Clouds sprites linked to head angle in VR.

  • Thank you for all your suggestions here. Making billboards face our position only and not the view direction introduces other problems also. Please consider the special cases of flying inside, right above and right below a cloud and keep in mind that the billboards are stacked together closely behind each other, so the drawings shown here are not 100% what would happen.

  • If only.......... :cool:

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    Devons rig

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  • If only.......... :cool:


    As a experienced real world pilot I have to say: those clouds are too transparent. And the edges are too washed out. Same problem that aparently every simulator currently has. (DCS still looks best to me in terms of cumulus clouds.)
    In the real world I cannot see through a cumulus cloud with a thickness greater than 50m. From a great distance there is nearly no transparency visible where the cumulus clouds are well in shape. Cumulus fractus can have some fragments where its a bit transparent but usually these parts also have a very veil/shred-like (however you call that) appearance.

    Here is a "counter" video from the real world: look how sharp the edges are, even when you are really close.

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    In short: While there are nice aspects in that rendering like sun beams etc... I would prefer clouds that are not transparent.

    I want razor sharp edges like this cloud has at the top:
    There are few cloud fragments in the lower part of the image, even those are not that transparent. They are really bright due to the sunlight. Its the contrast of blue sky and white clouds that makes all the difference. And the structure that you can see in the cloud. Without structure and without contrast/sharp edges (100% opaque) any cumulus cloud simulation will look ugly to me. (Even stratus clouds have a sharp top, even fog has when it "flows" into a valley)

    [Blocked Image: https://atikofianti.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/cumulus-1.jpg]

    Cheers,
    Jan

  • Of course, we can't have everything though, and there have to be compromises. :)

    Volumetric clouds I have played with generally have settings that allow you to mess with the transparency and all sorts of other settings to get what a user desires, sometimes to an almost bewildering degree of detail, like this demo from intel I used to play with.

    https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/20…-sample-updated
    https://github.com/GameTechDev/Cl…hive/master.zip

    Or this volumetric demo for the Oculus: https://simul.co/drifting-truesky-demo-for-oculus-rift/

    Or Silverlining: http://sundog-soft.com/features/real-time-3d-clouds/

    Then there are the neat toys you find on the web, like this. https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XslGRr

    As you can see, I was a big cloud fan, once. :D

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5