My thoughts on a better skybox

[MirceaKitsune]

Yes, I know this is something obvious that everyone likely knows by now. I just wanted to post my thoughts on it, and an alternative that I had in mind.

The main factor which I believe harms PS when it comes to good looks is the current skybox system. Everyone who tilts their camera up can notice the sky is just an inside-out sphere, which is most visible when you walk too close to the edge of an area. In many cases, it also overlaps with neighboring skyboxes in ugly ways (I took a few screenshots of it here http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/583/buggyskybox.jpg ). Now again, I know this is likely temporary and I'm not complaining or anything. Just wanted to post some of my thoughts for a good alternative.

Even if the overlapping would be fixed, I don't believe a sphere stretched over the whole area will ever do. If you look up while walking and moving the camera, you see the skybox is right above you and very close, braking the illusion of a far away sky. I also don't believe a correct day-night cycle can exist with the sky using a single texture at different brightness levels (you need stars during the night, a blue sky with white clouds during the day and so on). So on the technical side, the way I understand the engine (not a developer though I wish I was), this is my suggestion:

I'd go with completely removing the fake sphere models, so if someone looks up they see the infinite 3D space. Currently, if you look into infinity (happens in buggy situations) you only see models leaving trails over the black space. So my idea was rendering a cubemap skybox over that infinity, and letting players see it (most realistic skyboxes are done this way afaik). The cubemap itself would always be full bright and not affected by lightning, so lightning can be decided from the texture only. By making the infinite space display the sky as a cubemap, it would also look realistic when you move around. A cubemap makes the sky move with you, so you see it as far away as possible without it looking fake. If placed over a model like it is now, even if the model is large, it's obvious the sky is close and fake when you compare its movement to objects around you.

As for a the sky reflecting the time of day, I'd use multi-texturing with a fading effect for that. So for example, we could have a blue sunny sky cubemap for daytime, a red sky for sunrise / sunset, and a black starry sky for nighttime. At 12PM, the skybox only diffuses the daytime image. As the clock advances to 6PM, the red sky texture fades over the blue one, until at 6PM it replaces it completely. Then from 6PM to 12AM the red sky texture starts doing that with the black sky texture and so on. This can probably be synced with the ambient lightning system, to assure they both work properly. There could be some better alternatives here... like having the clouds as a separate layer that move across the stars / sun. But imo that's less important for the time being.

I know I'm probably pointing the obvious. Just posted this with the hope of inspiring the devs and making this happen sooner... if implementing an envmap system isn't too hard. I'd love to see a wonderful high-res sky when looking up, which I believe would make the environment much more beautiful and have a great impact Here's something I quickly photoshopped with a random sky image, to get a little taste of if: http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/183/shot143.jpg

[LigH]

There is really a bug that most maps seem to contain several overlapping sky meshes. This should be fixed as soon as the reason for this bug can be discovered...

But don't forget: It is not "sky" as we are used to. It is the look at a huge crystal's surface. There is no open atmosphere. There is no sun raising in the morning and setting in the evening (at least not inside the Stalactite called Yliakum). You won't be able to see stars in the night (at most maybe cracks in the crystal).

[MirceaKitsune]

But don't forget: It is not "sky" as we are used to. It is the look at a huge crystal's surface. There is no open atmosphere. There is no sun raising in the morning and setting in the evening (at least not inside the Stalactite called Yliakum). You won't be able to see stars in the night (at most maybe cracks in the crystal).

Aah, I understand. That's why the current sky was left to look like this. Should have read the story better... didn't know PS takes place in a large crystal

But even so, I think the current skybox can be improved and a cubemap used instead. We could draw the huge crystal surface on the sky image, with many shards and perhaps cracks through which the real sky shows. I think a giant crystal covering the sky on a high res skybox (but big enough to look very far away) would be totally awesome and surreal. Or if it still respects the theme of the game, a normal sky but full of crystal shards and floating pieces of crystal, covering more than half of it. I actually agree that would look much more surreal and amazing than a classic sky, but drawn on an high-res env-map rather than a model.

To honor the day / night cycle properly, the crystals could also change their color to reflect the time of day... just like the real sky. Light blue crystals during the day, orange during sunset / sunrise, and almost black during the night. Can already imagine how awesome that looks <3 Otherwise, the current sky I still don't agree with myself. Looks too fake and simple to me even for a crystal cover (I didn't even figure that's what it's meant to be).

[Roled]

The sky does change at different times of day,
or at least the effect of different times is apparent in the color of the sky,
then it's 'darkening', and the colors and shadows especially in Hydlaa, at least that's where I notice it most.
 
One time I sat on the top of the hill behind Hydlaa and watched sunset,
and once or twice stood on the roof of Kada Els' for sunrise...

And there is weather from time to time,
but apparently that causes major lag in lots of people's experience,
it's fine and a cool change on my screen, but
I do have a decent graphics card I guess.

Climb the hill with picnic and pie and..
Sit yerself down and watch the sky 

Hey you guys, Dean Erelenga, does that hill have a name?

Roled
the Wandering Elf of Pies

[Vakachehk]

There is really a bug that most maps seem to contain several overlapping sky meshes. This should be fixed as soon as the reason for this bug can be discovered...

But don't forget: It is not "sky" as we are used to. It is the look at a huge crystal's surface. There is no open atmosphere. There is no sun raising in the morning and setting in the evening (at least not inside the Stalactite called Yliakum). You won't be able to see stars in the night (at most maybe cracks in the crystal).

But then again, you should try adding in some effects such as clouds going past and things. You might see some gems on the roof of the stalactite shinning a little. But I don't know.... I am not in Settings

[RlyDontKnow]

it can be pretty much summed up to "replace the current sky with a shaded one"

there are examples of it out there, but...
1) someone would have to do the required artwork for it
2) someone would have to write the required shader(s)
3) the shader(s) would have to be embedded into the engine (time of the day passed as variable, etc.)

which leads to several issues:
1) we don't have many artists atm and all are busy with other things
2) we don't have anyone really familiar with shaders in general
3) it'd be another thing that'd only work on decent graphics cards (the texture splatting on the roads is a lot easier and already causes many issues) which leads to:
4) it'd need a fallback to (probably) the same old texture we have now

all in all quite a lot work for something pretty minor

[Sen]

Im not sure if I should say it (apologies if not), but one of the artists of planeshift can do very nice skyboxes. If they fit to planeshift or not is another topic, but I believe that replacing the current one is a quite valid thought.

[Vakachehk]

... but I believe that replacing the current one is a quite valid thought.

  agreed!