Volumetric clouds in ARMA 3?

[X14Halo 1]

I have seen screenshots of the sky in ARMA 3 and the volumetric clouds look incredible. But when I play I am only seeing a clear sky, and when there are clouds they look like crap. I have most of my settings up on high...is there something I'm missing? What option in video options controls how the clouds look?

[chrisb 196]

Have you set the weather right, i.e. at least say half way on your slider to start, then perhaps nicer 30mins later..:)

Time of day etc..

[dmarkwick 261]

The weather is in some amount of development flux right now, fog seems to be sorted but rain is disabled, and setovercast command is non-functional, so I guess we won't see examples of finalised weather effects in the current build.

[Tonci87 163]

It depends on your Cloud quality settings how many clouds you will see. And you need to set the overcast to something higher.

[ceeeb 147]

The weather is in some amount of development flux right now, fog seems to be sorted but rain is disabled, and setovercast command is non-functional, so I guess we won't see examples of finalised weather effects in the current build.

setOvercast does work, but the minimum time for it to take effect is substantially more than previous games (minimum time for changes is forty five minutes rather than instant).

The volumetric clouds are presumably third party, as there are currenlty many script commands starting with "Simul" relating to clouds in the alpha (not documented in Biki, but available via supportInfo). Be warned, the effects of using Simul commands are persistent between missions :)

Edited May 4, 2013 by ceeeb

[Droikka 1]

setOvercast does work, but the minimum time for it to take effect is substantially more than previous games (minimum time for changes is forty five minutes rather than instant).

The volumetric clouds are presumably third party, as there are currenlty many script commands starting with "Simul" relating to clouds in the alpha (not documented in Biki, but available via supportInfo). Be warned, the effects of using Simul commands are persistent between missions :)

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u36/aghiawie/th_arma32013-05-0421-24-42-08.jpg

The weather system is a licensed third-party library by Simul, called TrueSky.

[denco 16]

I think arma should use full potential of this program. Right now Brightness depends on the overcast, for instance the higher you set the overcast too less brightness you will have. What I would like to see is dynamic brightness adjustments like seen in the video that Droikka posted. You will see "GOD RAYS" where the sun can penetrate the sky and that are is brighter while the rest of the map is darker.

Also the rain and thunderstorms should be on the standard of the video too.

[zooloo75 834]

I'd like to see BIS use TrueSkys to the best of its capabilities! Its weather effects look amazing *just look at that lightning :O*

[clydefrog 3]

Are these volumetric clouds in the game yet? Guessing not?

[Vigil Vindex 64]

I really do hope we see the lightning and snow from this in the game at some point.

[Steakslim 1]

Are these volumetric clouds in the game yet? Guessing not?

technically we've had volumetric clouds back in arma2, not sure where you've been.

[clydefrog 3]

technically we've had volumetric clouds back in arma2, not sure where you've been.

Well I just mean whatever it is they are pushing as some new thing with arma 3 then. The clouds in arma 2 weren't very good.

[Steakslim 1]

Well I just mean whatever it is they are pushing as some new thing with arma 3 then. The clouds in arma 2 weren't very good.

Well yeah the 'new' volumetric clouds have been in arma3 since the alpha afaik, pretty much the same ones in TOH. In fact there was another recent thread questioning the ability to fly over them.

[Flash Thunder 10]

I really do hope we see the lightning and snow from this in the game at some point.

is this thread a wishlist?

[pressytcn 10]

i just hope the clouds will look like the ones in take on helicopters the did an amazing job with those flying a jet through those clouds is an amazing feeling and toh looks better than most movies i've seen

[liquidpinky 11]

i just hope the clouds will look like the ones in take on helicopters the did an amazing job with those flying a jet through those clouds is an amazing feeling and toh looks better than most movies i've seen

They are pretty much the same, although I may be imagining that they are slightly less detailed than the ones in ToH.

Still a joy to fly through them in first person view though. Can't wait till we get the fixed wing.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/576747103616675072/BA56CA1A813EF1C92A746131E4311DEC874D344B/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/576747103616681986/E97B9EB3FA3EA5371856A9EAAFCAD56426E98A69/

[pharoah 65]

The clouds in the latest build are AWESOME. I wonder what a low cloud base would do to performance. I did play the other day where there was heavy cloud and rain...but no impact on performance. Would like there to be driving rain though...to make flying that much more difficult (as IRL).

[meatball 25]

setOvercast does work, but the minimum time for it to take effect is substantially more than previous games (minimum time for changes is forty five minutes rather than instant).

The volumetric clouds are presumably third party, as there are currenlty many script commands starting with "Simul" relating to clouds in the alpha (not documented in Biki, but available via supportInfo). Be warned, the effects of using Simul commands are persistent between missions :)

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u36/aghiawie/th_arma32013-05-0421-24-42-08.jpg

Anyone know a simple way to handle the delay in the setOvercast effect for a multiplayer game? I'd like to give my players the option to set cloud/rain levels at the start of the game and have it start cloudy or rainy. If you set the sliders it seems to work, but setOvercast does not.

