[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Just for a brightness reference - this is how I normally run my sim - "Clouds01" blanked - the ORTS brightness is set at 140 - and - I'm using ReShade. It's killing me to test with the Unstable Version as it doesn't look anywhere near this good without ReShade.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51864665243_1bc601d99c_o.png


I did look at Dawn/Dusk yesterday - which I seldom do because it looks so bad - and the sun is pretty large. Also - I didn't see the normal unnatural saturated pink/red color that we used to see - I don't know if this has changed?


Regards,
Scott

[railguy]

Please accept my thanks for looking into improving the skydomes, etc. For me, this has been probably one of the biggest shortcomings of the otherwise wonderful OpenRails.

Also, just out of curiosity, Scott, what route is that in your screenie above? I really like how it looks, especially the water. Conn River maybe?

[scottb613]

railguy, on 04 January 2023 - 07:24 AM, said:

Also, just out of curiosity, Scott, what route is that in your screenie above? I really like how it looks, especially the water. Conn River maybe?

Hi...

Yep - Paul's wonderful CT River - it's the only route I run anymore. Big New England Steam - at speed - at its finest. I've updated all the TERRTEX, Water, and Foliage to better 1024 textures. Travis's fantastic signals are going in next along with Jovet's animated switch stands.

In the interest of trying to help ORTS be better and move the ball forward - like my Skydome - the Water textures are in both the Elvas and TS File Libraries - as Public Domain. The water base texture started life as a granite countertop advertisement - edited a bit - it looks better in person - as it has flecks of appropriate color beneath the surface that seems to reflect the sunlight. My attempt was to match inland water as I see it here in the Northeast US.

Here's a quick test video of where I spend my time in ORTS - YouTube:
https://youtu.be/dVwVxShVgaI

I plan to upgrade and detail the scenes - much like Randy does - when I get done with the locomotive fleet. LOL - years of work left.

Regards,
Scott

[James Ross]

scottb613, on 02 January 2023 - 03:56 PM, said:

I looked at your first upload - skydome mapping is PERFECT as far as I’m concerned - the skydome with clouds painted on the texture looks so much better. Thank You.

Great, thanks for the feedback!

scottb613, on 02 January 2023 - 03:56 PM, said:

When I tested the Clouds01 in the same version - the mapping appeared different than the previous version - the old versioned seemed better. I only had a few minutes to play with it - I’ll do more testing tomorrow and provide better feedback - as I have to run out. I haven’t looked at the flattened version yet…

scottb613, on 03 January 2023 - 02:57 PM, said:

I've looked at the sky in detail - and your "flattened" dome to display "Clouds01" is much better. It adds more of a perception of overall distance to any given scene.

Okay, that's good to hear. I will continue trying to improve the horizon edge, which might get exposed on some routes at present

scottb613, on 03 January 2023 - 02:57 PM, said:

One thing that's been a minor issue over the years - is we can't blank out the "Clouds01" completely using the [Ctrl] [+] and [-] keys - it's always present. As a result - I think many of us have resorted to using a completely alpha'd out "Clouds01" - as when "Clouds01" is present - it seems to reduce the overall brightness of the sim. When blanked - a bright sunny day seems more like a bright sunny day in the sim. This is what I run 99% of the time.

Interesting, I wasn't aware that it did not go all the way to clear, but you're right; having looked at the code, it's... complicated... and tied into the whole dusk/dawn issues, but I have managed to provide a quick fix in Unstable Version U2023.01.04-2136 - hopefully that helps until we can fix the dusk/dawn issues

scottb613, on 03 January 2023 - 02:57 PM, said:

I've messed with "Clouds01" a bunch today and tried a number of different variations - and nothing I can do with Clouds01 seems to actually improve the look of the sky over what I can with Terragen (ray traced clouds) alone. Granted "Clouds01" adds movement and is needed if we ever want to see dynamic weather. If dynamic weather is a goal - we'd need a better system for handling "Cloud01" textures or multiple textures to implement realistic transitions and changing conditions. I realize we can add precip and such now via activities - I'm talking about using different textures or combinations of textures.

We do need to keep the separation of sky and clouds - at least in some form - because we already have dynamic weather (weather file) and, e.g. the clouds need to cover the moon and the moon has to be in front of the sky :)

But I do want more dynamic weather (and more types of weather) which is all going to need more of something - whether that is more cloud-like textures (e.g. thunderstorm clouds) or more meshes (e.g. lightning or just cloud sprites)

scottb613, on 03 January 2023 - 02:57 PM, said:

I've included more test files - linked below. A new version of Clouds01 (no border) - a new 7.5K x 7.5K light Cirrus Terragen Skydome (trying smaller) - and - a clear blue Skydome I've used on my system for years.

