The Weather Update

Earth has weather now.

Clouds form, drift and break apart across the whole planet. Low-pressure systems bring rain, fog banks hug the terrain, thunderstorms roll in, and tropical storms spin up over the oceans in season. The weather runs on the entire planet at once, so a storm you see on the horizon is still there when you fly to it, and everyone on a server sees the same sky. Clouds

• Fully volumetric clouds, from scattered cumulus to solid overcast and towering storm cells. You can fly through them, climb above them, or watch weather systems from orbit.
• Clouds cast shadows on the ground and break sunlight into rays at sunrise and sunset.
• Works in both ray-traced and raster modes. On the Low graphics preset, clouds use a cheaper layered approximation.

Rain, snow and storms

• Rain only falls where there is real cloud overhead, and it stops under roofs and inside your builds.
• Below freezing, it falls as snow instead. Surface temperature depends on latitude, altitude, the weather and the time of day.
• The ground gets wet after rain.
• Thunderstorms bring lightning. The thunder arrives a little later the farther away the strike was.
• Tropical storms with spiral rain bands and a clear eye.
• Fog, and rainbows after a shower when the sun is behind you.
• New rain and thunder sounds.

Wind

• Wind now changes with location and weather, with gusts and drafts. Aircraft feel crosswinds and turbulence, and storms are rough to fly through.
• Ocean waves grow with the wind, and grass sways in it.
• Anchored propellers now turn in the wind and generate power, so you can build wind turbines.

Creative mode

• The Admin Panel (F4) has a Weather preset: Dynamic Weather, Clear, Few Clouds, Scattered Clouds, Broken Clouds, Overcast, Rain, Storm or Fog. The fixed presets also have a Relative Humidity slider that raises or lowers the cloud base. Your choice is saved with the world.
• Adventure mode always uses dynamic weather.

Existing worlds Weather is on by default in new worlds. Existing worlds keep their own planet settings, so to turn weather on in one, add this to the world's ARCHEAN_celestial/sun/earth.ini : [weather] enabled = true

Also in this update

• Misc rendering improvements
• Potentially fixed issue where some components would randomly get damaged on an anchored build where no damaged is applied
• Turbojet: Fixed exhaust not heating blocks and components behind the nozzle
• Computer: Fixed client crash when Ctrl+clicking an HDD with a long label
• Build: Fixed crash when holding the Constructor tool with the interface language set to Chinese
• Build: Fixed the Constructor tool Triangle and Strut modes showing their preview on builds you don't have permission to build on
• HUD: Fixed game freezing when calling set_size() with a negative value on a panel
• HUD: Fixed avatar_sensor_altitude being measured at the head when seated and freezing in drone mode; altitude and altitude_absolute are now both measured at the feet (at the center in drone mode)
• Tank/Volume: Fixed wrong pressure for supercritical contents (e.g. warm hydrogen), which made tanks filled by an Electrolyser burst
• Admin Panel (F4): Fixed "Find new spawn" leaving you stuck in the seated pose when used while sitting in a seat
• Avatar: Fixed moving diagonally being faster than moving straight (walking, running, jetpack and drone)
• Computer: Fixed storage variables written in the shutdown function not being saved
• FluidJunction: Fixed server crash when an engine or pump pulls fluid through junctions connected in a loop