Realistic Clouds

[rowdyb00t]

@Goffik

  I’ve updated the post for ya. So the banding I’ve noticed even with the default. I recall reading a thread somewhere about this. I’ll do a search. Anyway it’s in the mornings and evenings in both summer and winter. The 3rd version I adjusted some of the lighting in winter, so that’s possibly the culprit. I’ll check in to it tonight. 

 

 

Edited October 16, 2019 by rowdyb00t

[Goffik]

28 minutes ago, rowdyb00t said:

@Goffik

  I’ve updated the post for ya. So the banding I’ve noticed even with the default. I recall reading a thread somewhere about this. I’ll do a search. Anyway it’s in the mornings and evenings in both summer and winter. The 3rd version I adjusted some of the lighting in winter, so that’s possibly the culprit. I’ll check in to it tonight. 

 

Great, thanks for providing the old version in the meantime, I appreciate it. 

 

I took a look at the thread you posted, and yes, the "banding" I saw was very similar. Not nearly as bad as the screenshots in that thread, but similar. I'm pretty sure both career missions were indeed quite early. The sun was up but not high... maybe 8am or so. Also, the summer QMs I tested were at 10am and noon, so that probably explains why I didn't notice anything then.

[rowdyb00t]

I’ll runs some tests on all the clouds with different times of day. Unfortunately I don’t think it can be completely fixed

[HappyHaddock]

The concentric circles in the shadows of the clouds is a known issue in the stock game many (including myself) have posted about before.

 

 

It appears at the apex of the skydome when there is a low angle of incident light striking the clouds, a situation most common around dawn/dusk, though there are other rarer occasions when the light strikes the clouds at the "wrong"angle such that this can be spotted in daylight.  The problem becomes more pronounced the denser the cloud coverage simply because there is more cloud around for you to see that these shadows actually form concentric circles.

 

The devs have made a lot of tweaks and improvements to the clouds of late, one of which seems to have ben to increase the amount of cloud cover present in "heavier" weather, but as mentioned above the more cloud in the sky the more noticeable these concentric rings become if the light catches them at the wrong angle.

 

I've spent a lot of the last year with my own cloud experiments trying to get rid of this unsightly anomaly without success, so if others do figure this out and find a solution I'd be pleased to hear of it.

 

HH

[rowdyb00t]

 

Here's a few more screens.

 The first pic map (Moscow winter) is from @may-bug map repaints. 

 

Edited October 18, 2019 by rowdyb00t

[Goffik]

Your clouds are a real game-changer mate. They look absolutely brilliant, so much better than vanilla. I haven't seen the "banding" again since going back to v2. Happy about that as I wouldn't want to be without this mod now. 

[jasta11ace]

I tried your cloud mod last evening. Absolutely stunning. My thanks to you, sir.

[Fazer_Beam]

Awesome! Thanks.

[rowdyb00t]

Updated first post with newest version

 

 

Edited October 28, 2019 by rowdyb00t

[Marianggello]

Hello rowdyb00t, what is the difference between v1 and v4? Do I have installed all these versions or only the last?

Edited October 29, 2019 by Marianggello

[rowdyb00t]

@Marianggello 

Only have one version. I’ve been leaving the old versions on there just in case someone does not like the newer ones. 

Edited October 29, 2019 by rowdyb00t

[vonGraf]

Very beautiful cloudy sky now. Thank you.

[Marianggello]

1 hour ago, rowdyb00t said:

@Marianggello 

Only have one version. I’ve been leaving the old versions on there just in case someone does not like the newer ones. 

 

Ok, thank you.

[OrLoK]

Your clouds killed me! (not poor judgment...oh no!  )

 

 

 

[Ouky1991]

On 10/28/2019 at 4:08 PM, rowdyb00t said:

Updated first post with newest version

Thanks a ton for this mod. It's a whole new game, especially if you combine it with old sky colors mod. Are you planning to support this when they'll update clouds quality? It would be cool if we keep this look for high quality, which should save some fps according to them. 

[JSOflyer69]

These new clouds look great, thanks for the hard work!?

[rowdyb00t]

@P_Gora

   Not sure if your into mods, I noticed your post in the DD. Try these, they are so much better than the vanilla. 

[OrLoK]

1 hour ago, rowdyb00t said:

@P_Gora

   Not sure if your into mods, I noticed your post in the DD. Try these, they are so much better than the vanilla. 

slightly off topic but does your cloud mod change the ingame lighting (shaders?)as well as the gfx of the clouds?

[rowdyb00t]

@OrLoK

   I’ve edited the sky.ini files only. The cloud lighting and gfx are changed in these files I’m pretty certain. I have not messed with any other part of the cloud designs yet. Also the old sky color file is in there too. I liked it better. 
  On another note @LizLemon has a mod for the sun size if your interested in that. It looks as it should now, not like a giant ball in the sky. 

[bzc3lk]

5 minutes ago, rowdyb00t said:

@OrLoK

   I’ve edited the sky.ini files only. The cloud lighting and gfx are changed in these files I’m pretty certain. I have not messed with any other part of the cloud designs yet. Also the old sky color file is in there too. I liked it better. 
  On another note @LizLemon has a mod for the sun size if your interested in that. It looks as it should now, not like a giant ball in the sky. 

 

Your mod together with LizLemon's sun mod now makes the snow have that white glare that one would expect in such an environment instead of that blue appearance from the vanilla game. Kudos and thanks to both of you for your contribution to the community.