Thanks!

Genma Saotome, on 03 January 2023 - 11:36 PM, said:

Feedback: As the sun descends into the western horizon its diameter increases by at least 10x. The waters of the planet don't boil off as expected. :lol2: Hopefully an easy fix.

Does this work-in-progress presently apply to the night sky as well?

The stars in the night sky follow the same dome as the sun and blue sky, so they might look better, but it depends on whether the star textures we currently have are designed as dome textures (think fish-eye)

The sun itself and its "effects", along with the moon, are currently unchanged and will be addressed later

scottb613, on 04 January 2023 - 08:43 AM, said:

In the interest of trying to help ORTS be better and move the ball forward - like my Skydome - the Water textures are in both the Elvas and TS File Libraries - as Public Domain. The water base texture started life as a granite countertop advertisement - edited a bit - it looks better in person - as it has flecks of appropriate color beneath the surface that seems to reflect the sunlight. My attempt was to match inland water as I see it here in the Northeast US.

Thanks very much!

[Weter]

On TS.com there were more sophisticated stardome textures for Northern and Southern hemispheres - accurately reproducing real stars layout.

[PerryPlatypus]

I would certainly argue that, if ever there was a time, then the time is now to fully separate the skydome and the cloud layer.

A suggested weather roadmap for moving forward (open to comment / improvement):

From top to bottom, something like:
1. SKYDOME: a blue sky, clear day dome / clear night dome. This uppermost layer is always on, always 100% opaque. Two textures necessary - a daytime and nighttime version. ORTS automatically transitions between the two
2. SUN. A single texture, always on, always 100% opaque
3. MOON (intentionally on its own layer that is lower than the Sun, to preserve the ability to have a solar eclipse, wink wink nudge nudge). Always on, always 100% opaque
4. UPPER 2D CLOUD LAYER: 2D Cirrus cloud layer. Can vary from 100% opaque to 100% transparent/"off" depending on weather settings. Dpending on layer of opacity, can completely block out visibility of all layers above it. There would be several variations of this 2D layer (multiple alternative textures) representing different cloud types, with only one of them ever called at a single time.

5. 3D CLOUD ZONE: A "zone" within which 3D sprite clouds can spawn. Clouds will have a horizontal and vertical dimension to them. The uppermost vertical limit of this zone is even with the UPPER 2D CLOUD LAYER and the lower vertical limit of this zone can be even with the LOWER 2D CLOUD LAYER. 3D sprites are the only way I can see being able to produce realistic-looking renditions of any clouds that have a large visible vertical side to them - such as tall storm clouds.

6. LOWER 2D CLOUD LAYER: This is where low altitude clouds, HIGH FOG/overcast, wildfire smoke, smog, haze, etc. would appear if called for by the weather settings. This would mean there are several variations of this 2D layer (multiple alternative textures), with only one of them ever called at a single time.

The "Fog" (SHIFT+PLUS and SHIFT+MINUS) as we know it in ORTS currently will continue to be below the lower 2D cloud layer. If weather settings call for "Foggy", then the LOWER 2D CLOUD LAYER will call the 2D fog texture, and the 3D Fog that we already have will also be present.

For the current development level of discussion, let's ignore the 3D cloud zone and focus on the remaining levels.

The 2D cloud layers would be textures that represent ONLY the clouds, and do not contain any blue sky color in them. While I call them "2D" they would really be a 2D texture projected onto a hemisphere mesh of incrementally smaller radius than the upper SKYDOME layer.

Now question for Scott - how hard is it to produce 2D cloud layers (where the clouds are isolated, i.e. no blue sky part of the texture) that are tileable? This is the only way I can see being able to entertain mobile 2D cloud layers that move across the sky (arguably we could have a 2D cloud layer that just "spins" about a vertical axis directly above the player, but that eliminates the possibility to have weather that appears to actually be moving a single consistent direction across the landscape. This is the main question in my opinion - whether to have the UPPER 2D CLOUD LAYER and LOWER 2D CLOUD LAYER be mapped with a single, non-tiled texture that covers the entire sky, or to have them mapped with a seamless cloud texture that tiles multiple times across the sky - thus allowing us to simulate cloud movement.

