SolStice Reveal #02 - Sky & Clouds ☁️

After seeing the Ocean Renderer, you might have suspected this was coming. What's the point of realistic oceans if the skies above them don't behave realistically?

Next up: SkyEngine & CloudEngine.

Blackrack has done an incredible job with Scatterer and Volumetric EVE, but something has always bothered me about planetary atmospheres in KSP.

We often tweak shader colours until skies look right, without necessarily considering atmospheric composition, temperature, pressure or layers. And clouds? We basically slapped Earth's cloud maps onto Kerbin and called it realistic. Beautiful, sure, but Kerbin isn't Earth, so why would its weather look the same?

So I decided to approach things differently: let the planet determine what its atmosphere and weather should look like.

SkyEngine calculates atmospheric visuals from the planet's actual properties, including composition, pressure, temperature, atmospheric layers and stellar environment.

CloudEngine generates volumetric clouds and weather systems based on planetary rotation, gravity, atmospheric composition, pressure, temperature, terrain, oceans and stellar heating.

The engines include:

• Physically based atmospheric scattering and lighting
• Planet-specific atmospheric composition and vertical structure
• Volumetric clouds following wind patterns and atmospheric circulation
• Procedural weather systems and events
• Consistent clouds from orbit down to the surface
• Automatic planet configuration without handcrafted maps
• Optional planetary archetypes for more control

And importantly, the clouds you see from orbit are the same clouds you encounter at the surface, not separate textures pretending to represent what's happening below.

I'm also exploring gas giant storms, tidally locked weather, seasonal changes and eventually weather that affects gameplay.

Both engines are still very much a work in progress, but the goal is simple: make Kerbin look like Kerbin, Laythe like Laythe, and let fictional planets develop atmospheres that actually make sense.

More soon™