Beautiful Clouds

[PadFoot]

Personally, I find the cloudscape in FE1 Nov 2008 version being the most beautiful. They are puffy, densely populated, some are bigger some are smaller and they all are populated at different altitude.

 

Is it possible to migrate just the cloudscape from FE1 Nov 2008 to WOE/WOV/SF? If yes, how? Can anyone kindly help, I really love them all!

[Spinners]

Before you do that why not give ShrikeHawk's cloud's a go? A doddle to install and very nice.

[PadFoot]

I will certainly try. But I am jut now thinking migrating one of the aircrafts from say WoE MiG-17 to FE1. I just love the theatre. Is that also possible?

[ShrikeHawk]

You can put just the "cloud.tga" into WoV if you like. I've tried it and it works.

 

But...I'm certain the environmentsystem.ini will not work. I have a new environmentsystem.ini file I worked on this weekend that I like very much. It's pretty easy on the framerate, makes puffy clouds, and puts them on various levels. Would you like to try it?

[Liberty24]

You can put just the "cloud.tga" into WoV if you like. I've tried it and it works.

 

But...I'm certain the environmentsystem.ini will not work. I have a new environmentsystem.ini file I worked on this weekend that I like very much. It's pretty easy on the framerate, makes puffy clouds, and puts them on various levels. Would you like to try it?

 

Hi folks,

I downloaded some cloudscape mod around two years ago. That one even gets the sun glare right. And it doesn't bleed the frame rate at all. Don't recall the author but it is not up on the download section anymore.

 

I have FE 1 also and all the Wo* as well as SFP1. Upon comparison, WoI has puffy clouds by default. After reading this thread, I also tried out FE 1 just a couple of hours ago. PadFoot is right, the clouds looks vibrant. A bit like CFS2. Unlike Wo* and SFp1, puffy clouds are distributed at different altitudes.

 

Shrikehawk, can you share with us your environmentsystem.ini tweak? Thanks!

[ShrikeHawk]

Hey Guys,

 

Here's the settings I'm currently using that look pretty good to me. To use, just export the default enviromentsystem.ini from whatever game you're playing (WoV,WoE,WoI) using the CAT extract utility. The file will be automatically saved into the Flight folder of you install. Go to that folder and then rename the "enviromentsystem.ini" file as "enviromentsystem_ORIG.ini" so you always have an original copy. Open it, find the corresponding "[CloudsScattered]" and "[CloudsBroken]" sections in the file. Replace them with the following:

 

[CloudsScattered]

MaxClouds=54

MaxCloudParticles=81

3DCloudMaterial=CloudMaterial

3DCloudHorizontalSize=1800.0

3DCloudVerticalSize=2600.0

3DCloudSizeDeviation=0.47

3DCloudParticleDensity=1.4

ParticleSize=380.0

ParticleSizeDeviation=0.28

MinBaseAltitude=600.0

MaxBaseAltitude=1200.0

UseBottomRow=TRUE

MaxVisibleDistance=10000

 

[CloudsBroken]

MaxClouds=58

MaxCloudParticles=87

3DCloudMaterial=CloudMaterial

3DCloudHorizontalSize=4000.0

3DCloudVerticalSize=2900.0

3DCloudSizeDeviation=0.57

3DCloudParticleDensity=1.1

ParticleSize=360.0

ParticleSizeDeviation=0.22

MinBaseAltitude=600.0

MaxBaseAltitude=1000.0

UseBottomRow=TRUE

MaxVisibleDistance=10000

 

When you're done editing, do a "Save As" and change the filename to "enviromentsystem.ini". The whole operation should take about 5 minutes. No sweat! You could also copy the same sections from the FE1 "enviromentsystem.ini" file you like and do the same operation with the extracted file from WoV/WoE/WoI. Then paste the "cloud1.tga" from FE1 and into the Flight folder. That should get you pretty close to what you're used to.

 

The MinBaseAltitude in my settings above are VERY LOW so if you're flying over mountainous terrain, you might want to change that value to 800 or 1000.

 

I suggest trying some of the cloudskins or cloudscape clouds (loads of different images there) and see which ones fit your personal preference. Currently, I'm using the "Painted-Layered-512" cloud from "CloudSkins Too" with the settings above. A screenshot of how it looks in WoI is in my gallery here:

 

Let me know how it goes. Feedback is hugely appreciated.

[PadFoot]

Hey ShrikeHawk

 

I finally managed to have the time to go back and work on the Wo* installs.  Put in your clouds and they worked excellently well!

 

Just curious, what is/are the parameter(s) in environmentsystem.ini which generates clouds at different altitudes?  This feature is so fantastic!

 

Thanks!

 

PF