Environmental Effects?

[ewan_s]

All,

Were in the process of adding some environmental effects to our opengl simulation package, we have completed some of the basics like sky, fog, clouds, and lens flare. Now I'm looking for some examples on how to render rain and snow, any example url's etc. would be helpful. Speed is my main concern, this is a real time app so it's got'a be quick... and look nice.

Also any ideas for adding sun white-out (i.e. being blinded when you look directly at the sun) would be appreciated.

thanks in advance
ewan

[jleffelm]

The only thing I can think of for rain, or snow, would be some sort of particle system. If anyone suggests anything else, I would be interested in knowing what it is.

You could create a small rectangle just in front of the camera as the source, and move the source around when the camera moves. Although you would have to play with the size of the source to avoid snowflakes not covering the whole screen when you rotated around.

-Drew

[ewan_s]

yeh, my first idea was to use simple particles indes a cube placed right in front of the camera. The particles would get small as they are drawn towards the back of he cube to give the idea of greater depth/perspective then there actually is. The direction of the particles movement stays constant as the camera moves around i.e. the if the camera view is flat your looking a the rain drops side on so they look like streaks, if the camera view is looking down then the rain looks more like dots moving away from the camera.

would have been nice to know if this had been done before...

e