[dmarkwick 261]

Anyone know a simple way to handle the delay in the setOvercast effect for a multiplayer game? I'd like to give my players the option to set cloud/rain levels at the start of the game and have it start cloudy or rainy. If you set the sliders it seems to work, but setOvercast does not.

As far as I know setOvercast now has a minimum weather change period of 90 minutes (or maybe 30 minutes - can't remember the exact number but it's one of those two). No idea why, but it makes fast weather changes not possible ingame.

[meatball 25]

As far as I know setOvercast now has a minimum weather change period of 90 minutes (or maybe 30 minutes - can't remember the exact number but it's one of those two). No idea why, but it makes fast weather changes not possible ingame.

There's gotta be a way to do it though. If you set a mission slider to 0 Overcast in the mission intel in the editor you get a nice sunny mission at the start. If you set it to 100, you get a heavy overcast sky with a good chance of rain. Makes no sense that you can set that through script. The engine is doing it somehow based on the intel sliders...

[roy86 367]

Anyone know a simple way to handle the delay in the setOvercast effect for a multiplayer game? I'd like to give my players the option to set cloud/rain levels at the start of the game and have it start cloudy or rainy. If you set the sliders it seems to work, but setOvercast does not.

Use the setOvercast and the simulSetHumidity. This will simulate an instant weather change.

0 setOvercast 1;
simulSetHumidity 1;

While the setOvercast will take time to change, the simul commands are instant though I'm not sure what impacts this has on the weather engine over extended periods of time.

The alternative is to setDate -24hours, use "86400 setOvercast 1;" and setDate +24hours to simulate the change almost instantly.

Other commands can be referenced here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?162909-Secret-SimulWeather-commands

There is little documentation, if any, about the Simul commands. I'm still experimenting with them but have seen some great results.

Keep in mind, AFAIK, ALL these commands are local to the client and are not sync'd accross MP.

Edited September 10, 2013 by roy86
AFAIK

[progamer 14]

Use the setOvercast and the simulSetHumidity. This will simulate an instant weather change.

0 setOvercast 1;
simulSetHumidity 1;

While the setOvercast will take time to change, the simul commands are instant though I'm not sure what impacts this has on the weather engine over extended periods of time.

The alternative is to setDate -24hours, use "86400 setOvercast 1;" and setDate +24hours to simulate the change almost instantly.

Other commands can be referenced here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?162909-Secret-SimulWeather-commands

There is little documentation, if any, about the Simul commands. I'm still experimenting with them but have seen some great results.

Keep in mind, AFAIK, ALL these commands are local to the client and are not sync'd accross MP.

Can you confirm all of the commands are local?

[roy86 367]

Can you confirm all of the commands are local?

I can't definitely confirm 100% all simulSet commands are local as I could only test the commands that show a visible change when executed.

It is an assumption based on all the commands tested below as of Beta 0.77 (hence the AFAIK in the post), but it is logical to apply the result to other simulSet commands as they have a similar function by modifying specific cloud parameters.

Based on that video tutorial of Simul's TrueSky you posted in the linked thread, it was possible to glean some idea on what some commands do. E.g simulSetExtinction is the lights penetration of the cloud cover and changes to this in a dedicated environment are not observed globally, only locally.

This is similar to BIS A2 commands setOvercast, setDate and setFog.

Tested commands were:

SimulSetCloudWidth

simulSetAtmosphereThickness

simulSetCentreX

simulSetCentreY

simulSetCloudBaseZ

simulSetCloudHeight

simulSetCloudLength

simulSetCloudWidth

simulSetExtinction

simulSetFog

simulSetFractalAmplitude

simulSetHumidity

This may change in future updates but so far I'm not seeing these work globally.

Edited September 10, 2013 by roy86
clarified simulSet statement

[dmarkwick 261]

There's gotta be a way to do it though. If you set a mission slider to 0 Overcast in the mission intel in the editor you get a nice sunny mission at the start. If you set it to 100, you get a heavy overcast sky with a good chance of rain. Makes no sense that you can set that through script. The engine is doing it somehow based on the intel sliders...

Well the difference is that the mission slider represents a starting condition. You'll note that the "wanted overcast" slider takes the same amount of arbitrary time as the script command, unless you set it for longer.

---------- Post added at 07:44 ---------- Previous post was at 07:42 ----------

I can't definitely confirm 100% all commands are local as I could only test the commands that show a visible change when executed.

setOvercast is labeled as local by BIS here.

[roy86 367]

setOvercast is labeled as local by BIS here.

True, but I was more referring to the new simulSet commands which are not labeled either global or local. https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/simulSetHumidity