Cloud Simulation Milestone

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Summary

So far, we have implemented basic traversal of the scene, as well as adding in some sample particles to be rendered as clouds later.

Progress

Originally, we had planned to have some sample clouds rendered at this point, and then add in movement controls later. It turns out that movement of the camera is relatively straightforward, but cloud rendering using WebGL requires a bit more planning.

Our initial idea was to use a light scattering model to render clouds; in the current checkpoint, we have demonstrated that creating such particles is feasible, and it interacts well with the movement controls we have so far. However, it will take some additional time to figure out how to we can apply the light scattering model since the WebGL library we are using doesn’t seem to easily allow for it.

Another possibility is to try an alternate rendering approach that will be more friendly to our current setup. For example, projecting textures onto the scene in a way that appears realistic. It’s also feasible to use images of clouds as cloud “imposters” in the background of the scene, since they appear far enough away that interaction is not required.

Next Steps

We plan to explore the alternate cloud rendering approaches, and hope to converge on one of the ideas soon.

From there, we still need to make sure that travelling into the cloud layer is realistic, which could perhaps be simulated as fog.

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