Cloud weirdness

[maddogx 13]

I've noticed something about the volumetric clouds - in some situations they look a bit weird when rotating the camera. It's difficult to explain, so here's a video.

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This is with clouds set to very high, but as far as I can tell it happens on all settings. (Except "disabled", obviously.)

So is this just a visual glitch that's on the devs radar to get fixed, or is it just an aspect of the cloud tech that we will have to live with?

Edited October 5, 2011 by MadDogX

[purepassion 22]

I noticed this from the very beginning but kept it quiet..

Might this be a side effect from how they actually work?

[metalcraze 290]

Aren't they rendered using fractals (procedurally) - I think similar technique is used in software like Terragen?

So obviously changing an angle will cause a different recalculation.

They are not just flying sprites like in every other flight sim. I kinda like fractal clouds more.

[bullet purveyor 85]

I noticed this to. I think it has something to do with the FOV. When I zoomed in i didn't get that effect.

[twisted 128]

when i saw it i thought it looked like wind patterns and evaporation on sped up video footage. clouds do look nice tho.

[metalcraze 290]

I noticed this to. I think it has something to do with the FOV. When I zoomed in i didn't get that effect.

Zooming in doesn't change the camera angle.

I wonder how clouds are rendered in multiplayer though - clearly they are based on player's viewpoint and then there's the need to sync them over the network

[bullet purveyor 85]

What do you mean? You can rotate the camera while zoomed in. Then the strange effects are not visible.

[maddogx 13]

I wonder how clouds are rendered in multiplayer though - clearly they are based on player's viewpoint and then there's the need to sync them over the network

I would assume (or rather hope) that they are synchronized similarly to the way I believe the infinite border terrain is made to look the same on all clients. (Procedural generation using a seed value that is transmitted from the server.)

[zoog 18]

When under or in the clouds there is also a strange grey line.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Aren't they rendered using fractals (procedurally) - I think similar technique is used in software like Terragen?

So obviously changing an angle will cause a different recalculation.

They are not just flying sprites like in every other flight sim. I kinda like fractal clouds more.

To me, being sprites (or tricks involving "fractal sprites" or whatever) would be the only feasible explanation that clouds would react that way to camera orientation.

Terragen2 uses volumetric fractals with volumetric shading and shadowing - not something you put in a realtime game :p Hell, we're not talking about going from fps to spf (seconds per frame), but more like hpf or even dpf :) Those are render times I had with Realsoft3D back in the day, before volumetric shading was even fully implemented :D

For fun, just some Terragen2 clouds I don't think we'll see in a game anytime soon:

Edited October 10, 2011 by CarlGustaffa