[RELEASED] trueSKY Alpha for Unity Pro - Volumetric Skies, Clouds, and Time-of-Day

@element271
@rvkennedy

Hi element271 , can you tell me what is your GPU?
Are you testing TrueSky on Unity 5 or 4?

We are using Unity 5. We are getting same problem on AMD Radeon 280X but on AMD Radeon 5870 (much older card) everything works fine.

We are getting same problems as you described. All scenes with TrueSky main component are getting poor performance on a rig with Radeon 280X. After running any scene with TrueSky and then loading an empty scene or any other scene without TrueSky, performance is still poor. It affects editor, play-mode and standalone builds.

Everything works fine until a scene with TrueSky is loaded. After the scene with TrueSky is loaded, we need to restart Unity to get normal performance on scenes without TrueSky.

Performance on scenes with TrueSky (and on scene without it, but loaded after any scene with TrueSky was loaded before) is much lower, like 30fps vs 10fps.

We are seeing same results even if TrueSky Camera component is not attached to our camera, so sky is not actually rendered at all. We can even feel that editor is slowed down after loading any scene with TrueSky for the first time.

As I've said before, this is not happening on older rig with older video card (Radeon 5870).

 

We're having problems with glass shaders (which use grabpass) and wondered if anyone has stumbled on a solution, or alternatively, is it possible to restrict truesky to background rendering? I don't mind losing weather/shadowing because these effects end up inside my buildings anyway so I'd rather do them myself.

 

We would need come kind of TrueSky scaling and world re-positioning. It's essential if you have to do a large scale simulations, without having to cope with float point imprecision.

 

1+ for this.

 

Just a quick note: the skybox rendering system is off by 90 degrees ie not aligned with truesky (for reflection probes etc)

 

Hey. Thank you for posting the Oculus Rift demo. Could you please add a free camera floating option? I would like to see how it looks through the Rift when you are inside and above the clouds.

Thanks.

 

so, this is gorgeous. i love it.

 

Though, would this be expected (even if I followed instructions wrt TransparencyCamera)?:

 

May I suggest you hire a community manager?

 

Sometimes the sequencer won't load and it requires a reboot to get it back to life.

 

I've run into this as well, though the sequencer loads for me, it just closes itself after any change is made.

 

Yes we've implemented this for simulation customers so I'll make sure it's enabled for Unity.

No, that's what TransparencyCamera is there to prevent. But you need to make sure that you have your Layers set-up correctly - try setting your particle object to be in the TransparentFX layer, so the TC picks it up.

Will do!

I've been testing this with a ATI FirePro V5800 (FireGL) but that might be too old to show up this issue - no problems of the type described were seen. So we'll be investing in a 280 or 290... updates soon.

Incidentally, I've uploaded version 3.7.0 to the Simul server. This does fix one performance issue from the truesky cubemap probe (using uncached depth texture), and also the grid-artifact seen at the top of the clouds when it's raining. Plus lightning.

 

@rvkennedy flotation point solution would be fantastic.
Really looking forward to that one feature.

 

When you come back to the forum after a few weeks, may I suggest that you start looking from the post where you last left instead of just the current page? I made a post which you missed, so I have to ask it here again. Doesn't look so tidy.

I have TrueSky for a while now but some things are still unclear.

-Is there a manual available on how to use the sequencer? A manual is really required because I can't figure out how to use it.

-What is the difference between the presets named KeyFrame and no key frame?

-The fog example keyframe does not show any fog at all.

-How do I add fog or haze to the scene (not using the build in fixed function fog)?

-Does How do I make objects in the distance appear blue-ish (not fog, this is haze and rayleigh scattering), like this:?

 

@ RVKennedy, Simul,

I see that your last post here was March 2014 but the asset is described as Alpha. Is this asset still being developed and supported? Also, are you intending to release for Unity 5.x PE (not just Pro)? If the answer to both questions is a telling 'yes' with explanation of development roadmap, I would definitely consider buying it...

 

@Duffer123 Truesky Alpha is actually the full name of the product and not a development of stage of alpha, beta etc.
It's currently a full product and works perfectly on both personal edition and pro.
There still is a few kinks to work out but Roderick is still very much active on it, just not on the forums much.

Well worth the price, clouds are amazing and volumetric too (perfect for flight sim).
Product was meant to rise in price to $250 so not sure how long it will stay at its current price of $150.

 

@ John G,

My bad! This is wonderful news. I am currently scraping together the money to purchase it. Roderick will know there was a product for DBPro called Dark Clouds years ago, since then I've rightly migrated to Unity and, blimey, this is SO much more than that.... Glad to hear it is still being developed. Very pleased.

p.s. Roderick has said that he is going to amend the Asset Store blurb to reflect that the product now works with Unity 5.x PE as well as Pro...

 

@ Roderick,

I used something else you wrote years back on DBPro - DarkClouds - and that was obviously a long way behind this! However, you could play other celestial objects in to the background - like planets or multiple moons and the like - can TrueSky Alpha do this too?

Also, and I may have missed it, but does TrueSky Alpha do lightning?

 

After upgrading TrueSky from Unity5-3.53.0.0007 to Unity5-3.7.0.0007 my performance in editor is completely broken.

Scenes run fine in playmode but it's not possible to do anything in scene view, because fps dropped to 1-3 frames per second. (ATI 5870)

This happens even on fresh scenes, that don't use TrueSky at all after adding some meshes to them. Looks like something is working in the background and it affects the performance of editor.

I've switched back to the older version for now.

 

Yes I had this, I emailed Roderick about it so I assume he knows about it. Glad it's not just me!

While I am here I would like to ask for a faster "skybox" or background-only rendering path that's opaque for truesky. The reason is the transparency component trick becomes very *slow* on large worlds due to the fact Unity has to perform all the culling twice.

