Mod Release Weather - High Waves Mod & SKIES Upd.6

[priatnia]

This Mod increases the sizes of waves and the roughness of the sea in all conditions .


The waves and roughness of sea surface are different in all, with slight differences. Screenshots are included in the packs.

Credit to all the people who well modified the weather in these Builds whose work makes it great.



The weather so far was divided into 4-5 clusters 5-6 hours each with identical weather in each cluster, just that rain could happen, spoil it and pass.

Divided weather per 1 hour so there are 24 different types of weather now. This is related mostly to the skies folder but not only. Regulated the occurance of rain storm and fog, diff settings in the diff versions. Resulted in 24 different skies which exchange every game hour 2-3 minutes after it strikes the hour. Some of them were already there but not enabled, credit to the build authors. There are also diff water colours in the different builds.

Installation:Copy/Paste in main game directory.

Note: The hours from the morning to afternoon are similar with different clouds /CONV versions/. For early mornings is used different "Overcast"s as well as for some evening hours. In the MIX versions where it looks too identical was replaced with a sky from the original game. The dark night starts earlier at 22h if I remember correctly and does not follow the natural night cycle, you can see bright hours after the dark, dnno is it so or not in reality. Anyhow it was enabled just one night sky so far so...The early morning hours have protruded into the last night hours so to say and shortened the night, which for me was too boring long as it were. Maybe unnatural but fun. The Twilight hours aren't used any more as I found them dull. Night 2 as too dark also does not appear in some versions.

The marking of the files means: Standard/number/ - waves version(Elongated 3 is the first version before all and retains the older name); Follows description which Build version it is built upon for ex. beta 2.3. Older versions are not worse, just there are different colours of water, fog etc so it is question of preference. 24hrs marks the new version of 24 different skies exchanging every hour. ORG means only original game skies, tho they may load after reinitiation. CONV- converted from AoP. MIX - both converted and original game skies. Lastly "sunny" means more sunny hours but there is still some rain and storms. "Rainy" is the opposite. "Foggy" adds some fog not very thick almost in all cases/hours, so it looks like blurry a bit, tho the game abilities do not create nice or well coloured fog in my oppinion, but it is some improvement nevertheless. Lastly, in the oldest versions /Beta 1 pure or up to patch6 incl - here "Standard 3 Beta 1 24hrs ORG sunny" and "Standard 3 Beta 1 p6 24 hrs ORG equalsunrain" /- is still that bug with the ship rotating endlessly after storm passes, but I keep them for other unique settings, while this I find not so problematic.

DOWNLOADS for OLDER than BETA 3 Builds - 31Aug13:
SCREENSHOTS PACK:
http://uploading.com/39fe5e77/SKIES-SCREENSHOTS-PACK-rar

Standard 3 Beta 1 24hrs ORG sunny:
http://uploading.com/58f57e8d/Standard-3-Beta-1-24hrs-SKIES-ORG-sunny-rar

Standard 3 Beta 1 p6 24 hrs ORG equalsunrain:
http://uploading.com/9b25bd68/Standard-3-Beta-1-p6-24-hrs-SKIES-ORG-equalsunrain-rar

Elongated 3 Beta 2.3 24 hours CONV sunny:
http://uploading.com/f8582374/Elongated-3-Beta-2-3-24-hours-CONV-sunny-rar

Standard 3 Beta 2.3 24hrs MIX sunny:
http://uploading.com/2757b3bc/Standard-3-Beta-2-3-24hrs-MIX-sunny-rar

Standard 4 Build 2.1 24hrs CONV sunny:
http://uploading.com/6f4m125d/Standard-4-Build-2-1-24hrs-CONV-sunny-rar

Standard 4 build 2.1 24hrs CONV more fog&rain:
http://uploading.com/699e16m1/Standard-4-build-2-1-24hrs-CONV-more-fog-rain-rar

Standard 5 Build 2.5 24hrs MIX sunny:
http://uploading.com/9d1bd427/Standard-5-Build-2-5-24hrs-MIX-sunny-rar


Update 27sept13. STANDARD 6 based on BETA 3. All other versions don't work with Beta 3 or up. Download:

http://uploading.com/f8e9dc64/Standard-6-Beta-3-24hrs-MIX-Sunny-rar

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Hmm. Do the ships still move smoothly or do they jerk around like in COAS? I will find out soon enough.

EDIT: The ships move smoothly! The waves are less round and generally larger. Someone else got the small wave version so I took the big wave one. It looks like this one will be a bit much for small ships. The waves look a bit big for the Caribbean. Have the colors been changed?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Can't make up my mind about this. Yes, no, maybe.............The local area boxes stand out more now.

 

[priatnia]

For me it adds realism, the sea is seldom glass flat as all game conditions represent it per vanilla, with one or two hardly visible waves rising hardly when they are not lazy. Dnno what are local area boxes.
It should have probably more tiny wavies and foam but this is to where the engine can go in this game.

