small thing i have notticed when overcast

[overide1]

first i want to say that these are some of the best graphics and the most detailed online world i have encountered so far and really do love this game!

i just found this one thing that was kinda out of place and didn't make sense.

i am in tryker so i don't know if other lands work the same but when its rainy and overcast the ground is still well lit and trees still cast sharp shadows. this is of course when its overcast during daytime.

so, shouldn't the area dim and shadows blur?

i realize that alot has been put into this game so i am not worried about it. i just thought i would bring it to attention in case its something you might like to work on when you actually get some time away from the bug fixes and so on. good luck with that btw.

also, its would just be so pretty (yes, pretty) to see rays of sunlight through the clouds. icing on the cake, you know?

[dewdman]

I doubt we will ever see rays of sunlight poking through parting clouds anytime soon because that takes volumetric lighting and that my friend is one of the single biggest graphic intensive system hogs you can add to a rendering scene (especially real-time volumetric lighting). What *would* be nice and is very plausible and easy to add for graphic flare when it comes to lighting are dx9 shaders in particular the much overused, but beautiful when used right, 'bloom' effect. If you're wondering what I mean check out screenshots for Guild Wars. That game uses bloom effects and soft-lighting like its going out of style (although to great affect).

[gules]

Ew. Bloom works really well for Guild Wars, but I think it would be majorly out of place in a Sci-Fi world like Ryzom. I like my sharp, clear graphics.

[dewdman]

I disagree. A nice yellow-orange firey haze on the desert horizon outside Pyr would look gorgeous at sunset or sunrise, and an almost blinding white-wash during the day would really add to the 'Cauldron of Purity' mythos we associate with the harsh environment.

Then again I'm a hopeless romantic when it comes to dunes.

[thanakar]

Since you are in Tryker, next time it is overcast and raining take a look at the reflection in the water. Last time I was there, when it was overcast and raining at night, the reflection showed a clear sky full of stars.

[josephm]

Well that can be easily explained through the magical filament that runs through those giant roots you see in the sky. It's where magic on Atys comes from you see, and to balance out the magic output, it has a heavy 'filtered' gravitational pull. Since the roots need to access the 4th demension to make magic, it only pulls photons because they are really really small and move at incredibly high rates of speed. The magic that comes from the roots is really a mass of transformed photons and that's what we think is 'light' under the giant roots.
The reason you can see the stars in the reflection is that by the time light would have reached the ground, it was sucked into the roots. So all you see around you is magic, and since the roots 'breathe out' magic, the reflection shows the stars because what you really see is a lie...the magic is thickens air more than photons normally would so when you look up normally you're seeing what really passed 5 hours ago. In fact, the air is SO thick that it takes the water 5 hours to come down too.