Over the past couple of days, I continued some work on the planetary atmospheres.  First, I created a special version of the skybox that can be tinted to the color of a planet’s atmosphere.  Then, I updated the planet and cloud shaders so that they can be “fogged”, which means basically transitioning to a solid color to simulate haze.  The color of the atmosphere is also modulated by the atmosphere thickness of the planet; it will tend towards black the thinner the atmosphere is.  The atmosphere also transitions smoothly out to space and back for the launching and landing animations.

The three images below is an example of a very thin atmosphere, a moderate atmosphere, and a very thick atmosphere viewed from the same spot on the same planet, to illustrate the effect.

Very Thin Atmosphere Moderate Atmosphere Very Thick Atmosphere

I think I am happy with how planetary atmospheres are working.  Coming up next will be some more work done on the landing and launching animations.

Here is some eye candy!

Planet 90
Planet 91
Planet 92
Planet 96
Planet 100
Planet 96
Planet 453
Planet 454
Planet 455
Planet 456
Very Thin Atmosphere