very little. I'm not to discourage your suggestions, but I'm showing you all how much I actually have on my plate right now and that sometimes suggesting things that won't happen until a month down the road, isn't such a good thing for productivity. I really appreciate all of your support, suggestions, downloads, even donations if you were so kind as to donate so I can offset some of the electrical bills and time this takes up to do. With that being said, I am doing this all for you guys, for FREE. In fact, I pay for you guys to have this mod in your games and KSP installs, just out of my love for sharing wonderful ideas and things that can be done.

Again, thank you all for your support, I am very hard at work with this mod, and I'm making sure that all things are good to go feature wise and everything else so that it can be shipped out to you guys to download and use. As always, have fun flying and don't let the calm breezes stall you out!

~Mwah <3~

~SilverFox8124

[tofox]

well im glad that your the one working on this.

Ill be happy with just a small nice breeze here and there.

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Edited November 13, 2014 by tofox