The skies in EAW are all about atmosphere which is why I spend boatloads of time to enhance them. They've been a controversial topic in this forum and has been used by many to proof my inabillaty as a graphics artist. Little did these people understand that it was all about experimenting to find a good way of getting them right, both in terms of perceptive depth as well as drawing shapes with appropiate shading and fluffyness and about understanding how they worked.

Sure enough I started without any skills or knowledge in this department but after 500 created sets things started to improve. Now 15 years after my first creation I can say that these files were amongst the toughest things I've done with graphics. I experimented with colors, transparency depths, tiling, removing seams, layering and used every photoshop technique I could think of to create them. They didn't all come out right, photoshop doesn't give you any idea about how it will look in the game, but techniques were develloped and steadily improved.

Increased resolution, added/changed cloudlayers, colors, transparencies and 3D clouds all interact with eachother, the horizon, the skybox, and take full advantage of the FXEXE's improvements. Added weather selections and changed routines which influence the game's weather choices also influence the player's enjoyment of this game. Still, what each player likes or doesn't like is highly subjective and therefore the more choice one has the higher the probabillaty to enjoy.

For this reason all skysets are under revision since many of them are pre-FXEXE, but there are app. 1000+ sets I've created, every time I got bored or didn't know what else to do. Each one was a challenge, wether it was about using photographs or trying to draw them from scratch. I've looked at the real sky millions of times and each one was different and that was what I wanted in my game too. It kept me flying missions in a different ambience and each time it felt different, even though the missions weren't much different themselves.

OK, the 3D clouds aren't fully develloped (CTRL C switches them on or off), it's just a basic shape, but new models are being tested and experiments with the drawings is keeping me busy. I'll just keep at it untill I'm satisfied but I know I never will be as there's always some improvement that can be done.

Here's a few screenies of some recent work. Sorry if you don't like them, they've strictly been created for my own enjoyment and meant to improve my skills but when ready they will be released. Keep an eye on the online flying thread as the pictures there are likely to have a changed set every time.













VonBeerhofen
Launchpad's forecaster

Don't look too shabby to me VB Keep working

Ooooops, I forgot to show the 3D clouds in the release version. The clouds were incorporated into the the weather selection and can appear automatically when the weather selection is not clear sky. They can additionally be switched on and off at will with the Ctrl C key, as I mentioned before. This key overrides the selection made. Here are two shots from the FXEXE release version:





Hope you guys like,

VonBeerhofen

You already know I like them. A lot better than passing through a single layer.

So does turning the 3d clouds off and on effect the multiplayer aspect of things?
If its off for one player are they off for all players and the other way too..?

VBH, that last pic is pretty cool. Can you get this down to ground level to land in fog?

It is possible, as we experimented with the idea many moos ago, but only with flat textures, which gave you a very thick fog, but only about a meter thick. We tried to move all the layers [3 I think] down to ground level, but the effect was not that good.

VBH has seemed to have given it a 3D look, which is very interesting.

Can we see a screen of how does it look flying through the clouds?

I'm a dimbo!

These clouds are the EAW cloud 3dz, which have been in the game since year dot, but turned off. I can't off hand remember the combination of buttons to turn them on/off.

They have been converted to type 6 elements and mapped with a nice cloud texture.

Points out of 10 VBH?

February 02, 2010

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2953149/1

I don't think the cloud array is transmitted online, hence I believe that each player gets his own set. This is also the case with other things, like random convoys, trains and vehicles in missions other then interdictions.

With the new weather selections the cloudlayers can be very low and sometimes appear on the ground, the 3D clouds always have a position related to the layers so when the layer is at ground level you might find yourself in one of these 3D clouds too.

The model is fully 3D but in the release version it's still a very simple shape but you can be inside of one. This version has a tendency to break up on my computer when you're very close to the drawing, this also happened to the PTIII carrier deck. The solution is to increase resolution and isn't too hard to do.

The more complex shapes I've created don't have this problem but like in the early days with forrests, can have an impact on FPS. I have shapes which use the full set of 256 polygons but mapping has to be very well thought out as not to show seams. I haven't done that for this early version. However as compared to a single multiskin plane of 80MB, this only requires 64KB plus some for the 3DZ, which for me is pretty important on my old legacy computer.
In this respect a decision had to be taken.

