beating on the dead horse: we really really need a new sky!!

[Jacquotte]

<p>since the new amazing bloom/hdr effect in effect in sinking sands and eof/rok for example, the badly drawn low.rez sky really stands out</p><p> it would be great to have a new sky to match the amazing graphics in the rest of the surroundings, i would love for such a sky to be animated, as in thunderstorms, skies changing as the wind picks up etc</p><p>-i do remember a dev. mentioning that the original sky took about 10min to do-</p><p> (as in it was only meant to be a temporary sollution)</p><p>original post here:</p><p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=367363" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=367363</a></p><p> and another recent post with it mentioned:</p><p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=411946" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=411946</a></p>

[LordFyre]

<p>But, it sounds like the <b>sky</b> is the limit on what the Devs can change.</p>

[Cusashorn]

<cite>Corvena@Venekor wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>since the new amazing blood/hdr effect in effect in sinking sands and eof/rok for example, the badly drawn row.rez sky really stands out</p><p> it would be great to have a new sky to match the amazing graphics in the rest of the surroundings, i would love for such a sky to be animated, as in thunderstorms, skies changing as the wind picks up etc.</p></blockquote>Umm. I don't speak the technobable. Care to explain what you mean by blood/hdr?

[Guy De Alsace]

<p>Its not the sky thats the problem tbh - thats actually very very good. Its the atrocious clouds. They are abysmal. The "hammered metal" sky - just what is this supposed to be? Its mainly visible in antonica.</p><p>I'd like to know what the "blood/hdr" is as well? I dont think the core engine has been changed at all since release as far as I know, certainly no enhancements to take advantage of newer cards has been integrated to my knowledge.</p><p>The almost mythical skeletal revamp might be something to do with the engine but since its taking longer than the evolution of the Earth to doI'd wager the engine isnt very good at being revamped! <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[KefkaQ]

I agree, the clouds are..really rather horrid. I actually like the sky otherwise.

[Ariste]

Check out Vanguard for a really well-done sky.

[Jacquotte]

<p>my typo! i was supposed to write Bloom, of course =)</p><p> bloom/hdr examples can be seen in sinking sands and greater feydark for example, just look at the horizon</p><p> try to go to SS, with HQ settings, try to dis- and enable Bloom (in the performance menu) and you will see what this technobabble is about</p>

[Kitsune286]

I was thinking the rain of Blood in Shard of Fear and High-Dynamic Range, heh.

[Jacquotte]

<cite>Kittsune@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>I was thinking the rain of Blood in Shard of Fear and High-Dynamic Range, heh.</blockquote>hehe, that works too =P

[DamianTV]

<p>Patience my fellow skyhaters.</p><p>Let me ask you all a question:  Do you want Oblivion quality skies, or do you want skies that are so awesome they make Oblivion look like garbage?</p><p>There is logic behind my thinking.  Currently the devs are hard at work on implementing multi core support.  Multi core support will raise the ceiling of what the artists can and can not do with a new sky.  Lets not ask for a new sky too soon as we will be selling ourselves short.  Also, although Oblivion was an absolutely beautiful game, it was made even better by the player mods, something we dont have the ability to do.  We can mod our UI's but not the game content, like graphics, models, etc.  Obilion really shined when some of their user community graphical enhancements were applied to the game.  But also Oblivion didnt run that great on everyones computer.  </p><p>Now the important thing is that EQ2 has to be able to play on every current subscribers computer at some level.  It wouldnt be fair to those of us with lower end computers to change the sky and make the game run so poorly that they cant play.  I also dont think its fair to those of us with very high end systems that the game still runs with poor framerates with everything turned up (excluding shadows and particles).  One of the things that Sony's devs know is there are so many fad's in hardware that building for one puts the company at risk if the fad goes out of style.  At the time of development of the EQ2 engine, it was suspected that multi core processors may have been just a fad but as time has finally revealed, multi core procs are here to stay.  Does anyone remember RAMBUS?  Pentium 1 and 2 days with unheard of bus speeds.  They ran into problems tho, in that the ram was way too expensive and they had a bottleneck of the bus speed on the motherboard not even coming close to that of the ram speed so the increased ram speed did absolutely no good.  Dual core could have very easily gone that way also if it was not handled properly.</p><p>I agree that our CLOUDS specifically look terrible.  The rest of the sky effects are still stunning.  Star twinkle, SOLAR AND LUNAR ECLIPSES, shooting stars, Luclin blown all over the sky, absolutely gorgeous.  Clouds?  Yeah, pounded metal.  And nearly clear blue skies when its raining.  Bad.  Ok Im wasting time, I've already started my own thread about 2 months ago on the same dead horse topic, if youre interested in reading, go here:</p><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=406409" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=406409</a></p><p>Anyway theres a couple steps to getting us to having super awesome skies.  Its gonna take a while and frankly, I think the time is worth the wait.</p><p>Step 1: let the Devs finish the multi core support and get us some framerate increasing work on the engine.  </p><p>Step 2: User Option to have Advanced Skies.  This makes it fair for everyone.</p><p>Step 3: Super Eye Candy Skies!!!</p><p>I also understand there are some graphical limitations to what can be done and cant be done in the engine due to the way its core handles transparencies.  I couldnt exactly say what it is, like I've noticed alpha channel problems where the moon looks like it is in front of the skies, like the layering isnt rendering the alpha in 8 bit transparency but 2 bit (2 bit = on or off) on the moon.  </p><p>Now personally, I've also heard elsewhere some people mention "I can do a better sky", and a "yeah well lets see them".  Good challenge.  The following skies screenshots were created using ONE texture I made for the Serious Sam engine.  And that very old outdated engine had the exact same texture rendering problems as the EQ2 engine.  So "yeah well do better"?  Here ya go.</p><p><img src="http://www.intercomm.com/biobob/images/MovingClouds.jpg" alt="" width="846" height="568" border="0" /></p><p>The following is the same texture applied at night with different lighting.  The stars are a different set of textures applied to a skybox.</p><p><img src="http://www.intercomm.com/biobob/images/DarkForest.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="768" border="0" /></p><p>Same texture again, slightly different angle:</p><p> <img src="http://www.intercomm.com/biobob/images/DarkForest2.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="768" border="0" /></p><p>And if someone really wants to play with it, the uncompressed version of the texture is a PNG file I can upload later.  Basically I know exactly what the artists have to deal with, and know how to work around it.  First things first, lets get Multi Core support.</p>