Realistic Clouds

[Redwo1f]

Oops, the stock lighting file I uploaded yesterday had the incorrect file structure (my bad) - was missing the "data" folder. Should have zipped directly from my mod folder. Sorry. Now corrected with proper structure (so need to re-download or make that correction yourself).

 

(P.S. The older stock winter lighting uses a less colorful/more muted and "cold" lighting than the current stock (which was changed about 2.5 years ago). The current stock winter can easily be swapped in if desired).

Edited June 2, 2021 by Redwo1f

[Dutch2]

On 6/1/2021 at 3:27 PM, Goffik said:

 

Maybe that can. They mentioned somewhere (possibly in this thread) that there are plans to look at the clouds and weather at some point. No details or dates given though, so don't get excited. Rowdy's mod does a stellar job for now though, at least for those of us flying offline.

 

 

Edit: Found the post

 

 

So maybe they will invite Rowdy to join, like they did with Oysters cockpits and ICPD 4k templates. 

[Goffik]

2 hours ago, Dutch2 said:

So maybe they will invite Rowdy to join, like they did with Oysters cockpits and ICPD 4k templates. 

 

Well, from the post I got the impression that they respect Rowdy's work and the results, but have their own direction in mind and are just waiting until they have time to implement it. But who knows?

[jokerBR]

3 hours ago, Goffik said:

 

Well, from the post I got the impression that they respect Rowdy's work and the results, but have their own direction in mind and are just waiting until they have time to implement it. But who knows?

Same impression I had, but there's also a path where they work together in a new common direction for both. Anyway, until that, Rowdy's clouds is the way to go SP.

[Beebop]

1 hour ago, jokerBR said:

Anyway, until that, Rowdy's clouds is the way to go

?

[Goffik]

5 hours ago, jokerBR said:

Same impression I had, but there's also a path where they work together in a new common direction for both. Anyway, until that, Rowdy's clouds is the way to go SP.

 

One thing to bear in mind is that they need a direction which produces reasonable looking clouds at all levels and on differing hardware. Rowdy's clouds are fantastic if you have the horsepower to run them, but not everyone has. My old "mid-range" rig didn't stand a chance running the latest version in VR and my new rig can only just do it with acceptable performance. The devs aren't going to want to alienate the majority of their market by making the sim suitable for high-end rigs only.

[ubik_2008]

Hi @rowdyb00t

is this mod compatible with 4.602?

BR

[Goffik]

47 minutes ago, ubik_2008 said:

is this mod compatible with 4.602?

 

Yes, it works fine. If you install your mods with JSGME then it's a very simple task to just enable them and check to see if they work with latest patches. If not, you just disable them again, no harm done.

[ubik_2008]

and should I enable mods in the options?

[Beebop]

Yes.

[ubik_2008]

The new clouds are very good looking, but the background takes a yellowish cast that I don't really like much and that is not totally removed even using the Redwo1f stock lighting mod. In addition I found that the cumulonimbus add on is a fps killer even for my rig which is not exactly entry level - an RX 5700 XT. Eventually I resolved to uninstall it. 

Still scratching my head though... 

[rowdyb00t]

1 hour ago, ubik_2008 said:

The new clouds are very good looking, but the background takes a yellowish cast that I don't really like much and that is not totally removed even using the Redwo1f stock lighting mod. In addition I found that the cumulonimbus add on is a fps killer even for my rig which is not exactly entry level - an RX 5700 XT. Eventually I resolved to uninstall it. 

Still scratching my head though... 

 

  Pics? 
 

The stock lighting will make the ambient light, clouds and haze a different color. There are values that have been changed in the ini. files to soften up the light. 
    The yellow cast is from one of the skydomes. Maybe I’ll look into adjusting that. I’ve been extremely busy at work and haven’t messed with anything in a month or so. 

[ubik_2008]

[rowdyb00t]

@ubik_2008

 

   Yup that was intended. I never noticed the yellow though. It makes the landscape a bit more saturated. The reason I’ve made so many different skydomes was because there needs to be a third cloud layer for cirrus clouds or cirrostratus . That would change the look of the sky and lighting, then I would only need one skydome and one light.bmp. 
   In RL the sky is always the same color and the light will always be the same too on a clear day, it’s the way the sun cuts through the clouds and haze that makes the different looks of the atmosphere. So here I’ve just tried to replicate different weather situations. If you’d like I could talk you through a simple fix.  
 

 

example.

Edited June 13, 2021 by rowdyb00t

[Redwo1f]

6 hours ago, ubik_2008 said:

 In addition I found that the cumulonimbus add on is a fps killer even for my rig which is not exactly entry level - an RX 5700 XT. Eventually I resolved to uninstall it. 

Still scratching my head though... 

