rawdmon

This was with an HP Reverb G2 headset btw. When I previously saw this happen it was on my old Oculus cv1. The degree to which the clouds wander appears to be the same across both headsets, I didn't notice that it was any better or worse on one or the other.

Fair enough, the performance is very good I'll give you that. Mainly just needs some work with the way the edges of the clouds are formed, there is discernible blockiness which can hopefully be smoothed out eventually.

Your developers might consider having a look over the code for these: https://github.com/FarukEroglu2048/Enhanced-Cloudscapes You might pick up some useful shader tricks from them. They don't have this problem of objects appearing through them in the distance and they also have cloud shadows that don't wander in VR (though their shadows are slightly buggy in other ways at the moment). They are truly volumetric as well and likely using the same type of drawing as you are as they have the same visible distortion layer just below or above the cloud layers (unless blue-noise dithering is enabled for them). I find they look better than these new ones with SkyMaxx and just reviewing the code may give you guys some ideas of how to possibly improve on yours in the future. The SkyMaxx ones are probably nice for high altitude flying but when flying under the clouds in GA flight they aren't very good at the moment. I understand that they are beta and that it's something you'll need to work on and improve on over time. I just wanted to provide this feedback in case it's useful to you. SkyMaxx is still my go-to plugin despite the various problems with it. Hopefully these can be ironed out over time.

I just finished a flight in VR to try out the cloud shadows enabled. After finishing the flight I'm disappointed. The shadows look so good, they massively improve the immersiveness, I was just floored with how much depth it adds to everything just having those there. I also found that the way the shadows gradually darken the cockpit is great as well (I don't get why people complain about it, it's exactly what's supposed to happen, just need to turn on instrument lighting and you're set). The reason I'm disappointed though is because despite how good it looks, the moment you move your head the shadows shift left to right a lot (this hasn't improved over the previous version in this regard). It makes them unusable and unfortunately as good as they look if I keep my head stationary, they are just a no-go for VR still at this point. There has to be some way to fix this, and hopefully Laminar will help you out with that eventually because it's such a shame not to be able to use these. Seriously, when my head is stationary in VR with the shadows enabled it's the most realistic experience I've ever had in VR thus far, it looks absolutely incredible. Note that I'm still using the old style clouds as I'm finding the new volumetric ones to be too boxy on the edges and they also have other problems that breaks immersion. The old style clouds somehow look even better in this version and their performance is good so I'll just stick with those personally.

See video below. It seems to happen when the camera is between the distortion layers below and above the clouds. You probably need some sort of blue-noise dithering or something to prevent them from sneaking through the cloud layers like that.

Awesome, I can't wait to give it a try and see how things look.

Cool, I'll have to try them out once it's available and see how it goes. I'd like to point out that a well known open source truly volumetric cloud plugin (you likely know which one I'm talking about) casts shadows on the ground somehow via shaders and doesn't have that buffering problem with them. You guys might consider investigating how they go about doing that and possibly coming up with a better way to generate the shadows which doesn't cause them to wander like that. I find that properly working ground shadows are pretty essential to proper immersion in VR with clouds. Otherwise you're flying through all of these ghost clouds which don't cast shadows and it feels odd. I look forward to trying out v5 when it drops. Thanks for your reply.

Will the shadows work in VR? That's my main issue with SMP in VR at the moment, can't use ground shadows at all.

Agreed, it would be very nice if they would just continue to seamlessly fade in as you fly and not suddenly have every cloud in the sky change all at once. It's also incredibly hard on fps for a bit when it happens.

Default scenery or Ortho or TrueEarth? If it's satellite imagery the shadows you're seeing may just be included in that.

I took another look at them and the code is quite impressive. I gave the latest release a try and it's much better than they used to be. The performance is improved, the clouds look better now and more realistic than anything else I've used, the anti-aliasing is improved, and they have cloud ground shadows that work well in VR as well which has been a major pain point for me with SMP. I'll be sticking with those now until something better eventually comes along.

I'll have to examine the package files to see what it does exactly. I was under the impression that it's just a texture replacement. The anti-aliasing issue with those clouds make them unusable for me. They also cause a big fps hit. If it is a custom cloud engine then it needs a lot of work still.

The freeware one that you're talking about aren't truly 3d / volumetric clouds. They use the billboard method to create the illusion of volumetric clouds. The Silverlining feature that I linked to is true volumetric clouds rendered in 3d. Based on what I read in the article they perform better than the billboard clouds that SkyMaxx is currently using so it would be interesting to have them as an option in SkyMaxx. I guess we'll see what happens Edit: I see now that the ones you were referring to are truly volumetric. I didn't realize that was the case when I was looking at them previously.

Can we expect to see this coming to SkyMaxx eventually? https://sundog-soft.com/2020/09/silverlinings-volumetric-clouds-get-performance-and-visual-upgrades/ I believe you're currently still using the billboard method in SkyMaxx?

Do you mean 11.51?