setovercast still not working

[roguetrooper 2]

Why is setovercast still not working? This is really some kind of joke. Instead of tweaking uniform patches and colors, this seems to be more important...

[dmarkwick 261]

Be aware that setOvercast has a minimum time for effect, I think the minimum is like 30 minutes.

[dnk 13]

...which is a silly and arbitrary constraint.

[progamer 14]

...which is a silly and arbitrary constraint.

Makes the weather look realistic and not fake.

[dmarkwick 261]

...which is a silly and arbitrary constraint.

...I'm inclined to agree. Sure, make the minimum 30 minutes in the editor sliders, but as far as scripting is concerned there should be no forced minimum IMO.

My only thought as to why this is enforced is that maybe the third party cloud tech doesn't respond well to faster forced changes.

[gammadust 12]

My only thought as to why this is enforced is that maybe the third party cloud tech doesn't respond well to faster forced changes.

... something which was plain obvious in

(currently down). I remember noticing when changing certain parameters trusky took it's time to generate the frames. In any case, such a delay appears to be legit given the kind of computation being done (if nothing else because it might be preferable to pre generate the dynamics in advance (ie. 30 minutes cloud coverage - think of that), than having them generated each frame, if so, this being already an optimization in place).

I'm really having a hard time understanding why one would need such an instantaneous responsiveness. Given that to simulate real world cloud effects one would never have instantaneously changing cloud coverage. At best i understand the need to be as instantaneous at the mission begining (or even in some rarer instance to skip the time as a mission designer might need). Transitions from 0 overcast to 1 is possible within 30 minutes, do we really need faster?

This got me thinking that maybe if mission starts up with zero overcast, set in the intel panel, may allow to instantaneously set an arbitrary overcast value via scripting. I'm assuming here the issue arises because the cloud generation is done for the next 30 minutes once mission starts, and it must transition from that to whatever is requested - if there are no clouds, perhaps the generation will occur for the first time at this point.

I haven't tried the above, so i don't know.

[dnk 13]

Makes the weather look realistic and not fake.

I guess you live in an odd place then.

It can go from bright and sunny to full-on monsoon downpour here in under 10 minutes, and thunderstorm cells and fronts can kick up crazy weather in similarly small time frames throughout the Midwest in the US. Given that there's such miserable control over rain in the simulation (like, you can't just have an overcast sky, it has to rain at the same time. always, which is ridiculous), we really shouldn't be so limited.

Also, setfog is messed up. setfog array with a short timer results in VERY random results. Like, every time you run it you get a different density. Also setting fog to 0 density and 0 cutoff leaves you with a hazy look, and if you set the base up to like 500m it's impenetrable. I do not get how that works.

Additionally, while I'm on it, we should be able to set the fog color or at least, please jesus, the saturation of the color. I really, really, really hate the gamey-immersion-breaking-always-blue fog. Reminds me of GTA cheats that make everything look silly.

[roguetrooper 2]

Makes the weather look realistic and not fake.

What a bullshit (not your answer, but the way it works). So it is impossible now to offer weather options in the lobby to select the start weather of the map? They should at least implement a new command then

setovercastnow

This should be really reworked! Any dev around here reading this?

For everybody again: an instant weather change (zero time) is needed to be able to select the weather in the lobby (and for intros/cutscenes/outros that are meant to have another weather than the gameplay one minute before/after).

[dmarkwick 261]

... something which was plain obvious in

(currently down). I remember noticing when changing certain parameters trusky took it's time to generate the frames. In any case, such a delay appears to be legit given the kind of computation being done (if nothing else because it might be preferable to pre generate the dynamics in advance (ie. 30 minutes cloud coverage - think of that), than having them generated each frame, if so, this being already an optimization in place).

I'm really having a hard time understanding why one would need such an instantaneous responsiveness. Given that to simulate real world cloud effects one would never have instantaneously changing cloud coverage. At best i understand the need to be as instantaneous at the mission begining (or even in some rarer instance to skip the time as a mission designer might need). Transitions from 0 overcast to 1 is possible within 30 minutes, do we really need faster?

Well one of my ideas (which I did some work on for ArmA2 before getting distracted) was to make a weather & climate addon, which required the ingame use of setOvercast. It was to feature random weather and random weather changes, but appropriate to time of year and locality. It would have changes applied according to curves, some of them quite steep, so tropical regions for example would have the possibility of rapid changes from reasonably warm & sunny to torrential downpour over a short period of time.

So although I wouldn't necessarily have a reason to go instantly from 0 to 1, I might have wanted to go from 0.3 to 0.8 in ten minutes.

[gammadust 12]

^^ well i think you would get a pretty similar effect by relying on the instantaneous rain response (provided it meets the 0.5 overcast requirement), this while adjusting overcast as fast as engine allows.

Just pulling a number from my a**, but the currently achievable cloud coverage responsiveness should address +90% of cloud coverage transition cases in real world. (Excluding instances when one artificialy changes time, or mission initialization)

Having said that, tweaking the engine to generate 15 minute, or even 10 minute time chunks of clouds instead, is nothing that i would oppose.

Edited November 9, 2013 by gammadust

[xendance 3]

I don't understand why the setOvercast doesn't take time as a parameter. That way you could decide interpolation time between current weather and overcast.

[roguetrooper 2]

I don't understand why the setOvercast doesn't take time as a parameter. That way you could decide interpolation time between current weather and overcast.

That's the way it used to work.

1800 setovercast 1;

formerly changed the weather within 30 minutes to heavily clouded. Really don't know why this has been abolished. If it's a bug it's high time now to fix it.