Clouds. Are they broken?

[RearAdmiralZill]

A couple things regarding clouds, and I'm halfway asking and halfway suggesting here.

First, buffs. Either buffs need to stop showing through clouds, or the shiny glow (that doesn't always show up) needs to go away. If I want to be sneaky, I shouldn't be penalized for buffing my components. You could argue that you could just pre-buff and wait, but it shouldn't be a factor to begin with. Watching buffed engines fly through a cloud is a bit.....silly.

Next, perhaps it is just me, but clouds really do suck for losing spots nowadays. Idk if something changed, or a flare was remotely around (more on that in a sec), but I've come to really b-line for the surest way to lose a spot, which is terrain. Problem is that on dunes/fjords, that's not an easy luxury to come by.

Flares. When a flare is out doing its thing, lighting up a cloud, what is the range of that effect? 1km? 2?

And finally, I'm wondering if the fact that (im guessing) a vast majority of people have their lighting set to low (for fps issues) is lowering the effectiveness of hiding in clouds. While they obviously won't look so pretty, I'm hoping that lower settings isn't showing ships in clouds easier than high settings.

I know clouds will never be as effective as good ol' terrain blocking the enemy's view, but they still should play more of a role than they do now, which almost feels aesthetic vs tactical. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather be told I'm losing my mind so I can work around it, or maybe this is a real issue.

[HamsterIV]

While we are complaining about clouds, on low render settings they are showing completely white at some angles. This makes it impossible to see the white box or hit markers on a target. This is a problem when shooting downward on an enemy.

[Zenark]

I agree with the buffs having such a powerful glow. Makes it incredibly easy to snipe any part that's buffed, cloud or not. I think a glow outside of the cloud is fine of course, makes buffs a little bit easier to counter.

[N-Sunderland]

Especially on dark maps, a lot of the long-range spots I get happen because of buffed engines being visible. Honestly, I didn't mind them before they had their glow. It's not as if the glow even works properly (it doesn't).

[Serenum]

There is also the issue with the dark smoke coming from disabled components being visible inside a cloud, unless it's intended, which I don't think it's the case.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

The flares actually don't show up on low. At least not on my laptop. I had tried it on low for awhile till I figured out I just manually had to put my GPU on instead of auto detect. I noticed the lighting was really off. Not really a bad thing. Some levels like Anglean it actually made the world look colder. But then I noticed flares were not showing up in clouds. So running much of the game on low does have its drawbacks.

[Plasmarobo]

Are clouds bill-boarded?

Occasionally I get an interesting glitch where the seem to be rendered "sideways" and are much thinner then the normally are. This usually occurs with tar barrel, and it sorts itself out quickly.

I can see the actual flares on low lighting, but I don't see the disco, it is distressing.

[N-Sunderland]

Yes, clouds are bill-boarded. You can tell pretty easily in spectator.

[ATeddyBear]

I have had similar experiences with the clouds not losing spots very well recently. They were fairly effective at it before, as I remember using the clouds in Water Hazard for stealthy approaches and then quickly diving back into them to lose spots.

[Watchmaker]

I can answer some questions about the implementation here.

1) To the best of my knowledge, there have been no changes to how spot cancelling works in recent memory.  Not sure what you guys are seeing there.

2) Buffs visible through clouds is a bug, but it is a bug I fixed like 5 minutes ago so it'll be in the next patch.

3) Yes, clouds are billboarded; unfortunately the way this is handled means that if your camera moves very rapidly it may take a few frames for all the clouds to catch up, hence sideways clouds and the fact that the billboards are more visible in spectator mode.  It's a thing I'd like to improve but there are unfortunate performance considerations.

[N-Sunderland]

2) Buffs visible through clouds is a bug, but it is a bug I fixed like 5 minutes ago so it'll be in the next patch.

Thank you so much, this makes buffs much less of a strategic risk on cloudy maps.

[RearAdmiralZill]

2) Buffs visible through clouds is a bug, but it is a bug I fixed like 5 minutes ago so it'll be in the next patch.

Thank you so much, this makes buffs much less of a strategic risk on cloudy maps.

+1. Does that include destroyed component smoke as well?

[Watchmaker]

It doesn't, unfortunately, though you raise a good point.

[Zenark]

Thank you, Watch Maker!

[Captain Smollett]

Watchmaker you are amazing.  That's the best thing to happen to GOI in weeks!