[rowdyb00t]

6 hours ago, Ouky1991 said:

Are you planning to support this when they'll update clouds quality?

   I’m fairly certain that this mod will work with the cloud update. The update is only bringing another setting to the clouds. I’ll check it out after the release. 

[LizLemon]

They have already made some changes to the clouds. The noise texture that is used was simply upscaled, which is probably to try and minimize the shimmer. Unfortunately they haven't figured out that filter>add noise in photoshop is the wrong type for the cloud system they have.

 

I'm also guessing that part of the cloud update will be increasing the sampling, which can already be done in gpresets.

[peregrine7]

Just adding kudos, this mod looks gorgeous in VR. The old sky colour is lovely, all the lighting looks great. A real shame the devs changed things up on this front. Your clouds also look very nice.

All round, great mod. Makes me want to fly some careers and admire the pretty view. Wish we had this on MP servers.

[rowdyb00t]

Updated version in first post

   I think that I am finally satisfied with this version. Let me know if there are any issues with lighting or anything else. Enjoy

 

[Oyster_KAI]

Not sure if this is my wrong impression, I felt better performance and smooth with this mod.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Oyster_KAI

[rowdyb00t]

The cloud files have a few lines in them that can be adjusted to help with that. Such as noise amp, iterations and cloud smoothing. Those are just some examples. The vanilla clouds were set ( IMO ) wrong for performance. The jittering and stutters came from some of those examples. 

[Blooddawn1942]

Man, that looks simply gorgeous! 

I will wait until the cloud update goes live with the next patch just to be sure things get not messed up with the mod installed and enhanced cloud tech arriving. 

But after that I'll install this mod for sure!! 

[Ouky1991]

Perfection. 

[eastriverman]

5 hours ago, rowdyb00t said:

Updated version in first post

   I think that I am finally satisfied with this version. Let me know if there are any issues with lighting or anything else. Enjoy

 

Nice to cry....thanx a lot for this beautiful MOD. Subtracting all this war stuff, this could be my Shangri La ?

[LizLemon]

The cirrus cloud issue is caused by them only being lit by ambient light. Jacking up the ambient is not a good solution as it loses what little contrast this game already has and causes the tonemapper/autoexposure to go even crazier than the stuff it already does.

 

Also you sun color is wrong. Direct illumination in this game is sun + ambient and those two should add up to around 6000k at noon.

[rowdyb00t]

@LizLemon 

   I didn’t change the ambient lighting the sky.ini, I adjusted the color in the light bmp. Also I never changed the sun color, unless that is for the sun color. 
   So are you saying that changing the lighting on the sky dome will affect the contrast on ground textures and objects?  I didn’t see any negative affects on anything. There is still a banding effect in the mornings and evenings. Have you downloaded it and seen these to be an issue?

Edited November 5, 2019 by rowdyb00t

[LizLemon]

8 minutes ago, rowdyb00t said:

@LizLemon 

   I didn’t change the ambient lighting the sky.ini, I adjusted the color in the light bmp. Also I never changed the sun color. 
   So are you saying that changing the lighting on the sky dome will affect the contrast on ground textures and objects?  I didn’t see any negative affects on anything. There is still a banding effect in the mornings and evenings. Have you downloaded it and seen these to be an issue?

 

I'm not talking about the ski.ini, I mean the light.bmp - which is the lighting for everything. Boosting up its brightness and dropping the saturation just makes everything else even more washed out that it already is. You've also made nights very bright by just increasing the entirety of ambient brightness and not just the right half (which is sun above 0 degrees section.)

 

Direct lighting color in stock game is wrong and your mod doesn't fix this issue. Its ambient + sun color = direct light color in light.bmp.

[rowdyb00t]

@LizLemon 

    Well I didn’t just simply brighten the whole thing up. I brightened up the top two parameters of color on the right sides of them. Possibly I brightened up the center too much resulting in a brighter 10pm or 11 pm?  Did you test this? I’m just curious, I understand what you are saying in the light bmp. I didn’t notice any drastic changes in lighting only other than you are now able to see the cirrus clouds in the sky dome. 

Edited November 5, 2019 by rowdyb00t

[LizLemon]

You did brighten up all of the ambient line. You also scaled the image to 126x128 when it should be 128x128.

[rowdyb00t]

Whoops   I’ll fix it later. I’m not at home I currently out of town so I can use my laptop. Thanks Liz 

[LizLemon]

You also made a similar mistake with the summer skydome. The sky is much brighter on one side than the other.

[rowdyb00t]

46 minutes ago, LizLemon said:

You also made a similar mistake with the summer skydome. The sky is much brighter on one side than the other.

 That’s odd I never messed with the sky dome. That’s from your old sky color mod iirc. 
 

It’s not your mod just checked. 

Edited November 5, 2019 by rowdyb00t

[OrLoK]

4 hours ago, rowdyb00t said:

Whoops   I’ll fix it later. I’m not at home I currently out of town so I can use my laptop. Thanks Liz 

hurry up!

Edited November 5, 2019 by OrLoK

[rowdyb00t]

@OrLoK

  Is the night sky too bright in this version? I only have my laptop since I’m working out of town. I normally test my modifications out on my pc at home in vr. It didn’t look to bright to me. Anyhow I plan on fixing it tonight

[TP_Tufty]

Well done on providing this great mod for us people who don't know how to modify anything,

but just love the sim!

I am grateful for anything that enhances it, even if not 100% accurate or has some little flaws, or whatever.

I certainly  can’t  do any better!!!!

thanks again