New Sky/Atmosphere model in 4.24

[jrapczak]

@SebHillaire

Ok There was indeed a performance issue (only in editor, not visible in GPU perf capture so must be CPU, that is why timers might have been weird also).
Explanation: when enabling a SkyDome with a sky shader, we render in the background some editor text to warn artists when the sky dome is not covering/initializing the color buffer. This text is rendered using Canva and was costing more than expected for some reason (investigation will be conducted). The fix is in (not using the canvas) but it will only be available in 4.25 because it involves shader changes which are now prohibited in 4.24 updates.
However, the next 4.24 update will have a new command I have added to disable that text rendering pass: Use r.SkyAtmosphere.DebugText 0. That should help in the meantime.
Thanks for your report!

Planet: The decision was made to simulate telluric planets with a ground that cast shadow in the atmosphere (visual feature deemed important). That is why we have the ground radius for a virtual planet. Not a gaseous planet. Also, even if we add a color to the ground that will still create a sharp edge at the horizon (because you are close to the ground).
The goal was not to reproduce what the AtmosphericFog was doing because it has many issues, fudge factors and more (for instance the camera was forced high up in the air).

That being said, in 4.25 you will be able to transform the Atmosphere around the component and position the planet anywhere. Then you can use the current component properties to reduce its radius and increase the participating media density to simulate a gaseous planet bottom with smooth horizon. That should do what you want.

Hey Seb,

It seems like I can’t get SkyAtmosphere to respect the world geometry, it just renders the horizon line on top of everything:

Compare this to AtmosphericFog which smoothly cascades over the mountains (aside from the wonky colors):

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Jesse