Creating SkyDomes

[phydeaux]

I have some fairly interesting sky photos that I've taken and would like to try my luck at possible creating some skydomes. Do any of you know where I might find information on creating skydomes from photographs? Thanks in advance for any direction or guidance you might have.

Larry

[scottb613]

I have some fairly interesting sky photos that I've taken and would like to try my luck at possible creating some skydomes. Do any of you know where I might find information on creating skydomes from photographs? Thanks in advance for any direction or guidance you might have.

Larry

Hi Larry,

Spent a great deal of time and even some cash trying to build a better skydome for ORTS. There are some serious distortion issues inherent in the skydome texture application within ORTS that can only be fixed by a developer. Sadly - I didn't have much interest from any of the developers while I worked on it or it could have been just beyond what they know. I believe the guy who initially worked the environment left long ago.

That said - if you have a standard panoramic image - you can use "distortion effects" in a paint program to give it polar coordinates - so it matches the texture you see in the current skydome.

You can follow my trials and tribulations here:

https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?336727-Build-A-Better-Skydome-Terragen-2

There's a link in my thread to a 10,000x10,000 pixel skydome test.

Regards,
Scott

[baldwin]

Is there any valid reason why we are using a dome for the sky. Both ATS and ETS2 use a box and that looks very good when compared to our dome.

[scottb613]

Is there any valid reason why we are using a dome for the sky. Both ATS and ETS2 use a box and that looks very good when compared to our dome.

Hi Mervyn,

As I’m pretty sure you dabble on both side of the fence - as do I - even FS9 has far better skies than we do in ORTS (which I’ve edited before). Given our present conundrum with texture distortion - anything would be an improvement - Hah - well maybe not the environmental mess that MSTS was.

I had plans to generate all kinds of different skydomes with Terragen to represent various weather conditions - however - the distortion of the final images by the sim didn’t make it worth my while.

I think it’s just lack of time/interest/skill from a qualified ORTS developer - to work on the environment. I’m fairly competent with textures and would gladly work with someone who can code - to improve this aspect of our sim for all.

Regards,
Scott


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