Live cloud maps

[Vincent]

Selden,

I partly agree with you. But don't you think the png file that we get with Christophe code has the opposite problem, i.e. too many grey areas that gives the cloudmap an unrealistic rendering ?

Then, would it be possible to use an Imagemagick script that would provide a more balanced cloudmap between these two extremes ?

[Vincent]

Hi,

I spent a few hours in the ImageMagick command-line tutorial to find a way to get a more balanced cloudmap... and I think I managed to get a quite acceptable result...

Here are the 3 versions. The new one is in second position.

- version with too many grey areas :


- new version, quite well balanced IMHO :


- version with too sparse clouds :


Here's the new Celestia.bat code : (don't forget to change the "Celestia FT1.1" folder's name if necessary)

Code: Select all

cd c:\Program Files\Celestia FT1.1\textures\medres
c:\wget -O clouds_2048.jpg http://www.ruwenzori.net/earth/clouds_2048.jpg
convert clouds_2048.jpg -contrast -contrast -negate -channel R -separate -channel A -combine clouds_2048.png
cd c:\Program Files\Celestia FT1.1
start Celestia.exe

As you can see, I only added two "-contrast" commands BEFORE the other changes. I'm still working on it, but if someone else is interested in optimising this texture too, here's the link to the ImageMagick command-line tutorial :
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/comma ... ptions.php?
Goog luck !

Any feedback will be very welcome (Selden ?)

[dirkpitt]

Reviving a really old thread...

Recently I noticed that there is a live cloud map for Google Earth *with alpha*:
Global transparent cloud map

The kml links to a png hosted on dev.keyhole.com (=Google Earth). Supposedly they take the xplanet 2k cloud jpg and add an alpha channel before hosting it.
I wonder if an addon creator could use this png (with Google Earth/xplanet's permission I suppose)?