Exciting news from the shaders Discord:
peterboese Today at 8:34 PM
SO whats going on with the weatherFX: weatherFX is a replacment for the present AC sun, sky, cloud and fog render. It will solve many limitations AC has. Sun: - sun is rendered correctly (global position, size, graphic look) - due to the correct position full day/night cycles are possible - look and illumination is separated (many possibilities for modifikations) Sky: - a complete new sky render is used. It doesn't work the AC render way. The new sky render already produces realistic colorfades and is tweakable in many ways. It solves the major problem of AC's linear colorfaded sky. The new one produces a much more believable distance. - additional spherical color gradients can be drawn in the sky. Clouds: - the new cloud render uses normal maps, to get the cloud textures some volume - every cloud could be managed individually - clouds can be lit from all sides (front, back....) with different graphical results Fog: - a complete new fog render is used. It produces much more realistic pictures and has many more parameters to customize. - the fog is separated for ground, sky and every single cloud. - the main difference to the present AC fog: In full blend, every part(sky, ground) gets the same color. Now thick fog is easily possible - impossible with Kunos fog. So weatherFX is the new base for doing weather. It has much more functions and options, but here are some keynotes: - full 24h cycle - correct sun path for every global position on every date - correct moon path per global position (correct visual shadow on the moon) - complete earth's star map - correct position - new sky render - new fog render - new cloud render - Online compatibility (daytime for the first release) (the goal is also online day/night cycles) All credits goes to Ilja, who has build an absolute gamechanger with this!!!
SOL It will use nearly all features of the new weatherFX. The first release of Sol will include the 7 standard weather. With the further releases i will provide dynamic weather changes and weather effects like flashes. Later i will do a little kit, so you can create your own custom weather with a few parameters. The biggest goal of Sol will be very realistic changing weather generated out of real data. Due to everything is in development and Ilja is restless , there will be big changes from version to version. But what i can definitly tell you: With the new weatherFX, AC starts its second life cycle. The difference to the present AC is huge. And i am serious, the 24h cycle is just one small feature of the whole thing - and yes it works absolutely great....