Misc TT alternative weather (weathers + ppfilter) 0.9

[Tomas Torasen]

They are cirrus and a compromise because of the latest weather I made. You cant select which clouds should be along with which weather, which is really bad to be honest by kunos. It just randomly chooses between all the clouds. If you restart, sometimes you get a cloud that really doesnt fit as you say.

 

[gamer19]

You should warn people that "SweetFx" ALWAYS produce some (bigger or smaller) FPS hit.
Just saying...
not everybody knows it.

 

[blackcelica]

They are cirrus and a compromise because of the latest weather I made. You cant select which clouds should be along with which weather, which is really bad to be honest by kunos. It just randomly chooses between all the clouds. If you restart, sometimes you get a cloud that really doesnt fit as you say.

I didn't know this, I thought they were fixed types to fixed weathers. Interesting. I have a combo of around 40 cloud textures which I'm testing out at the moment. Just need to figure out if the texture name and number are related to which weather is in use or if all textures in the clouds folder are just selected at random??? Does anybody know?

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Yep they are selected at random. 10 at the most, although at my latest weather I just use 4 or 5 at a time. Which clouds is used is not possible to control unfortunately.

We can hope for more intuitive controls over curves for pp filters and weather files, also specific textures and so on in future updates.

 

[blackcelica]

Yep they are selected at random. 10 at the most, although at my latest weather I just use 4 or 5 at a time. Which clouds is used is not possible to control unfortunately.

We can hope for more intuitive controls over curves for pp filters and weather files, also specific textures and so on in future updates.

Yes, it looks like a few of us are working on the same thing. Clouds need to be determined by weather type, that way we can custom a specific weather without affecting another. At present I convinced it can't be done. Believe me I've tried.

 

[blackcelica]

Ok, I think I've got it. Evening storm 18:00.
This is a combination of yours and my clouds, some whispy, some thick and full, I cherry picked the best. What I did notice was that your cloud textures were 8mb each which is way too high and too much of a fps hit. I resampled them all to 2mb each and now have combined cloud folder containing 41 different textures and styles. It still looks heavy like a storm but also has the breaks to allow for that sun breakthrough. What do you think?

EDIT: I've now got the cloud textures down to 512kb each with no loss of visual quality. That allows me now to display 8 different textures for the same cost of 1 of the 8mb one. I have increased the amount of cloud textures in the clouds folder to 80 different variations. This gives the absolute best randomisation of sky appearances across all weathers. Here is an example at Silverstone, 16:30 on a sunny medium cloudy day.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Good work and effort, blackcelica! Looks good!
The problem is that if you want a specific weather and not a mix of clouds, which off course also can be fine, but if you want it specific you are left at randomness and no specifics.

In California_sunset I wanted a cirrus cloud sky as in the morning sometimes. I'm no weather or cloud expert so I just rely on my own experience from searching for skies in photography. As I understand, the cold of the night makes it more difficult for clouds to form, when the sun hits the ground in the morning hot air brings the moist upwards into the air and sky, sometimes creating fog which then goes more upwards. It builds up, which is why you more often see cirrus in the morning than cumulus. Stratocumulus for example is a higher version of the cumulus, just added to by time and you can see like a darker under side of it. This cloud means it will produce rain. So it looks a bit wierd to me to mix cirrus with cumulus. But thats what we are left with.

Conclusion seem to be at this point. Only mix clouds which could exist at the same time with not too much variance. A heavy storm will have clouds of a totally different nature than a morning cirrus sunrise.

It's interesting that you interpolated the files down. I will do the same and analyze the FPS. Although I dont believe the clouds produce big drops in framerate, Imagine my two weathers, one use only 4 clouds and the heavy storm uses over 200, and I dont see much if any frame rate difference. Maybe its preloaded and rendered together before rendering it as a whole somehow.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Also I think a higher quantity of clouds does make it look better, not risking to duplicate the same clouds twice next to each other. But theres a mathematical limit to it.

The game randomly chooses a maximum of 10 clouds in the cloud folder to build up the sky. Then you have to consider how many clouds your sky will have by the number in the weather.ini.

