Rigs-of-rods: Let's bring SkyX back

[only-a-ptr]

Based on community demand (Discord chat), I decided to research SkyX and try to finish it's support in RoR.

I'm creating this issue ticket to persist info from the chat (and as self-reminder)

SkyX

• Homepage (contains resource downloads, out of date): http://www.paradise-sandbox.com/#hydraxskyx.php
  
  
  
  • OGRE wikipage: http://www.ogre3d.org/tikiwiki/SkyX
  
  
  • SkyX development repo - up to date, but without resources: https://bitbucket.org/ogreaddons/skyx
  
  

It may be old, but the code is pretty clean and simple. The volumetric clouds use OGRE 1.x geometry-manipulating API a lot, but it's still very clean and straightforward. Overall it looks fairly portable to OGRE 2.1.

RoR integration by Max98

https://github.com/Max98/ror_nextstable_gui/tree/SkyX-Clean

it looks like it should work out-of-the-box. The SkyX sources/shaders/media are completely included, which makes sense. The library is unfeasible as dependency because it's barely surviving and the only existing repo doesn't contain the shaders, which is actually the most important piece of code (and media are also missing).

[Max98]

If I'm not mistaken, the integration I had worked on should be good to go. But that was with Ogre 1.8/1.9, not sure for Ogre 2.1, it might need some changes from here and there, as I also saw that you have changed many structure stuff.

[Speciesx]

I have everything. :)

SkyX lib + demos source and media files
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3t2lsh59l4ev06i/SkyX-v0.4.rar?dl=0

CMake package (For SkyX 0.3.0 but also compatible with 0.4)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qcc6vib5zg1emvc/SkyX-v0.3_CMake.rar?dl=0

[only-a-ptr]

@Max98 Hi, nice to see you here again. Yes, I'm also under impression it should be good to go. For OGRE 2.1+, it'll need a major overhaul because the API is completely different. Scene entities are still there for compatibility, but geometry/shader API is new. But I'm not concerned about that right now.

@Speciesx Cool, might come in handy.

[Speciesx]

@only-a-ptr
https://github.com/Speciesx/rigs-of-rods/commits/SkyX
Current upstream with working SkyX.

[only-a-ptr]

@Speciesx Thanks a lot, but unfortunately, it works just as badly as my attempt: https://github.com/only-a-ptr/rigs-of-rods/commits/SkyX-raw-old

On DirectX, there's a huge white ball in the middle of the screen (any daytime) and clouds are distorted:

On OpenGL, the sky is fine but clouds are still distorted:

Tested on Windows 7 x64 + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (drivers 350.12)

[ghost]

Works fine for me on DirectX - Windows 8.1 Pro x64 + NVIDIA GeForce GTS 360M (very outdated, I know)

[tritonas00]

also works fine with opengl on linux

[Speciesx]

@only-a-ptr
This is a sightrange bug.

[only-a-ptr]

Thanks for the research, guys!

I'll re-check my settings. And I'll post RoR.log next time 😊 Did any of you modify the SkyX config file? If yes, can you upload for me to test?

[ghost]

I use the default configuration with layered clouds enabled. Sightrange is set to unlimited, haven't tested lower values yet.

[only-a-ptr]

Removing from v0.4.8 because the code got out of date and integrating it would take a while.

I'll get back to it first thing after the release.

[AnotherFoxGuy]

Should we completely replace Caelum with SkyX?
Since Caelum is written 100% in CG shaders I think Caelum will only cause more bugs in the future
(See #1412)

[tritonas00]

:+1:

Tested yesterday, works fine https://forum.rigsofrods.org/development-discussion/64-rigs-rods-skyx-build.html#post646

[only-a-ptr]

@AnotherFoxGuy Makes complete sense, but in that case we should invent some fallback handling of CaelumConfigFile entry in terrn2 : http://docs.rigsofrods.org/terrain-creation/old-terrn-subsystem/#caelum-sky

@tritonas00 Heh, I didn't even know about that thread, thanks!

[AnotherFoxGuy]

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