I am wondering if an extremely detailed and advanced sky system is possible in 3dgs. Here are some things I hope to achieve.

1. REAL beams of light coming through the clouds
2. The clouds cast a real shadow
3. The clouds actually change shape and formation
4. When the player walks from a light area to a dark area, the screen gets bright for a second so their "eyes" can adjust.
5. The "thinner" sections of the clouds are brighter than the "thicker" parts
6. REAL sunlight where if you stare into the sun then the screen gets bright.

I got these ideas while paying attention to the sky system in Enchanted Arms. I am wondering if this is possible in 3DGS. I have included a picture of what I am hopefully trying to achieve. Pay close attention to the details.

Hmm i dosent really know but the idea sounds good.

1. what's meant with "real"? realtime? real spot light?
2. would be nice, but a slowdown...
3. try ello's sky system 2 (earthcontrol.de)
4,5,6 are HDR features, try the bloom shader provided in matt's shader collection. it's not hdr, sure, but it comes close.

yeh DaBro0zar's right about the HDR and ello's sky system. well, 5 would also in part be part of the sky system (having grey on thicker parts, etc, but probably not too hard with ello's). beams of light through the clouds? most likely they'd all be faked with models, particle effects or something. serious sam 1 and 2 do that.

clouds cast real shadows: that is simply a projected shadow system, probably tiled or procedural based on the clouds also being made. doesn't hav to be high-res coz u'd smooth it out anyway.

julz

Nearly all of the sky features that you want are nothing else than HDR, High Dynamic Range Rendering. 3dgs doesn't have that yet, but it was included in a Beta of Sphere [sadly it isn't available anymore in the final version -.- it looked really good to me] That means, it's possible, just someone has to make it.
And about the shadows, that are just tiled projected textures, moving. Has nothing to do with real shadows

well, just thought to show two screens using skySystem2 and sylex for the bloom:



if you can programm a dll you can create things like this:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=86024

the last pic (not yours, the one from the other forum) looks so very much like terraGen... even the pixellation of the clouds fits.

Wow thanks guys for the quick replys. I will definately look into making a dll for 3DGS to make skys like this. Also, I havent been on the Ask Conitec boards yet, but do you guys know if 3DGS has any plans to support HDR?

Doing an HDR dll would be very very easy.. I had it in Sphere once.. got rid of it because frankly I thin HDR is kind of not so great..