Weather file making

[mongoose]

I'm looking to make a weather file representing heavy haze and also heavy smog. The making of weather files is still a bit of a mystery, even though I have tried before in the past.

1. The making of weather to a particular area; such as over London, the Midlands, the Rhur, etc. I know one has to add Lat=Lon references but not quite how

2. Colour of 'fog'; I assume fogColor="4288332017" is white; how about a 'smog' colour?

there seem to be several components

<BackgroundWeather precipType="xxxxx"

skyboxCloudType="xxxxx"

CloudType="xxxxxx"

CloudRadius="xxxxx"

CloudCount="xx"

So is or are there any 'how to' docs on weather?

Who is or are the expert(s)?

[MajorMagee]

From a weather Mod I never published...

You may either make copies of your original files, and then replace them with these, or install them as a temporary Mod using JSGME.


These files are intended to be used with AnKor's 2017 shaders for CFS3 that correct for the gray band at the horizon. I've included an update to every weather.xml file I have. The BackgroundWeather fogcolor in each weather.xml file has been tuned to match the horizon color of the included skybox files. The high resolution skybox files provided are a combination of new textures and modifications of existing ones to smooth out the banding, and eliminate the corner seams as best I could.


The default skyboxes and fog color tend to make the horizon too blue for anything but a zero humidity day. I've tried to mimic as closely as possible the atmospheric effects I see in the real world. The sky generaly goes from blue to bluish grey-white as you approach the horizon because of the water vapor in the air.


The method used for the tuning of the fog color was to check the color at about the middle of the texture using PhotoShop, and then to turn down the brightness by 12% in the color checker. The Hexadecimal RGB values were then put in a calculator with FF added at the beginning, and converted to the decimal equivalent. This is the value that went into the fogcolor. A quick check in the game was then used to refine the brightness value up or done slightly in PhotoShop, and a new hex and decimal value was tried until the match was optimized for most conditions (see table below).


If you are drawing new images each patch is drawn as Front, Left, Back, Right, Front to make the joins seamless.
Front is displayed looking South
Left is displayed looking West
Back is displayed looking North
Right is displayed looking East


In the panoramic_cubic_test.dds file these should be placed in Back, Front, Top, Bottom, Left, Right sequence.
(The default that came with cfs3 was not done correctly.) Some of AnKor's shaders use this file to create cloud reflections on the water, and I think it may be used for the UI background scene as well. You will notice mismatched seams at the edges of the sections if the sequence is not correct.


There is a setting in the weather xml files called skyboxcloudType that can have a few different predefined descriptions:
NoClouds (and ThinClouds) will display the clear_bk, _fr, _up, _dn, _lf, and _rt textures from the effects\skybox folder
FewClouds will display the cirrusonly_bk _fr, _up, _dn, _lf, and _rt textures from the effects\skybox folder
ScatteredClouds will display the scatteredclouds_bk, _fr, _up, _dn, _lf, and _rt textures from the effects\skybox folder
BrokenClouds will display the lowcumulusonhorizon_bk, _fr, _up, _dn, _lf, and _rt textures from the effects\skybox folder
ThickClouds will display the grayhorizon_bk _fr, _up, _dn, _lf, and _rt textures from the effects\skybox folder
If you don't have it explicitly defined in the weather xml file it seems to default to the NoClouds version.


Within the weather xml files there is a parameter called fogcolor that uses a 10 number sequence to define it's color. This is a decimal that converts to hexidecimal as FF followed by the Red, Green and Blue color values as numbers from 00 (darkest) to FF (lightest). A pure gray would have R = G = B. For example scatteredclouds4low.xml has the BackgroundWeather fogcolor as 4288789972 which converts to FF A1 BD D4 which is a light blue grey R=161, G = 189, B = 212. The choice of this shade will have a significant impact on how well the fog will blend into the skybox background colors. AnKors latest shaders address the grey band that frequently was seen along the horizon, but they cannot completely make up for poorly matched fog/skybox colors.


For the skyboxes in this pack the optimal values are:
NoClouds = 4288789972
FewClouds = 4288789716
ScatteredClouds = 4287013048
BrokenClouds = 4290432475
ThickClouds = 4285757562


I've made a few other edits to some of weather xml files to eliminate the flickering line that forms when a cloud texture intersects the surface of the terrain. This was generally done only where it was quite noticable and was accomplished by raising the minimum altitude of individual cloud effect entries.


The cloud texture dds files have also been checked and edited to eliminate any stray non-transparent corners or edges that may have snuck in the aplha layer.

[mongoose]

Thanks Andy. Could you send me the weather mod as it would hopefully make it easier for me to understand the above.

I did note we have also discussed jet streams before at http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...n-weather-xmls which I never continued at the time; got distracted, and there was the altitude issue which I assume has not been solved.

[mongoose]

So trying to make sense of how fog, or in this case, smog. would be decimalized for weather xmls, the colour picker shows the colour in RGB, Hex, and ?HSV notations. How is this or these values converted to the 10 number decimal?

One can colour pick from some of these for different effects! https://www.google.com/search?q=indu...ih=728&dpr=1.3

[MajorMagee]

Using the Win 10 calculator in Programmer mode FF B8 9C 5B (hex) converts to 4290288731 (decimal).

[mongoose]

I take it Win 10 calculator in Programmer mode is a win10 gadget??

[MajorMagee]

It's the free little calculator that has been part of windows going back for 30 years.

[mongoose]

OK I am trying to make weather smog xmls by altering other xmls. So I have something like this.

Weather Name="TOW_Smog2">
<BackgroundWeather precipType="HeavyRain" skyboxCloudType="FewClouds" MaxAltitude="-1000" MinAltitude="-1000" fogColor="4285757562" Windspeed="0" windDir="0">
<CloudLayer cloudfile="TOW_Haze_Cloud2.xml" CloudType="ScatteredClouds" CloudRadius="20000" CloudCount="60" Lightning="noLightning" MinAltitude="200" MaxAltitude="1000" fogColor="4290288731" Density="1"/>
</BackgroundWeather>
</Weather>


On daylight testing I am seeing these effects and don't know what is the cause. They appear according to the exterior POV from the Lancaster.





Then they aren't visible




Very sharp delineation.

[MajorMagee]

skyboxCloudType="FewClouds" should be skyboxCloudType="ThickClouds" to match the 4285757562 fog color and that should resolve the sharp delineation.

We would have to see what's in TOW_Haze_Cloud2.xml to sort out the cloud streaks in your smog.