About the recent weather trailer, and how I found it a little lacking

Well, It's in the title. If you've seen the Trailer for the upcoming weather system you will know what I am talking about, and if you aren't a sucker for the weather - that's fine by me.

Let me get this out of the way first; I know this is literally second ever footage of weather in SE 2, deep in development, painted in programmer art and fresh out of the dev oven. It's early and will most likely see a change. For the better or for worse we'll see. I also know that the Newsletter has mentioned wind is not in yet!

Now i'd like to just have a short word with you and hopefully the developers if they chime in or read this. If they do, thank you for your time.

Weather:

Weather is something we are all familliar with hopefully. Rain, wind, temperature and pressure all intermingle with one another to create atmospheric phenomena we percieve as weather. It can come in different flavours, all it takes is to replace one thing with another in the Humidity, Wind and Temp triangle. What I'm saying here - And I hope it comes across fine, is that weather in SE 2 appears to lack the fundamentals of what makes weather actually look like it's natural. If we look in the trailer we can see that rain is but an occasional particle directed to fall straight down.

Okay, but rain does fall straight down last time I checked, doesn't it? Well yes, however, In majority of clips shown in the trailer, it is taken at a great height. In my own experience having spent most of my life living in a mountaineous region (Transcarpathia, UA(Not mountaineous but still quite windy: Coastal United Kingdom)) precipitation tends to not act in the usual manner; and by that I mean wind. Wind is what makes weather fundamentally work - you take away wind and it breaks most Earthly weather phenomena. What the trailer has shown us is that wind is but a suggestion, yes the clouds move, there are effects to showcase wind too (see image above).

In most cases, especially way up high in the mountains, wind has a direct effect on precipitation, it increases the particle's speed and if it is strong enough - vapourise it.

The impression that I got from the trailer is that rain and wind do not interact together to bring us proper weather.

• So, I suggest we do the inverse.

Let's not go as in depth as create a complex system for wind, pressure and temperature. Instead, all I'm asking for (you can see it as a demand as you wish) is to make precipitation (rain) fall at an angle, impact surfaces from the side and create a hopefully optimised impact effect in return. The higher the player moves, the more quite literally sideways the weather should get; rule of thumb is that the more sideways rain is, the faster and stronger it is, as such there needs to be a visual difference in high-speed rain (enlarged, more visible particles, rain impact sound that of a pressure washer against a window, and howl that puts thrusters to shame). Giving a slight, nigh imperceptible randomness to the direction of the rain should also help, as nature is chaotic, and pockets of wind tend to move in separate directions, carrying precipitation with them.

IF you've ever been to Liverpool during rainy season you will know what I'm talking about here - horrible mistake on my part -but great learning experience. Weather is an exciting topic for me, and I adore developers who rightfully believe that weather heavily influences the feel of a location.

Sand (dust?) storm

It's a great attempt, but somehow worse than it is in SE 1; there appears to be a critical lack of dust accumulating in immediate proximity to the player.

SE 1

Real life!

What do we see here? Dust storms are a weather phenomenon where light particulates of sand, dust and other junk are accumulated by a powerful storm system and displaced over a large area. This heavy, thick cloud of dried out and hot dust will cover the earth until it dissipates from uneven terrain, anything caught in its path will be engulfed in a low-visibility, reddish pea soup.

In my at the time 643 hours play time spent on SE 1, they nailed this weather phenomenon, on Marslike and Pertam especially, it's dangerously low visibility and presents a direct threat to you and your machinery.

SE 2 has clearly decided to take a different approach (and I commend it), a cacophony of dirty particles, branches and sand will shoot in random directions around the player. And the larger, ship sized particles of dust will also appear around the player albeit with greater proximity.

And this is where the root of the problem stands; Things just appear around the player, and often just fly outward or wherever else instead of the player. Dust storms are something that have direction to them, unlike rain, the wind has an iron grip over the particles in the atmospheres at the time, and carries them all in one direction:

Dust storm on mars has a clear direction. It is a rolling threat that leaves no rock unturned

From Marek's dev diary. A faint cloud of dust. It is dissipated and just sitting there by the looks of it. (I still like it)

Dust storms surprisingly have a structure to them, they are like a moving wall of terror:

Here we can also see that particles only move in one solid direction inside of a dust storm, unlike shown in the trailer.

So, why did I write this instead of spending my free time on my college assignment?

I love this game. I really do wish the absolute best for it. I have sunk a lot of time into it, alone, or with my friends. A lot of the time I spent simply adoring the beautiful sights handcrafted by Keen so thoughfully, at the cost of my frame rate. I wish for SE 2 to expand on it, as it logically should by being a direct sequel to the game, albeit with a story now.

I've thrown this together haphazardly just to get my words out because I'm really excited for what's to come with the new engine, the possibilities just seem to expand with each development log, and I hope weather is not left in a ditch.

If this is difficult to read, my bad, I'm tired.

Cheers