Over the past couple of days, I continued some work on the planetary atmospheres.\u00a0 First,\u00a0I created a special version of the skybox that can be tinted to the color of a planet’s atmosphere.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The atmosphere also transitions smoothly out to space and back for the launching and landing animations.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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I think I am happy with how planetary atmospheres\u00a0are working.\u00a0 Coming up next will be some more work done on the landing and launching animations.<\/p>\n

Here is some eye candy!<\/p>\n<\/div>