Captain Kitten

We'll see ?

In this first picture you can see some of the artifacts we are working on. You can see them on the upper layer. We hope to get rid of them completely but they are a bugger to work against. Next we see some winter wonderland of yet somewhat unrefined winter season. And in the last picture you can see the new snow line calculations that make for a more realistic snow line on the mountains. (same as in first picture)

I'll add what I wrote in facebook: I think I need to clarify one thing. Getting super detailed cumulus clouds and the epicness of billboard cloud photos / art is plainly not achievable on the private computing power we have today ( for noise rendered volumetric) We will depict all sorts of clouds, but we will have to sacrefice on something when going for volumetric clouds. We definitely believe that it is worth the effort and with time the resolution of the clouds will be higher. As for now we are trying to find the sweetspot between cloudporn and performance where performance is the higher priority. So, in the beginning we might see some types of clouds better depicted than others but rest assured we continue to work beyond 1.10 and Vulcan might give us a push in the right direction. As for a demo, no. Sorry. But we'll have some good performance with this update and we'll be completely open on that front.

Snow on ortho scenery test (Zonephoto LOWI) (Don't mind the ugly clouds - they are mid production and snow line refinements are in the pipeline )

WORK IN PROGRESS (so very wip) Clouds seem to be happy in the new atmosphere. It's like they belong there. And they dance before our eyes while we try to add and test features. Some for 1.10. Others for later - but thrown in to see how it plays with the rest. The road ahead will be, among a lot of other stuff, to give the clouds character and to shape and define them. While we now assemble and add our carefully prepared ingredients we need to tweak and adapt along the way. People are asking about performance. It's no use talking about performance at this stage. While it is still very much within our tolerances a LOT can happen along the way. As always: our aim is to have better performance than 1.09 and performance is in focus. People are also asking if this or that bug is fixed. Nothing is fixed. While there are key elements of 1.09 in this version you can't compare the two. This is what 1.09 was a stepping stone for. That step brought us into another dimention. Litterally ? Anyways, enjoy the latest results but remember that it is still rough. Very rough.

Should we add some shadows to those clouds? Haze? Extra cloud layer? Maybe buildings on the ground reflecting the sun from the right angles?

Some unknown, some known 30km VS 15km height. The difference in atmosphere density together with weather data controls the color of the sky .

Weekly Update: (WORK IN PROGRESS!) Today we have closed two most important items in our roadmap, both related to the cockpit camera and both responsible for numerous visual artifacts. Finally we are moving over to our new cloud system, volume rendering, final atmosphere tuning and testing. Yup, were on the home stretch. Its a long home stretch but the mountains of two steps forward and two steps back then falling, getting hurt and stand up marginally further than where we fell.... is over. The largest hurdle in our journey to the noise rendered volumetric clouds is behind us. Say goodbye to the horizon shift slider height limitations of 60k feet and a couple of other things, say hello to zoom, volumetric clouds and an atmosphere that calculates the sky color correctly =) Thank you Ben Supnik for the answers we needed. So... here are some more shots from the latest progress. I'm excited! Back to work!

I am very familiar with Terramaxx and Maxx products. John is a good friend of mine and I love his products. I use Skymaxx as well at times -so for everyone who would hope for a rivalry hatefest: I disappoint ? (Unrelated to your comment ricka47) xEnviro seasons (at least the snow at this point) is completely independent of ground or object textures. TerraMaxx replaces the ground textures to achieve the seasons and xEnviro will just be "laid on top" of that. We will have to see if it actually turns pout this way, but xEnviro should be completely compatible with terramaxx. With that said, when xEnviro seasons is released it would replace the need for TerraMaxx (sorry John) and the effects of xEnviro might even be somewhat reduced. Like in valleys where you would have snowy mountainsides that transition over to snowless lowlands would be gone. The effect you see in the images above would be watered down if you have pure snow textures beneath them.

Some WORK IN PROGRESS snow up close. This is still in need of refinement and will be in the process of adding seasons to xEnviro ( not in 1.10 )

IMPORTANT Announcement!! (And weekly update) Three new xEnviro weather servers are currently online. We have tested and published updated plugin versions named 1.06s, 1.07s and 1.09s in the update section. Please note these are the only versions that work with new servers and the old server will be put offline in the very soon. The old versions WILL NOT WORK ANYMORE! You need to download the new ones. Download here: http://xenviro.net/update.php These are NOT hotfixes or bugfixed for the respective versions and there never will be. They are just adapted to work on the new servers! We are working hard on 1.10 and that is our only focus at the moment. We believe that 1.10 will make all previous versions obsolete. We are also ironing out plans for when we should implement the new features as seasons and some other bonuses that may or may not come in the 1.XX run. Sorry for the inconvenience of having to download an old (new old) version - but the new servers should be a lot better and much more stable .

For anyone still asking if it will work with ortho: yes, it will.

xEnviro's atmosphere engine is being refined before introducing the clouds and a bi-product of this ground work is that snow accumulation is working at this stage.

The color is a result of calculations based on real formulas found in science regarding light scattering and visual results of several calculations. It is therefore as close as we can get to what the real sky looks like - with deviations of course. But it's not a matter of "picking a color" or choosing a "sky texture". So if you feel it needs adjustments - then use a shader tool. As for the question if the snow will work on ortho scenery: yes it will. This effect is based on the atmosphere formula which is drawn from real time world weather data from several sources. So yes, it will build up and melt over time what ground textures you use is irrelevant. But please, do NOT expect this to come in the next versions of xEnviro. The preperations for it is laid down now and it will be refined and worked on later.

You can't compare reality with photographs in any way. What bugs are you talking about? I have used maxxfx with all versions of XEnviro.