I was actually just thinking about this. It’s 2023, I wish we had this feature, it would be super useful.
Along with this, I think Roblox should consider adding a way to show which side of the skybox is which in the viewport (eg replace textures with ones that say front, back, etc) it seeks simple but it honestly can get jumbled up sometimes.
Here’s an example of a skybox in omegaspace. It’s great but if I wanted to rotate it I’d have to edit the skybox and reupload which is a pain. While we’re at it, if you look closely the black levels are not great and it’s because the images were made with high bit depth but Roblox limits us. If it was not a huge engine hassle I would love it if Roblox could overhaul the skybox system to implement the suggestions made here
Can you just use a spherical skybox mesh, anchor it to the camera with a script, and rotate it that way? I’ve used this to show a sky in a ViewportFrame, but never in the actual game.
That has its own limitations, such as all that comes with rendering a spherical mesh (not really all that much, but still, just another object to render), and the fact that you won’t be able to see the actual sun and moon (and stars) using this method.
I think some scripter could make a fake skybox that does the same thing, even to the point of setting the position of a sun and moon decal based on TimeOfDay and GeographicalLatitude. It’s just slightly off from the real thing.
I kinda agree that a rotational Vector3 should be added if it doesn’t take Roblox way too much effort.
And further properties on the skybox wouldn’t hurt me, it would give users more ways to design their experiences.
I just don’t think there are many games that really need a spinning skybox, which is probably a reason it has not been added yet.
This likely already is added, but not yet “enabled”. I can check it out via internal studio to see if any fast flags related to it are here that would prematurely enable it.
Will we also be able to affect celestial bodies with this?
I can see a lot of potential for this in creating a psuedo map rotation effect by rotating the skybox and its celestial bodies to make it appear as if the map is rotating without affecting any physics, but I fear only being able to rotate skyboxes is going to look goofy if not for the ability to rotate celestial bodies with it due to how they affect lighting.
Without the ability to reorient celestial bodies as a group, this effect can’t be pulled off due to the way repositioning just the sun works in Roblox, meaning lighting would ruin your effect.
Personally I wouldn’t want celestial bodies to rotate for my own use cases, and it seems difficult to set Sun/Moon position if you have TimeOfDay, GeographicalLattitude, and now Skybox Orientation affecting them. But maybe we’ll see it happen?
I’d love an upgrade to stars in general. They’re still flickering pixels.
You’re absolutely right. I feel like both the skybox and celestial bodies should be treated as separate instances (perhaps only internally for parity with legacy projects) to best fit every developer’s use case, but whether or not this is feasible is up to the team.
At the end of the day it’s cool to see something surface that has been on the back of my mind for a long time now.
Kind of crazy!