It's probably worth bearing in mind as an option (and it's possibly faster) plus it solves any issues with grab pass ie glass and custom shaders which require the sky to be rendered opaque but behind other geometry.

An option for a faster background only opaque version would solve a lot of problems for some users - at least until Unity decides to play nicer with middleware.

 

Yes, it does. Go into your sequence asset, right click and select "add storm". I've been playing around with it but so far it looks like the lightning will only run at simulation speed. Does anyone know if there's a way to get the lightning to run in realtime, like how you can turn "Sim Time Rain" on and off?

 

I'm pretty sure the answer to this is no, but does the trueSky-driven directional light use the moon as a light source once the sun has set?

 

Not for me but I have a second dir light for that purpose I activate and crossfade with the main dir light.

 

Yeah, that's what I was considering doing, but at the same time, it also seems like something trueSky should handle.

 

@mittense @hippocoder

Roderick wrote here, that they have that on the list already (using directional light for moon lighting)

↑

 

I must have missed that; any time estimate on it?

 

Does anyone know a way to change the location/radius of the storms? Unlike the cloud region in the map view, the storm region (magenta circle) seems to be locked on a relatively small area around the origin.

 

Has anyone had success with using the sequencer to reliably edit keyframes? I'm getting very unpredictable results (with either 3.7 or 3.53). Sometimes keys don't interpolate properly, deleted keyframes still influence the sky, "cloudiness" will animate on its own with just two identically set keyframes.. Anyone having better luck?

 

how does true sky collaborate with all this unity 5 ibl/ pbr features.

 

Do you have any problems with standalone builds and TrueSky?

Everything works generally fine in the editor but in standaolne build TrueSky is not rendered in the camera view (onscreen diagnostics and profiling is also not visible) and directional light that is controlled by TrueSky is not active/not visible (no shadows and lighting). When I'm changing a slider that is connected to TrueSky 'time' value nothing happens (no directional light movement, skybox still not visible. It actually renders solid color that is set up in the camera. I've tested both x86 and x86_64 builds.

version: Unity5-3.53.0.0007

I don't remember if it worked fine in standalone builds with older versions of plugin.

You need to use enviroment probe script to get realtime ambient source for ambient lighting (it captures the skybox and uses it as an imput for ambient light in the Unity lighting settings).

It generally works good at the moment and I'm sure that it will be even better in the next releases.

 

okay thanks,

since this is labeled "Alpha", if i purchase it at the assest store until when do i receive updates?
and it does not work with unity free right?!

 

i dont see problem why it will not work on unity free...

 

hi there
have a question. its critical for us.

we have several cameras with different (custom) projection matrixes. will trueSKY work with them properly?

please, dont ignore.

 

@zelmund - Best to contact the dev directly, not through the forum, if you have an urgent issue to discuss.

 

What hopeful said, theyre very responsive to emails.

Here's a pimp for truesky and Ceto (see scrawks ocean in work in progress)

 

I've used it with multiple cameras with no problem.

They really do go hand in hand, Two fantastic systems that above one hell of an environment.

 

multiple cameras with custom matrixes?
can you tell me how it looks like?
trueSKY have a several slots for different camera use (or something)?

 

Pretty much a dream come true tbh! I've been waiting for years for this stuff to come, run acceptably and complement vr so well

 

I have 2 cameras running a custom matrix to model a navigational sextant.
The left halve of the screen is stationary 1st camera while the second rotates upwards 2nd camera.
To get angle of stars moon etc, you can see pics earlier in the thread. Both cameras have Truesky attached and align perfectly.

 

John G: Can't wait for the ocean! I got truesky, does the atmo fog from truesky blends well with the ocean?

 

You are joking, right? They never respond to any of my emails.

 

Humm, i find that odd, maybe they're busy i guess they do have big fish to fry. Did you quote your invoice number with the emails?

 

Elecman, if you didn't receive a response from contact@simul.co, your mail might not have arrived. Please pm me directly and we'll sort it out.

 

There's a new version up at https://simul.co.

The really good news is that with Unity 5.2, we have a new plugin API that allows us to inject trueSKY rendering directly into the pipeline between solid and transparent rendering.

The upshot: no more messing about with TransparencyCamera, and no extra draw calls. This should improve performance for trueSKY Unity up close to what we get with the native SDK.

Secondly, we now have a free 30-day trial for the Unity plugin as we do for UE4 and native. In the new version, you can either enter your Unity invoice number to activate it, or you can register at simul.co/register for a trial, and we'll send you a 30-day key.

And finally, the Unity package (at least the one we host on the website) is now part of our automated build pipeline, so it should track the current trueSKY master build a lot more closely. The asset store version will lag still, and the above updates are not in there yet. Once things seem good and stable with this version, I'll send a new Asset Store submission.

Cheers!

 

like like like like

 

Thanks for the update @rvkennedy . Great to hear that transparency would work now without any additional scripts.

 

I know right? Roderick knocked it out of the f'n park! This is more like it and what many people have been on the fence for (so I've heard!)

The only thing that remains is somehow getting a fake skybox from truesky. What I would like is a very fast (but approximate) skybox that matches what truesky is doing so my main reflection probes don't have a hit from re-rendering trusky or loading from Resources... and we can use that skybox for the IBL/GI stuff - any ideas or plans for that?

 

Any update on a Mac build?

 

Thanks, I got your reply. 3 months late, but it finally did arrive. Perhaps the first email got lost.

 

Have you tried using CubemapProbe? I know that it won't work for reflection probes at this moment but for it works for GI input.

Anyway. You are right. Method for adding some approximated sky input (like the one that is produced by CubemapProbe for example) to reflection probes is very important.