 

Might I suggest you try CloudsVR.2? It will be MUCH lighter on the FPS (that is what I am currently using even though I don't have VR). And yes, I eventually chose not to use cumulonimbus in the end due to framerate. 

 

I try to keep as much processing power available now (and reduce overhead as much as I can) due to time dilation issues with the GBS engine (that I don't think everyone releases are actually occurring). Anyway, that is my motivation, and very much a give and take - but the CloudsVR.2 do look really really nice too and Rowdy did a fantastic job with them as well! ?

[Beebop]

It looks like a tornado is about to form and sweep up Dorthy's house!

Superb shot!  What are the atmosphere conditions settings for that?

 

And quick, where did I put those red slippers?

[BladeMeister]

That is heavy_100. If you find it in the ME let me know.

 

S!Blade<><

[ubik_2008]

3 hours ago, rowdyb00t said:

@ubik_2008

 

   If you’d like I could talk you through a simple fix.  

that would be appreciated, thanks

2 hours ago, Redwo1f said:

 

Might I suggest you try CloudsVR.2?

I'll give it a try, thanks for your suggestion. In fact when I have some spare time I'll benchmark some combinations of these addons as I believe they are noteworthy

[sniperton]

In my experience it's mainly the lights#.bmp files that are primarily responsible for the brightness and tone of the terrain, including the colours and self-shadows of clouds and those cast on the ground.

Thing is that they are not map-specific, that is, one setting that looks good with the Stalingrad autumn map may look bad with the Rheinland summer map, and vice versa.

The stock files still provide the best balance, but they are far not perfect, to say the least.

And to add to that, very much depends on your monitor and gamma settings. Lowering the gamma results in over-saturated ("orange") colours on some maps, while raising the gamma creates an enviroment that is too bright for my eyes.

And all this is not about @rowdyb00t's excellent clouds, its just about the terrain.

 

 

[HappyHaddock]

Many factors contribute to the look of so many others, you can't adjust one without having to rebalance all the rest.

 

In terms of the terrain; it's appearance is affected by the light files, skydome files, sky.ini files, settings within the textures files, settings within shaders and probably a lot more.

 

It is relatively quick and easy to tweak any single file to improve the appearance of any single part of the game, much more slow going to tweak everything to improve the  look of all of the game without upsetting, or better still improve, the overall balance which isn't great in the stock game to start with.

[Highwayman]

@rowdyb00t Massive fan of your clouds mod for VR in our group, we have one sticky point though, not to do with your Mod, but with the clouds in general that we were wondering if there is a fix for.

 

The banding in the clouds I've seen raised in the troubleshooting forum, but was closed as 'normal'. The one I haven't seen raised is the repetitive animation at the cloud edges. It's like there are two similar shaped cloud edges that switch back and forth every half a second and whilst it's minor, it can be very distracting... Any idea if this can be disabled?

 

We're all running Clouds VR2 here, but the same thing happens with the stock clouds.

[rowdyb00t]

@Highwayman  

 

The best way to remove it ( well mostly) is changing the cloud samples in the gpreset file to 128 or higher. I have a link in the first post for that. It’s very annoying. Another way for fixing it is lowering the cloud detail and noise amp on the sky ini files. 

  It’s been called jittering in some discussions. 

 

Edited June 21, 2021 by rowdyb00t

[Highwayman]

4 minutes ago, rowdyb00t said:

@Highwayman  

 

The best way to remove it ( well mostly) is changing the cloud samples in the gpreset file to 128 or higher. I have a link in the first post for that. It’s very annoying. Another way for fixing it is lowering the cloud detail and noise amp on the sky ini files. 

  It’s been called jittering in some discussions. 

 

 

Thank you! I'll try it tonight ?

[Emil109]

Hi, very thanks, downloading best regards

[AWC]

@rowdyb00t I dont know what youve done, but these clouds, lighting and sky effects just make the world come alive. It feels like a different environment. I wish it was an official change.

[Goffik]

Not strictly related to clouds or this mod, but is there a way to remove the "sheet rain" effect? It's not the individual rain drops, it appears to be a large fixed texture. It might look good on monitors (haven't checked) but it looks absolute rubbish in VR.

[rowdyb00t]

5 hours ago, Goffik said:

Not strictly related to clouds or this mod, but is there a way to remove the "sheet rain" effect? It's not the individual rain drops, it appears to be a large fixed texture. It might look good on monitors (haven't checked) but it looks absolute rubbish in VR.

It’s in the texture file. You could possibly erase it.

[Goffik]

16 hours ago, rowdyb00t said:

It’s in the texture file. You could possibly erase it.

 

Yes I think I've found it, in the Landscape folder? I haven't had time to test a blank texture yet, but will do tomorrow. (Well, later today for me now...)

 

I'd never really noticed it before because you don't tend to fly in bad weather during career mode. But I've been performance testing with your overcast clouds to see if I can run them or not, so lots of wet weather flying.

