The under development branch of Sylphis3D is going to support high quality terrain rendering. At the moment the terrain rendering code is in place and produces some very nice views! However the sky support was limited to skybox rendering. At first I thought I would just go for some HDR textured skybox. This was good until I reallized that it would be stupid to have an engine support realtime shadowing and lighting and have the outdoor areas with static lights, because of a static skybox. It was obvious that a dynamic sky was needed, so that day/night cycles can be simulated.

After a lot of experimentations and book studing about light scatering and stuff, we had results! In the screenshot you can see a sunset in Sylphis3D. The sky it rendered by simulating several types of atmospheric scatering in realtime, producing a real, high dynamic range sky!

The sky can be parameterized in many ways. From atmosphere thickness to light wavelengths emmition and absorption by sky particles!

Sorry got to go… got to relax watching a sunset 😉