And in some cases it looks almost perfect:

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I used the high wave version yesterday and saw low, medium, and storm waves. So far today using the small wave version I have seen low and medium waves. No storms yet.
For low waves I prefer the small wave version. The medium waves look about the same in both versions except that in the small wave version the ship is not centered in the local area, or Level Of Detail boxes. I used to think there was only one box but it appears now that there are three boxes, each with a lower LOD. This looks very bad as the ship can have big waves on one side and small waves on the other side. See the screenies. This LOD stuff needs looking into as to how it shows up with higher waves.

Onto the storms!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The waves in the Caribbean are generally not overly huge, but you do get big swells on the Atlantic side on occasion.
Those screenshots look rather steep; waves should be longer...?

 

[priatnia]

I am not sure full realism with longer waves can be achieved, that is why they went developing the AoPs.

@Hylie: I do not know how the local area boxes work. What you show may be not loading at distant range, which is a sort of graphic range problem. I'll think about it, don't know for now.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Finally got in a storm. It must be the calm time of year as I had to go looking for one. The waves seem slightly less rounded than before. Not much difference that I could see.
I do not know how they work either, but they are much easier to see with your mod. Overall I like the idea of less rounded waves but this still needs more work. Your ship can be sitting in very spiky waves and another ship close by is sitting in calm water.

 

[priatnia]

There is a version down attached with elongated waves&bigger sea amplitude. Overall looks more classic, and the storm finally lost the round waves. But it looks now flatter in calm weather.

I do not know how they work either, but they are much easier to see with your mod. Overall I like the idea of less rounded waves but this still needs more work. Your ship can be sitting in very spiky waves and another ship close by is sitting in calm water.

I notice it but usually all ships nearby are in some waves. At a distance it becomes flatter. There are still the big long waves but the small ones get lost. I am gonna check it further. In the meantime are you sure your settings are at max to allow distant loading of objects ? That happens in some other games where distant mountains loose shape or are not loaded at all.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Most games have very short draw distances. POTC is the exception in this regard and I like it. My video card settings are as high as they can go and still get useable fps. If you look at the right side of this WIP screenie you can just make out the island. That is about as good as it gets in POTC.


Methinks those boxes are part of a LOD system. No ideer where that is located.

 

[Armada]

Regarding the LOD system: try having a look in PROGRAM\Weather\WhrSea.c. There are a few values that look useful there, one of which is 'Sea.LodScale = 4.0;'...

 

[priatnia]

Might I suggest that you check also the box "Enable Surface Format Optimization" although nobody knows will it have a result.

Question is what does the LOD do and in what way, one cannot randomly change it with a swing of the wind.

 

[Armada]

LOD, or Level of Detail, controls how a mesh looks at different viewing distances. In this case, it determines how detailed the surface of the water looks.
Close to the player ship, the waves are highly detailed, whereas on the horizon they look flat. The assumption is that changing the 'LodScale' value will affect the distance at which the water goes from detailed to flat, or something along those lines.

 

[priatnia]

Yes thanks.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I played the elongated waves version for a while last night, but did not get into any code stuff. The LOD's did not look too bad but I will play with settings.
Again, I like the calm water.
The medium water looks very wrong to me with the spikey waves. Also, when turned sideways to the waves the ship rolls violently from side to side. I spent decades climbing up in the air on land and am not afraid of heights but would not want to climb those masts when they are swinging like that.
The storm waves look too close together to me now. They are less rounded though. Storms are more violent now and this sturdy ship that should have weathered that storm easily almost capsized. Only the storm ending early saved her.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I doubled the LOD thingy from 4 to 8 and it seems that the LOD consists of boxes of boxes. Or boxes within boxes. Anyhoo it looks like it doubled the size of the boxes or squares. This has several effects. The sea seems smoother and looks better to me, but there are occasional "tears" where the box edges do not line up. Also there seems to be a heavier load put on the hardware. The fans for both my CPU and GPU spooled up higher than usual and there seemed to be a slight drop in fps.
More testing required.

 

[Post Captain]

The waves in the Caribbean are generally not overly huge, but you do get big swells on the Atlantic side on occasion.
Those screenshots look rather steep; waves should be longer...?

I agree. These are a bit unrealistic to me. The ones in the stock game look more proportionately correct.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Is it possible to change the code so that the wave length depends on its height? That way, they should look better in ALL instances.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I clicked that box in CCC and it really made a difference. I not only got all the fps back and more but the water looks better.

To me the stock waves only need to be less rounded,especially the storm waves.

The tearing can be reduced or eliminated by backing off on the LOD to 5 or 6 methinks. To me the storm waves are improved now, but changing the LOD might mess them up gain.
I decided that the treasure galleon was keeping my POV too high above the water, so traded her in for this little caravel. The medium waves are still terrible IMO. I guestimate that the small waves are maybe 2 meters tall and the medium waves are maybe 4 meters. The medium waves were washing over the deck of the caravel. That is not rough seas, that is a storm!

 

[Post Captain]

It isn't actually physically possible for waves to look like that. There is a maximum length to height ratio. The wave breaks if it exceeds that ratio. I agree that the waves in the stock stock game only need to be made less rounded in some instances. They're even too steep in storms.