As per title, surely an easily implemented first step for the much wanted atmospheres would be arid waterless worlds. Since these arid worlds only have the layer of gas and ambient occlusion to model, which they already model for ELW/s and gas giants (fly around one in supercruise) they could borrow those parts of the existing games code.
I am pretty certain I am not alone in this but I personally think it would be cool to zoom about in an SRV and see a sunrise / sunset with the ambient occlusion and a coloured sky. Even if there wasnt a single cloud in the sky. Not having moisture and therefore clouds & weather featured drastically reduces the complexity of the environment model required. Thus making it easier to implement, and it would be a much appreciated by the players really big bone to throw at us if in season 3 we could get some sort of simple (arid) atmospheres and development wise it would give FD a good starting point for fulfilling the dream of full on meteorological functional atmospheres.
Even something as rudimentary as shrouding the surface of some planets in translucent gas as used to model nebulae's would add some feeling of depth to the universe.
I am pretty certain I am not alone in this but I personally think it would be cool to zoom about in an SRV and see a sunrise / sunset with the ambient occlusion and a coloured sky. Even if there wasnt a single cloud in the sky. Not having moisture and therefore clouds & weather featured drastically reduces the complexity of the environment model required. Thus making it easier to implement, and it would be a much appreciated by the players really big bone to throw at us if in season 3 we could get some sort of simple (arid) atmospheres and development wise it would give FD a good starting point for fulfilling the dream of full on meteorological functional atmospheres.
Even something as rudimentary as shrouding the surface of some planets in translucent gas as used to model nebulae's would add some feeling of depth to the universe.