California sky uses only 4 so theres no problem at all with only 20 or even 10 cloud files.. but mathematically, if you have lets exaggerate, 100 cirrus and 100 cumulus. The mathematical possibility that you end up with more cumulus when you want cirrus is then bigger.
On the other hand, the same for the dramatic stormy sky which should have overlapping cumulus to look good, preferably another cloud completely which wouldnt work well on it's own, but that one would also risk getting too many cirrus with that many clouds.

I think the best would be concentrating on quality and not quantity, at the same time as trying not to make the cumulus too dense and high (this also creates a problem since the cirrus needs to be stretched out to look realistic.

 

[blackcelica]

I'm still tweaking away and I think I pushed it up too far, only saw fps drop on heavy clouds and storm. Only about 5fps but enough to bug me. Later I'm going to start chopping stuff out and looking at the best of the best textures and trim it back to say 20 textures or even just a base 10. Don't really need 80 cloud textures but I'm glad of the discovery of mixing the types to still achive a random detailled sky.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

I'm doing the same right now. Working on some new textures based on these findings. Will try to combine the best as you say and also have in mind to exclude the most extreme ones to not mess up the different weathers. After that I'll downsize one step at a time and check closely at possible detail loss and fps change as I do it.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

I've tried scaling down the clouds now to a 4:th of the size. I get at the most a 2 fps difference, too small to be of significance and also possible that it might be anything else on my something causing a slight change. I get a higher variance than that if I run the same setting and a benchmark test twice.
I noticed though that I cant see any difference while in game that the cloud resolution is lower, so you're right about that.
So the conclusion for me is that the lower res might just as well be switched out.

The difference between my two weathers, of over 200 clouds more, sums up to 7 fps. Thats less than I would have thought, although worth considering.

I'll tweak both weathers later today with this in mind.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Tomas Torasen updated TT alternative weather (weathers + ppfilter) with a new update entry:

optimized and added cloud textures, further tweaked weathers and added sharpening

Optimized and added cloud textures, further tweaked weathers and added sharpening, balanced and added glare effects.

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[blackcelica]

Well after another tweaking clouds session, I've come up with a similar result to you. I don't think there is too much more in it until a game engine change allow custom clouds for custom weathers.
I've looked at your latest version and compared it to mine and it is very similar indeed.

This is my version of clouds for evening storm, I have a few more texture varients and I have a max of 180 clouds to your 208.

This is how my clouds look in Cali-sunrise 8:00am, I have a more transparent light look to the clouds, I wanted that haze look without the look of misty fog. Anyway, it's been great to bounce of a few tips and share resources, even after a shaky start. Keep the different weathers coming, i'll be using them when they arrive.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Nice, blackcelica! I was down to much less but didn't like the bigger sizing, it made them lose some quality and definition. Too many and they overlap too easy sometimes and they make the sky blow out in white. It's difficult with varied cloud types.

I'm still not happy with the colors in evening storm, it's so time demanding when we have to restart a session to see results.

I would be interested in in som cumulus clouds if you have them in 1024*512..

I had to go back up one step btw in cloud res. Didn't look good in some places. They're half the size of the originals though.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Tomas Torasen updated TT alternative weather (weathers + ppfilter) with a new update entry:

fixed a glare issue

Fixed an issue with glare parameters that was hard to notice at first. A biproduct of adding other glare effects that I did want.

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Erg]

Hey Thomas,

Can I use some of your clouds for my spring weather?

Your stuff is completely amazing btw.

If I share the weather, I'll credit you as well.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Hey Thomas,

Can I use some of your clouds for my spring weather?

Your stuff is completely amazing btw.

If I share the weather, I'll credit you as well.

No problem, just go ahead. And thanks.

 

[antonn]

hello thomas, I would like to know how to remove all the things written on the screen when I'm playing. C: // program files ..................... . there are at least 10 registered lines and it's very gènant.merci.

 

[antonn]

hello tomas, I would like to know how to remove all the things written on the screen when I'm playing. C: // program files ..................... . there are at least 10 registered lines and it's very gènant.merci.

 

[antonn]

Tomas hello, I want to know how to remove all the things written on the screen when I'm playing. C: // program files ..................... . there are at least 10 registered lines and it's very gènant.merci.