I have taken some screenies of the more complex models but they're on my FTP picture Gallery and it contains hundreds of screenshots. Most have the same name plus a number. I'll see if I can take an interesting shot inside the clouds with the more complex models. As for points, I'd give these 5 out of 10 and the more complex ones 7 out of 10. I do agree with Mark and my online players, they like the additional graphics as long it's not there all the time, hence the random display in the weather selection and they do make it harder when enemies fly into em.

As for using sprites, they need a 3D calculation so their polygons don't appear fixed. Sprites can't rotate like 3D objects, the drawing will always stare you in the face, but they can shift their individual screen position related to other sprites and be resized related to distance. However I've had bad experiences with large ammounts of sprites in terms of FPS, and you need a lot to create realistic clouds, the 3DZ clouds are much faster on my computer but with 256 polygons in each and a few dozen visible in your area there may not be much difference.

You can not be inside a sprite cloud but there could be sprites in front of you to make you believe you're inside. 3DZ are true shapes that can surround you when you're inside, like a box. The more boxes the better the illusion.
Distance transformations and rotations are already incorporated for 3DZ objects and the clouds are under the same routines for rendering groundobjects, terrain or airplanes. Additionally 3DZ files have animation codes which can influence what you see and in the FXEXE they work on whatever you like, and that's besides the new codes I introduced.

For me 3DZ models win hands down with this knowledge but I'm always open for suggestions.

VonBeerhofen

Hi VBH,

As I see it when you fly into a 3dz, you see an empty space. OK, you can partly get around this by putting a texture on the inside of the cloud 3dz, but when you fly into a cloud, you just see cloud and nothing else, and that is the tricky bit to get right.

Ralf tried generating sprites to form a cloud, which had volume, which the 3dz cloud failed on, but the sprites killed the game.

No easy solution.

On a historical note. The cloud 3dz is actually the 3D cloud from PAW as is the code running it, although they are normally switched off, Hit "ctrl c" to see if it still works.

Not entirely true Col.

This is my 3D model which is a vast improvement over the PAW model which don't have transparency, it already existed as soon as I learned about these models being loaded back in 2005, but yes it all started with the PAW model. In the FXEXE more things changed then v1.2 was capable of. Some ideas were actually inspired from Knegel's tries. The cloud routine is more complex then it used to be in order to display these formations. The orignal version is pretty boring in that respect but the idea was already there. Just like Ralph's try it just needed a bit of TLC and understanding. You also can't switch the clouds off after activation in the original game but in the FXEXE you can.

VonBeerhofen

Playing Il2 and BoB having clouds give a huge immersion factor..

Hi VBH.

I was talking about the original Cloud.3dz from PAW, not yours. I tried to see last night, if the cloud code still works, but I have a Hardware problem.

Here's a little fluffy white one:

Ralf's sprite code, Tony?

Does it work any better on a modern machine?

6 years ago it converted EAW into a slide show, but there's a lot of memory tweaks since those days, so it might work better.

Still, fill the sky with them and we would be back to a slide show.

The consensus back then was to update our DirectX Code, so we could have better effects.

Pity Syddy left.

Here's the more complex cloud 3DZ:



VonBeerhofen

Col. these are some older screenies from inside the 3D clouds:





VonBeerhofen

Hi VBH.

Have you ever flown through real clouds?

There are a few real Pilots here, I've only been a passenger in the front of a 2 seater, but when you fly, even through a small cloud, all you can see is the Wings & Prop. It's the same as driving you car into 10 meter fog, except you can't slow down in a plane. The first time it was very scary, and I understand why weekend pilots have to be able to fly under clouds, and not high, or through, on instruments, Which is for the more experienced pilots.

Now, you see the problem with 3dz clouds, because they have an empty space inside. What we need are volumetric clouds. But for these, our elderly DirectX6 would need updating, as Allen has pointed out several times.

http://vterrain.org/Atmosphere/Clouds/

But as you'll read here they come at a big FPS hit.

Now, a cheat could be to make the flat cloud layers render thicker, and add more of them. You could even place them close to each other, so they appear even thicker.

I'm not saying it's not possible to do, just a load of work either way.

Well that flittle fluffy white sprite cloud is a good start, so why doesn't someone finish it and make a few dozen appear in the game of various sizes and in various locations? You could use UHR textures you know, as can I.

VonBeerhofen