Gas Giant weather systems and animation..

[xondk]

I am guessing it is a performance issue, granted they could make it something to be toggled.

But also remember that weather patterns do not really move that fast, and are usually seen over several hours if not days on other planets, then compressed down in a timelapse, I don't know if anyone has actually tried to do that in Elite just yet? Just to see if there's any movement at all.

 

[Varrag]

And yet they are still the best looking procedural gas giants I've seen so far.

They do look very good in ED, however SE can also generate spectacular gas giants. With aurorae and ring shadows, btw
(still no thunderstorms, though)

 

[frostypaw]

I believe the gas giants won't look really good until a proper fluid dynamics approach is implemented. You could also animate it to update one frame every minute or so for some fun timelapses...

This is the answer I think.

Fluid dynamics and all may look lovely but it's processor hogging stuff when you're asking it to model global patterns of weather at varying depths. In some way it's gotta be rigged so you don't need a whole extra processor to do it.
Speed seems the best choice in many ways - the storms move very slowly in the planetary scale so doing 1 frame a minute is actually pretty acceptable as long as there's a sneaky turbulence shader keeping all the colour edges moving so it's also passable closer up

 

[Cmdr Cheese Wedge]

This is the answer I think.

Fluid dynamics and all may look lovely but it's processor hogging stuff when you're asking it to model global patterns of weather at varying depths. In some way it's gotta be rigged so you don't need a whole extra processor to do it.
Speed seems the best choice in many ways - the storms move very slowly in the planetary scale so doing 1 frame a minute is actually pretty acceptable as long as there's a sneaky turbulence shader keeping all the colour edges moving so it's also passable closer up

It might also have something to do with the framerate being tied to the network and it didn't work correctly.
I don't see how that would be the case but I read that somewhere on the forum some time ago, but don't quote me on that.

 

[frostypaw]

It might also have something to do with the framerate being tied to the network and it didn't work correctly.
I don't see how that would be the case but I read that somewhere on the forum some time ago, but don't quote me on that.

That would make sense if the modelling was done back at FDev servers I guess, but that seems a big ask? Hmm