[scottb613]

PerryPlatypus, on 04 January 2023 - 03:30 PM, said:

Now question for Scott - how hard is it to produce 2D cloud layers (where the clouds are isolated, i.e. no blue sky part of the texture) that are tileable? This is the only way I can see being able to entertain mobile 2D cloud layers that move across the sky (arguably we could have a 2D cloud layer that just "spins" about a vertical axis directly above the player, but that eliminates the possibility to have weather that appears to actually be moving a single consistent direction across the landscape. This is the main question in my opinion - whether to have the UPPER 2D CLOUD LAYER and LOWER 2D CLOUD LAYER be mapped with a single, non-tiled texture that covers the entire sky, or to have them mapped with a seamless cloud texture that tiles multiple times across the sky - thus allowing us to simulate cloud movement.

Hi Sean,

I think we're all on the same page. Ideally - your vision seems aligned with James. Isolated skydomes with clouds being handled separately seems best - for multiple reasons. You described it well.

This started with me just wanting to fix the skydome distortion so I could use the Terragen textures to make better looking skies - which I believed would take minimal development effort. Better skies with the least imposition on the developers - seemed like it had the best chance for success. I really hadn't anticipated getting this deep into it because this area has had so little interest over the years (realizing we have very few developers actively coding and different areas of development require unique skills). I'm all for whatever you guys want to try - as anything we can do to improve the environment will make better first impressions and perhaps bring in new blood.

In post 98 I linked to my test files on Mega - in that file "clouds01" is seamless and tileable at 4096x4096 - and - the clouds are isolated from any sky. As currently presented by ORTS - they just don't look better than what I can do with Terragen. To me - they remind me of Trainz - which isn't a good thing. I've been making textures for just about everything - for many years - and I'm "all in" for whatever you guys need in our attempts to improve Open Rails - just let me know.

Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

James Ross, on 04 January 2023 - 01:40 PM, said:

The stars in the night sky follow the same dome as the sun and blue sky, so they might look better, but it depends on whether the star textures we currently have are designed as dome textures (think fish-eye)

The sun itself and its "effects", along with the moon, are currently unchanged and will be addressed later

Hi James,

I'll try your update - thanks.
;)

As Weter mentioned there are some improved night textures on TS - however - I don't think there are any in the "skydome" format - I thought ORTS uses the two square textures - for Northern and Southern hemispheres (Starmap_N.png and Starmap_S.png). I don't think the StarDome1.bmp is used - no?

Personally - I seldom run at night due to the single "sphere of light" limitation.

LOL - StarDome1 is kind of like how we have (11) raindrop files in the Content directory - yet ORTS only uses "Raindrop.png".
:)

Regards,
Scott

[Weter]

My thoughts for Sean and others:
Sun mustn't be a texture, as it's visible color and size are variable, due to certain conditions.
Moon has variable visible size, depending on position, orbital state and athmospheric conditions.
Also - variable color and phase - depending on Sun's position. So, it likely to have at least a variable texture.

So, two 2-D clouds levels?
3-d ones are good, as they can cover tall mountains.
They can also fill deep valleys underneath, or fog have to do that.

Clouds are not always travel in single direction: due to turbulence, their trajectory may follow curves. They even can spin sometimes.
Different layers on different heights can move in different directions.

Clouds may dissolve, condense, or change their shape, being torn apart.
There are many accelerated videos, how they behave on skies.

Yes, Scott: Stardome textures, either default, or two from TS.com are square *.pngs.

[PerryPlatypus]

Weter, on 04 January 2023 - 09:56 PM, said:

My thoughts for Sean and others:
Sun mustn't be a texture, as it's visible color and size is variable, due to certain conditions.
Moon has variable visible size, depending on position, orbital state and athmospheric conditions.
Also-variable color and phase-gepending on Sun's position. So, it likely to have at least variable texture.

Good point on variable color variations of the sun and moon. Things like that will need to be influenced by color-shifting that happens real-time within the sim. (How high or low the sun or moon is in the sky should be the primary factor influencing the color shift and apparent size, and also presence of cloud cover or fog). The current code is very wonky how it has explosive sunset sky colors, but sunrise has no particular color-shift. Ideally, sunrise and sunset times should both have color-shifting (a shift away from blue), while just before sunrise and after sunset, it transitions to the opposite - more blue color. (The effects are of course influenced by cloud cover). Something I've always disliked about ORTS lighting is how weak and filtered the sunlight looks in the first few hours and last few hours of the day, as if there is always a thin overcast. In reality (when clouds are not present) the light is quite intense and contrast is high between light and shadows in the early morning and late evening.

I'm now getting way into the weeds of course. One thing at a time :)