Cloud particle updates

[+Dante-JT 6]

I've been improving current cloud particle texture for one with better resolution based in a photo of a cumulus that I've took with my digicam :)

[+Fates 63]

Excellent!~

[Dagger 21]

now those are some great looking clouds!can't wait to fly through them!!

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Dante, I don't *see* clouds, I see generalized fog.

 

Interesting texture. Can you collect them into well isolated large clumps, to represent large towering cumulus clouds that look hard edged from a long distance from the player's cockpit? I'm thinking that fewer larger clouds, with significant spacing between them would conserve performance as compared to the dense packed layers of industry standard "flight sim" white flak puff clouds. Can you do something new with these textures, never done before?

 

I don't recall the season the Falklands war was fought, but it was winter down there I think, correct? Maybe you are modelling the drab wintery overcast kind of cloud cover we see in winter in the northern hemisphere. The mental Psycho image I have of the cold winter sea off Argentina is the same I have of the grey skies of the northern Atlantic. Your clouds, or fog, does match that image, if it is correct of course.

[+Dante-JT 6]

Interesting texture. Can you collect them into well isolated large clumps, to represent large towering cumulus clouds that look hard edged from a long distance from the player's cockpit? I'm thinking that fewer larger clouds, with significant spacing between them would conserve performance as compared to the dense packed layers of industry standard "flight sim" white flak puff clouds. Can you do something new with these textures, never done before?

 

I think yes, we can vertically assemble these clumps to shape like towering cumulus here and there besides the conventional ones. At the moment, it's industry standard flight sim clouds (Lock On FC, F4:AF and WoE) where a single billboarded cloud particle is clustered in large fat tridimensional clumps creating the volumetric effect - IL-2 '46 looks like it's slightly doing something else, it feels like its switching to geometry in closer LODs instead of only denser particle clusters - I see edges in IL-2 clouds here, that's why I suspect some geometry is also involved, unlike the other flight sims.

 

I don't recall the season the Falklands war was fought, but it was winter down there I think, correct? Maybe you are modelling the drab wintery overcast kind of cloud cover we see in winter in the northern hemisphere. The mental Psycho image I have of the cold winter sea off Argentina is the same I have of the grey skies of the northern Atlantic. Your clouds, or fog, does match that image, if it is correct of course.

 

Was in autumm entering winter, the cloud cover is pretty much all time like this, large cumulus formations with holes here and there where you can spot the sea below. If you read Hostile Skies, or Sea Harrier Over The Falklands, the accounting of the air combats always mention "I saw a canopy glimpsy through a hole in the clouds below" or "the Turbo Mentor dived trying to reach the protection of the dense cumulus below" (Ward, describing an encounter with T-34C Turbo Mentors armed trainers).

 

Summing up, clouds are essential part of the air combat arena here, much like corridors are essential part of gameplay in a Doom-type fps game. :)

[Gryphonne 0]

Will the weather be dynamic as well? like in FS2004 for example?

[+Dante-JT 6]

Will the weather be dynamic as well? like in FS2004 for example?

 

The system will run weather scripts (lua scripts with cloud formations' density, position and lighting conditions) probably updated at each campaign day, or perhaps each campaign realtime hour for a better dynamic feel.

[atoll1 0]

some nice looking clouds.

 

Hope it doesn't have that same issue in SFP/WOV/WOE where clouds can rotate when viewed at certain angles and one rotates the camera...