 

 

Edit:

That did it. A blank texture for rain.dds and rain_fog.dds got rid of the "sheet" effects. Also reduced the size of the rain drops (rain_drop.dds) to stop them looking like incoming gold balls. Looks much better now.

 

Only remaining issue is when your pilot is directly exposed to the rain. The droplets land on a invisible pain of glass about two feet in front of your face, rather than on your googles! ?  Probably nothing can be done about that though, unfortunately.

Edited July 25, 2021 by Goffik
Extra info.

[rowdyb00t]

   I’ve been fine tuning the latest version a little bit lately. I’ve worked on the sky and lighting to suit the weather. For instance, the sky is more blue when there is less haze/moisture and less blue when more. I’m also trying to get some better performance out of the clouds. Should have something for you to look at soon. It will be just one version. It will have some grey overcast in it with the heavier weather options. 

[Picchio]

@rowdyb00t Thanks for the continued effort you're putting in this mod of yours. I admit I have stopped using it because I feel it's not mature enough yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing your progress.

Also, out of curiosity, about the latest dev update... is that you, working on the new environment/weather?

[Beebop]

7 minutes ago, Picchio said:

I admit I have stopped using it because I feel it's not mature enough yet

Ummm, OK.  But it still looks tons better than stock and I'll always take a good looking 'Beta' over an "official" version if it looks better.

Something tells me that the new clouds will still fall short a bit.  I just hope it doesn't break all the work rowdyb00t has done.

But...if rowdy is working with the dev's they couldn't have made a better choice IMO.  That would be fantastic and I'd love to be proved wrong in my expectations.

[SCG_motoadve]

This is the best mod . and its much better than default clouds.

Specially heavy weather and overcast with grey skies very immersive.

Thanks for your work.

[Spaz-505]

I just learned about this mod, its awesome!  Thanks for all the hard work to increase the realism and significantly improve the clouds!!!

 

I have one observation that I'm trying to understand.  I have a summer VL mission, using clouds heavy08.  In the game, the cloud coverage is quite sparse compared to the default ones.  I tired several settings and found that heavy05 produces much more cloud coverage than heavy06-09.  Since I've just loaded this mod yesterday, I don't have a clue where to begin investigating.  I did notice in the mission planner, the clouds appear much more dense for heavy06-09 than they do in the game.

 

Any suggestions where to start looking or possible solutions greatly appreciated!!!

[rowdyb00t]

40 minutes ago, 49th_SPAZ said:

I just learned about this mod, its awesome!  Thanks for all the hard work to increase the realism and significantly improve the clouds!!!

 

I have one observation that I'm trying to understand.  I have a summer VL mission, using clouds heavy08.  In the game, the cloud coverage is quite sparse compared to the default ones.  I tired several settings and found that heavy05 produces much more cloud coverage than heavy06-09.  Since I've just loaded this mod yesterday, I don't have a clue where to begin investigating.  I did notice in the mission planner, the clouds appear much more dense for heavy06-09 than they do in the game.

 

Any suggestions where to start looking or possible solutions greatly appreciated!!!

 I’ll check it out

[Spaz-505]

Thank you!  I did some more tests, I may have found something.  I looked back at the past few pages of this thread and saw your comment that the mod was developed with the cloud setting on "high". I had my on "extreme", so I changed it to "high", now "Heavy_08" has much more sky coverage than before.  Could this possibly be tied to what I observed?

[Beebop]

Yep.  This mod works best with "High" clouds.

[rowdyb00t]

2 hours ago, 49th_SPAZ said:

Thank you!  I did some more tests, I may have found something.  I looked back at the past few pages of this thread and saw your comment that the mod was developed with the cloud setting on "high". I had my on "extreme", so I changed it to "high", now "Heavy_08" has much more sky coverage than before.  Could this possibly be tied to what I observed?

  No, extreme just makes the clouds look like plastic. If your using the grey sky version, I think I remember the clouds In that one being more sparse than others. I’ve been working on the mod a bit so this should get addressed. 

[Spaz-505]

I have not tried the grey sky version, only Version 15.  I don't know why, changing the clouds from extreme to high did correct the sparse issue with cloud settings Heavy_06-09.

 

The below screenshots taking with each setting, the cloud cover is significantly different. 

 

Taken with cloud setting "extreme"

Taken with cloud setting "high"

Edited August 19, 2021 by 49th_SPAZ
more comparable screenshot

[SCG_motoadve]

Question, in VR there is a white layer when using the cloud mod, clarity is affected, is there a way to solve this?

I have notice this more lately with the Vive pro 2.

[Beebop]

3 hours ago, SCG_motoadve said:

Question, in VR there is a white layer when using the cloud mod, clarity is affected, is there a way to solve this?

Are you using the VR versions?

See OP and bottom of first post.

 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Beebop