Lighting, Lightning, and Stratus decks

Our clouds are integrated with SilverLining™ 's outdoor lighting simulation in order to provide cloud lighting with a physical realism that has never before been seen in real-time rendering applications.

Starting with the actual spectrum and luminance of the sun itself, SilverLining™ models the passage of the sun's rays through Earth's atmosphere for any given simulated environment.

Then, using concepts from prior research at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we model the scattering of this light through and within each cloud as it finds its way to the scene's camera location - using real empirical data about the actual size and density of the droplets that make up a given cloud type.

The result is stunningly realistic clouds at dawn, daytime, dusk, night, or any time in between.

Cumulonimbus clouds also incorporate lightning effects. As with the clouds themselves, the lightning is procedurally generated for added realism. Lightning illuminates the parent cloud and have animation effects to simulate the flickering due to return strokes.

Stratus cloud decks have thickness and a configurable "scud" layer above and below them. They accurately influence lighting when the viewpoint is below the cloud deck based on our own extension of the CIE overcast sky model.

Stratus decks may also be configured to be "broken" - this provides a visual approximation to scattered clouds with extremely high performance characteristics.

Fog effects inside a stratus cloud will honor the "holes" of a broken cloud deck - that is, you can fly right through a clear patch with no visibility impact.

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