[glob2-devel] New clouds

[Erik Søe Sørensen]

Leo Wandersleb skrev:

> to get nice structured clouds i guess the only option is to use 
> prerendered ones like we had before.
>
> i thought perlin was the answer to get really dynamic clouds and was 
> frustrated when i saw how expensive it was. perlin clouds like in your 
> screen shot would need a far finer scale of structures.
> now we render blocks of 32x32 pixels i guess but still you can see 
> steps some times (what is due to some bug maybe).
>
> i did maths so i would have plenty of ideas to make the clouds 
> prettier and more structured but it gets too expensive even now.

Well, maybe we'll have a bit more room now for quality/luxury -
I've just checked into the 'optimized' branch a faster cloud generator, 
which (a) uses Perlin's later Simplex Noise algorithm, and (b) uses 
floats only (except outside the main loops).
The noise generator is 4x faster, and the generator in total is 6x 
faster now.

Kieran: Care to test & measure? :-)

Leo et al.: For nice could lighting, maybe we could let the noise 
generator calculate the differential too (it's not more work), and save 
the info in another array - so that the two (cloud intensity + slope) 
could be combined at draw time, for that fluffy feeling?

Everybody: Assess quality, please :-)
(It was a bit jump/jagged at one point, but I think I've fixed that. The 
exact cloud size etc. probably changed somewhat.)

/Erik