Remake/Make better clouds

Make a new could system that extends to the horizon

• Learn OpenGL
• Make basic cloud stuff
• Render clouds
• Add this for better looks https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/e7xol/this_is_how_clouds_should_work_gif_simulation/
• Implement cloud lod’s
• Use generated noise rather than texture to make jar size smaller (don’t generate an infinite noise thing but rather make a small noise image that corresponds with the seed)

added Feature Improvement labels

marked this issue as related to #127 (closed)

assigned to @coolGi2007

Hello, I'm curious about this goal of better clouds. How do you make it fit with Distant Horizons? Would there be better clouds only in the LoD rendering? (i.e. better distant clouds only?)

• If yes (distant clouds only), then it's kinda sad that things "would look good until you get close to them " (it should be the opposite :-D)
• If not (i.e. better clouds even close up) then maybe it would be better as a separate, standalone mod? Or at least clearly separated from distant Horizon's core... and even separated from everything else in the mod!

By the way this is exactly the kind of use I was advocating for here : "A mod that needs to have a fast and rough approximation of the world's topology, with a low refresh rate "

The goal of this is to extend the clouds to the lod render distance rather than being capped at the vanilla distance.
When I was doing some tests on extending the clouds (build this to try it out https://gitlab.com/jeseibel/minecraft-lod-mod/-/tree/dda3c7636b6b573860cac6d482a6a6ae8a442c28) it turned out the vanilla noise was not good at large scales so I needed a way to make the clouds be usable without blocking the entire sky (that’s why I’m adding the dynamic clouds)
If dynamic clouds was put as its own mod then I don’t think it would look good as this effect would probably only look good at higher render distances.

Once it does get the dynamic clouds it would still be usable when the lod’s are off and probably once the distant horizon’s api is finished other mods can use our custom cloud stuff if they want.

Responding to each of your questions:

• The basic goal is to have clouds near identical to MC's render correctly for both LOD and vanilla terrain, due to the fact that vanilla clouds render on top of LOD terrain.
  How that will be achieved is still to be determined, however if I had to guess, we will probably override vanilla MC's cloud rendering and use our own instead.

• For improvements the only thing I'm aware of is potentially implementing what is shown in the reddit gif.

• I doubt we will make a separate mod due to the fact that the cloud rendering will be pretty ingrained in our system (specifically rendering and config).

Is there any progress on this? The lods look great, but having to turn off clouds is a big downside.

No not yet, I'm planning on doing this after #176 is done.

@coolGi I wonder if it would be better to add the generic rendering system and use that to render clouds instead of adding a whole new cloud renderer. That way we can kill several birds with one stone (#127 (closed), #74 (closed), and #459 (closed)) and potentially have multiple people work on it in parallel (rendering api, OpenGL rendering, cloud setup, and rendering storage).

added OpenGL label

Cloud rendering was added in DH 2.2.

closed