EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements
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rbray89
Normals + Ramp
I note that at present the scaledspace planet shader supports neither. Do you plan to support either? If not, I'm not going to bother shipping normals with RSS, that's for sure! :)
I'm not sure. The existing Normal method with stock KSP makes craters on the dark side light up. So the maths would have to take care of that. It was on my to-do list though.
I would have thought a reasonable implementation would still have the dark side with dot < 0?
Usually as a cop-out the shaders calculate the normal (vertex+map) then dot, so you get odd effects with craters on Mun for example.
Even if you calculate the normal that way, I wouldn't have thought the map normal would influence the vertex normal enough to raise dot above zero for the dark side (or particularly the very dark side; edge cases are edge).
It isn't super noticeable, but it is enough to make me complain about it. You can see it in action here in the left in the dark. The craters shouldn't be lit up like that. http://i1162.photobucket.com/albums/q527/transcendentape/KSP%20Share/munarchloc.png
Oh, I've seen it. It's way worse on RSS Earth, you can clearly see mountain ranges in the center of the dark side. I was just gawking at what kind of weird stuff they'd be doing to have that happen, since I wouldn't think a normal map would offset the vertex normal enough to allow for a >0 dot on the (very) dark side.
Yeah... still toying on the best way to solve it. Will likely use dot(vnorm, lnorm)*dot(norm,lnorm)
Ah yeah. As to the other part of the question--will you be reenabling the ramp shading, or writing your own, or something else?
(Although I guess the first isn't viable since you're writing your own shader anyway. But I meant "doing something close to stock" vs. doing something different.)
Not entirely sure yet. I don't think the ramping looks very nice to be honest. I'd rather have something designed to simulate proper atmosphere.
Well, there is AtmosphereFromSpace, although it seems like it's never used...
But you're quite right that the space-atmosphere shader needs some work (Jebified to MOAR BLUE!). :)
Haha, I'm considering using an overlay mesh with a depth shader to emulate it.
Hmm. Would that work better than changing the planet shader and the clouds shader and doing pixel-based depth work?
Well, effectively it would be a special "cloud layer" doing pixel-based depth stuff.
Yeah, I was just thinking that you might cut out the middleman and do it directly in the planet shader. (And, if necessary, the cloud shader too, although the clouds seem high enough that, going by the LEO photos I've seen, they're not that much affected).
I was thinking about that, but I don't like how it wouldn't be able to extend past the planet's edges.
Ah, good point. Though at MEO and above the limb doesn't appear to extend past the planet's edge, and at LEO the AtmosphereFromGround corona is still going to be visible, and you can tweak that to handle it?
Another note: despite your planet shader appearing to support specularity, that doesn't seem to get added in practice...?