For environment modders only: Weather Transitions

[h.sie]

While working on the Bad Weather Fix

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=177507

I programmed a little mod that triggers a weather transition exactly every 30 minutes from good (clear sky) to bad (heavy clouds, often fog & rain) and back to good and so on. Using this little mod in the Navigation Lesson of the Naval Academy, I found out that in my private environment mod the weather transitions looked very ugly:

1. Fog appears and disappears immediately and
2. Clouds also appear/disappear immediately without any smooth transition.

This happens for most of the available environments I've tested so far (e.g. OLCE), but surely noone saw it, because weather transitions occur seldom (every 20-40 hours) and thus probably during high TC.

Now I found out how to make much better looking weather transitions by making some changes in scene.dat:

1) Set EnvSim:Fog:FogChangeSpeed to 0,001 instead of 1,0.

2) Set Node-Clouds:Clouds:Wind: CloudsTransitionTextureName=CloudsTransition.tga instead of <no entry>.

I don't know why the devs set FogChangeSpeed=1 and some modders deleted the CloudsTransition.tga entry. Maybe because of side-effects I am not aware of. So don't understand this post and my results as final truth, it's just intended for discussion and further development.

@Makman94: In the patch for M.E.P. v3 you deleted CloudsTransition.tga from scene.dat. Why did you do that? Before your patch weather transitions looked very well in M.E.P, but not after the patch.

h.sie

My Weather Transitions Test Mod can by found here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?6h7v5xkka645dgl

[makman94]

....
@Makman94: In the patch for M.E.P. v3 you deleted CloudsTransition.tga from scene.dat. Why did you do that? Before your patch weather transitions looked very well in M.E.P, but not after the patch.

......

there is no reason H.Sie,

i was 'fighting' to locate an error that i created during the development of M.E.P v3-patch so i restarted working on a brand new base scene.dat importing parts of my tweaks till i located the error. then i import all the rest tweaks but i forgot to import this one you mentioned here so yes it must be done as CloudsTransitionTextureName=CloudsTransition.tga in the scene.dat but expect some light's strong reflection on water only at the start of changing procedure from good to bad weather.

about the FogChangeSpeed setted to 0,001 i don't know...never have 'messed' with it but sounds good...i will try it to see it in action now that you provided this tool for fast changing weather.

also , no matter what env mod someone use,it is a good tweak to set at sky-->envsim-->UpdateTime = 0,01

it will make your sky objects (sun ,stars,clouds and moon) to move much more smoothly as this will updating your sky every 0,01 seconds (note:maybe there is a faster updating value but if you set 0,001 the game crashes)

ps: happy new year to every subsimer with health and smiles !

[IFRT-WHUFC]

I just wish the movement of couds were simulated more with the wind speed!

don't really see a great impact of the cloudstransition.tga myself & 0,001 seems way to slow!

ok
Rick

[IFRT-WHUFC]

not had a game crash @ 0,001 though! hmmmm

[h.sie]

Hi Rick,

CLoudsTransition.tga does not affect the movement of the clouds, but much more the fading-in / fading-out when weather changes.

h.sie