Reviewing my last asset, it actually took just over a month from the day that I submitted it for it to be released on the marketplace. (I thought it was shorter but my inbox timestamps tell a different tale.)
As I’ve had quite a few people asking for a pre-epic-release copy of Orbit, I’m looking into using Gumroad as an alternative until I hear back from Epic. I’ve never used it before, so I’ve a bit of research to do, but I’ll update the thread and let everyone know my decision when I’ve had some time to review it.
A Demo with unlocked FPS would be really great
If it is well optimized (we cant tell if anybody tests with 980tis!) then it might be another reason to consider buying it!
Can offer results with a R9290 and RX480.
I think you mentioned somewhere that flying through the clouds currently isn’t possible with your system, but I can’t find the specific post anymore. Is that still the case? And if so, could you show how the clouds look from inside? Do you think moving through the clouds can be faked somehow, maybe by adding fog around the player at a certain height?
I will be running all tests using Asus ROG GTX 1080 cards. So when i get my hands on this thing, i will post the results from testing… you know, eventually, when Epic decides to add this to the marketplace lol …
While that’s very flattering of you to say, TrueSky is still miles ahead of my system in various areas. I hope one day I can get this system to be something comparable to it, but for now, we are worlds apart.
The issue with the clouds and flying through them is that right now, their volume is generated via stacked slices. While this works when viewing them from the ground, the illusion unravels when you go up to fly through them, as looking directly horizontally through them allows you to see through “gaps” between the samples. I can provide a picture after I get off work this evening to serve as an example.
There are a couple of ways to potentially combat this (which I’ll be looking into post-release) such as what you mentioned, running a trace from above the camera to see if you’re in the clouds, and then turning up the intensity of a camera-local fog. I’m also looking into re-writing the stratus clouds altogether, either using a cube-volume utilizing volume texture raymarching, or by using a procedural mesh component generating slices on the fly. Both come with their technical and performance challenges, and would require me to rewrite a lot of the system, as the current cloud shading model is unlit, but influenced through the blueprint and dynamic material instances to simulate the effects of light-scattering, backlighting, and self shading, the intensities and falloffs of which are all customisable without having to break into the material and changing the shader model parameters and then recompiling.
I’ll be putting up a demo before it’s out on the marketplace, I just haven’t had time to set it up yet. It’ll be using the flying game template, and allow some customization options such as whether or not to simulate time of day, what cloud sampling quality to use, and whether or not to render the volumetric fog, so that everybody can see how their systems perform.
wo0t i am so excited for it all!
i dont have flying of any type in my game, but, being a “cloud” would be cool so i can drop the cloud ceiling and have them cover mountains …
anyways - amazing work so far, i am super excited for it all.
You could, but doing meshes like that wouldn’t really have a whole lot of breakaway/interaction. I was going for an organic, archaic cloud field, and didn’t really see a lot of opportunity to morph individual pieces into larger formations in a natural looking way. Also it wouldn’t really help to fly around within a big empty cloud mesh, as the space on the inside of a mesh is still hollow. You could fill it with slice cards at a bunch of angles for a static piece, but then there’s the issue of massive transparency overdraw that would cause.
Hey all, I’ve thrown together a quick demo of Orbit. Today was kinda hectic, so I didn’t have time to set up in-game commands to change the settings of the system, but the clouds are running at medium sample quality, so you’re still experiencing the volumetric effect at a game-ready sample quality. Here’s a link, and here’s a video of me flying around in the demo.
I’ve also decided to put the release build up on Gumroad. I just need to put together some documentation to help you guys get started and set up, and I’ll be uploading it.
Also, can confirm, in that demo build, I got between 70 and 110fps on a GTX 760 2gb. Please email me your specs/results if you feel so inclined, so I can gather more info.
How about you make that layer of clouds thicker and randomly offset the height of the individual clouds? this would help making the clouds look less like a carpet xD
That is a good idea, but potentially I’ll be looking into raymarching cloud textures within a volume, so the need to mitigate the cloud sheet look with more meshes won’t be there, as the cloud shapes will be much more varied in height and shape.
stop the madness!
i feel like i little kid that cant wait for xmas ! haha. I have been checking for updates like every 30 min for the last few days … driving me nuts lol
Man, i can NOT tell you how excited i am to add this to my current project.
Runs OK on a 290 - about 70-110FPS depending on the scene. But ill be waiting until clouds can get thicker, looks like floating pancakes currently
And as for the demo: The skysphere background clouds dont quite fit into your clouds setup … And i expected more performance from it (shouldnt be “that” heavy). Did you set the target to 300fps without smoothing in the project options?
I completely disabled frame rate smoothing, set the max and min frame clamps to open so there’s no limit at all.
The backdrop clouds can be disabled, or set with other templates. I’ll be making a tutorial on how to bring in custom backdrops in the near future.
Clouds can be thicker, to a certain degree. Performance is purely due to transparency overdraw, as I’ve mentioned I’ll be looking into other cloud solutions besides the current setup but it’ll require a large degree of rewriting.
Thanks for checking it out and for your feedback, I really appreciate it!
For the used techniques it is really very performant
And the 290 is quite old already … on monday i can re-test with an RX480, lets see if how this goes! Maybe somebody could also re-test with a 1060. These would be the mid-tier current-gen cards which most ppl play games with in the near future.
Hi, I just wanted to thank you for submitting a marketplace item for a complex weather system and not charging people a ton of money for it. If you keep this up to date once it’s available, it will take a ton of time out of things I need to implement. So, basically just thanking you for your cool work and for being reasonable with the price
