Near Real-time Weather Rendering System

This is the video from the bachelor thesis from Matthias Thomann in Spring 2021 at the Berne University of Applied Sciences.
Clouds contribute a substantial part to the overall ambiance in games, but an implementation of such effects often proves to be more challenging than anticipated. To get as close as possible to real clouds, this project engages in researching and developing a near real-time weather rendering system. This means that real weather forecasts from meteoblue are used
to visualize past, current, and forecast weather at any given time of day. The environment is created with elevation model data from ArcGIS. Live photographs from Roundshot cameras can be viewed side-by-side with the rendered output for comparison.
The bachelor thesis dives into the science of clouds and illustrates the ten distinct classifications and how each of those could be represented in a weather simulation. In order to achieve high fidelity, the implementation relies on concepts like Voronoi noise generation and raymarching, which means generating a random 3D cloud pattern and rendering it volumetrically.
At last, the goal of the project is to create a fully-featured, near-real-time weather rendering system in Unity. It is able to render procedural and volumetric cloudscapes, for any given date and time. An intuitive user interface allows the user to control the weather simulation manually or let it run automatically based on meteoblue weather reports.
The achieved solution shows great results and fulfills almost all specified requirements. It is only missing the cirrus clouds but features shadow casting and a rain particle system, which were both not originally planned. For future work, the weather rendering system could be incorporated in a game or further improved to achieve even higher visual realism.

[@Arda_muys747]

Spiel name?

[@joshuadrewlow]

Nöd schlecht. Cooles Setting :) Wurden die Wolken auch nach dem Volumen korrekt gerendert oder nur 2D? Beispiel: ruclips.net/video/OVqa_AGCaMk/видео.html

[@HuCEcpvrLab]

Nein, die Wolken sind 3D mit speziel optimierten Shader. Es war in der Tat eine herausragende Arbeit.