Dynamic Skies Are Getting Cloudy

I hope that in the future we can have more customization over the clouds, such as color & where they are on the Y-axis.

17 Likes

is there any way i can insert it

12 Likes

Can’t wait to see this live! :eyes:

But some things that i want to suggest @ProfessorKJM :

  • Cloud colour (colour gradient too?) changing
  • Cloud animation speed changing and toggleing
  • Cloud mesh canging
  • Precipitations (such as rain or snow)

Thank you!

30 Likes

will there be a property (possibly an enum type) to define the shape? so for instance if i wanted stratus clouds, or cirrus, i could change it? will we be able to procedurally move them? will they be able to move with time? will we be able to color them?

14 Likes

I’ve been looking forward to this feature for a VERY long time! Great work to all involved. However, right away I see some glaring problems with this that really hinder its usefulness (be mindful I wrote this before the DevForum thread was posted, so some things were inevitably covered in the OP):

  • There is no control over the types of clouds you get. In real life, there are many different types of clouds that can form. I don’t want a blob of grey noise in the sky; I want clouds!

  • Clouds NEED atmospheric impact and lighting simulation. If they don’t have it, they just look weird and unnatural. Here are some clouds at sunset, where they should be BLEEDING orange on the side closest to the sun. Instead, they’re just white.

Notice how these clouds are also missing the very bright glow that they should have around their edges when the sun is behind them. Here is an example of what I mean:

Also, this is a minor gripe, but why do clouds look so fuzzy and noisy around their edges?

And now onto minor problems:

  • There is no way to adjust speed of the clouds. By default they move very slowly, I’d like to be able to speed them up or slow them down. If I were making a game where players could speed up or stop time, I wouldn’t want the clouds to keep moving at the same speed.

  • Being able to adjust cloud color is a must! I’m currently working on a space game and I’d like for planets to be able to have different colored clouds.

  • A property to control how high the clouds appear to be would also be nice. If I’m making a dogfighting game like Sleitnick’s “Perilous Skies,” I’d might want the clouds to be much lower in the sky, or even below the horizon.

  • Blob cloud shadows would be e p i c

66 Likes

This looks very nice! It’s great that we can make good clouds without scripts, because it can be a pain.

But if you’re going to do dynamic clouds, you might as well create some other weather features like rain and thunder with just the dark skies and no lightning, as I can imagine developers making these themselves in an unoptimized or poor way.

4 Likes

Wow, Roblox has come so far. Remember before lighting when lights looked something like this?

132 Likes

I’m underwhelmed, people have been doing the same thing for years with a decal of a cloud and it looks the same.

2 Likes

Very cool but would it cause any lag?

5 Likes

I hope that after this gets fully released, we will be able to simulate realistic weather phenomena. I feel like storm chasing games could gain some traction after this update, because it will actually be a fascinating, educative and engaging experience. Weather was very neglected on Roblox until now, i hope that we will have more such updates in the future. The next step, though, is probably allowing a higher number of particles on screen. If you’re trying to simuate realistic, heavy snow, you will have to hugely reduce the number of particles that are being generated, because after a threshold, they all start to flicker, and if you add more, they simply disappear.

A suggestion that others also seem to be supporting is perhaps adding a preset list of different kinds of clouds such as Stratus, Nimbostratus, Cumulus, Cumulonimbus, Cirrus, Altocumulus and so on. What makes clouds beautiful is their diversity based on the ever-changing atmospheric conditions, and the succession of different types of clouds as time passes.

12 Likes

I’ve been waiting for this ever since I saw it on the roadmap. I can’t wait to experiment with everything that is to come with these future updates. If light is going to reflect off clouds properly, I hope to see lightning. I might just add blinking lights in the sky to replicate that if it comes down to it.

Regardless, this is going to make a lot of my projects look so much better.

3 Likes

Not to sour the mood here, but I can’t seem to insert the Clouds object… Could someone for the love of god tell me how to use it, lol

2 Likes

For some odd reason that screenshot of them showcasing the Cloud feature really reminds me of skyrim, perhaps someone will try making a realistic rpg game :thinking:

4 Likes

It’s not out yet, this post is more of a mini-roadmap for the cloud system, the first phase will be released next week, as stated in the post.

5 Likes

Well, at least I got a short burst of dopamine from this…

5 Likes

YES! About 2 hours ago I was sitting inside of my game asking when we would get this feature!?

3 Likes

Great job Roblox, this update looks amazing, I love how far the Roblox platform has grown!

22 Likes

There have been previously been issues with atmospheres on Roblox on different devices, are you certain this will not occur with this new update?
Other than that, this is a great update and I will try using this for my game. :slight_smile:

1 Like

This is a great feature, but I’m hoping that we get the option to make clouds have physical locations relative to our map. Like, let’s say your map is big enough to encompass two distinct cities. Each city could have its own cloud cover.

1 Like

Really hype about this! I already have a functioning weather code in my game that gets real-time weather in NYC, so can’t wait for the sky in my place to look nearly the same as it is where I’m from.

1 Like