Variable Weather/Seasons on a Private Sim?

HI all.. I went to visit the SL Ecosystem a while back, and the programmer's got rain, etc going on in there, to make the plants grow and stuff. I was wondering two things:

1) Can you BUY this cloud/rain system?

2) Is there a way to make SL have seasons on a private sim? Any system I can purchase? I know that I can throw down orange leaves in the fall, white snow textures in the winter, but can I make the system do it itself?

IMO, that would be way cooler than Windlight...

I don't know of any way to do it 'cept manually (an yes, we'll have a lotta fun snowing up Livingtree, Oryx, with all the plants we do have out). It would be quite cool to have it happen automagically, though!

Mari

If you find a way, please let me know. I've been hunting this for over a year.

I *do* have a way with the usual scripted methods, but, in light of the Windlight update it would be cartoonish compared to what's coming. So I'm holding out.

Presently the plan is to have about 20-odd different weather/sky effects, one for each sim, each varying through the times of the standard SL day. As the seasons go forward, I'll manually change each one.

I REALLY want LSL control of Windlight, and some sort of cloud/fog system like they make... we'll see how it goes.

Well I went and bought the Damiana weather system; it can work for up to 1600 s.m. so to cover a sim, you'd need a few of them. So far it seems pretty cool; it's all particles so if you're worried about lag... but the snow can remain on the ground and build up so that you have a snow covering... will keep you posted. That's the best one I could find yet... I'm going to keep looking.

I saw a weather system on SLExchange that would duplicate the weather at your RL location...that would allow "seasons", if you live in a temperate climate...

I wonder how it would handle a hurricane O.O

/gulf coast!

I'll be working on improving my current system. (The damani thing).
As for the implementing seasonal changes, i'd love to add that. (Weather changes are in there, but mostly random now.), But i like to know how people would like to have that implemented
Shoot me your ideas and i'll see if i can add them to the system.

Next update will add hail, wind tracking, sunlight through clouds, full sim coverage (as good as possible) and several other things.
Concerning RL weather tracking, it's in development too, and will be in one of the next updates.

If you could end up walking knee deep in snow that would be cool. I assume the snow is made up of particles. Now all we need is for someone to script a snow modile that detects particles and can rest on top of them.

The snow on the ground is actually temp-on-rez prims. (Using particles wouldn't work for larger areas, and would not look realistic, snow needs to follow the ground slope).

How does the snow pile up if it disappears after 60 seconds?

I uses a timed alpha fade to slowly appear / disappear, and the system replenishes the ones disappearing.
And this is the last thing i'm posting about it here. As I don't want to come over as making a commercial... it's not what the forums are about. My apologies to those people that feel that i did.

Still. I'm really interested in cool ideas people have about how to implement weather in SL.

I *do* know that people love Daimanos' weather - that was the system that brought the snowy Christmas to Caledon's Victoria City last year!

Daimanos - a request - I have a large Weather Device in the Guvnah's Mansion in Caledon, pointed skyward... my big dream is to have a coupla buttons on it to alter the weather in 20+ sims... grin

Not that I would use such a system as a mainland Doomsday Device, Of Course!


*pinky finger to corner of mouth, while clutching Devon Rex cat*

One meeeeeeellion dollars!

Sure, np. But let me first add the prim destructing, avatar slinging hurricane to the system. For fun of course...

WOOT!

Cooooool! I am officially in the market for a mobile home to make the best of this!

I use Jesrad Seraph's astonishing Cloud System for a variety of weather effects in Lovelace. I cannot praise it highly enough, and customer support (what little I've needed) was rapid and accurate.

It will cover an area from 16x16 to an entire sim with a single device and has some unusual effects. When I had the sim set up as the Inferno, I used the Cloud System to provide rains of flaming meteorites. Very nice.

I'll leave it running on random for a few days if you'd like to visit and see a full-sim weather system in action.

Damanios, I don't see this as an advert, I see it as communal creationism (if that's a phrase haha). I would love to see a system that alters the existing SL wind vectors into an actual weather system. As I see them now, the SL wind vectors are pretty random, even from spot to spot. I made a wind mill that depended on SL wind magnitude and direction and the poor thing couldn't keep up with the random changes. If you could find a way to direct the SL winds into a manageable sim-wide vector system, we could blow the flexi trees around, and produce a realistic weather pattern, be it a definitive breeze, a brisk snowstorm, or heck, like you said, a dern hurricane or tornado. Particle anythings would be a breeze (pun intended) after that.

I've already implemented wind tracking in the next update. (Allowing three levels of strength), the rain/hail/snow particles will continuously change direction and speed based on the specific wind at the location of the emitters. But i agree, wind vectors in SL are pretty random, although on a larger area/scale they seem to be behave better.

Sadly SL wind is not longer being influenced by external factors, as it was in the past. (An actual avatar would effect the wind then, but it has been scratched for performance reasons.)

A new implementation would need a complete wind simulation system though, which is kind of a tough job to create.

I bought a weather system just recently. Might be Damanios' system, but I can't check as I am not in-world right now. It looked good for things like positioning rain or snow bearing clouds over an unoccupied mountain area. But it was noted in the documentation that since the rain is a particle effect, it would fall through rooftops and into buildings. Snow, on the other hand was done with temp-on-rez prims.

These systems are very promising, and once I finish moving into the new sim that I now call my home, I am looking forward to playing with it some more!

Dang, where are those meteorologist programming SL lifers when you need them? I bet it could be done. You could have stronger winds at the coasts and maybe over the plains areas of the big continents; updrafts and downdrafts along the mountain ranges.... soooo cool.

Ridge soaring! Hang gliding! Thermals!

Where's Ace Pilot Trout in this discussion? Let's bring soaring to SL!

I have a slowly animated texture on my mostly transparent windows in my workshop that make it, looking out, look like it's raining outside.

I find it incredibly soothing to sit in my chair and look out and listen to some classical music when I take a break from crafting and watch the rain. I've always loved the rain though- which is probably why my shop got an easy name, Rainy day. ^.^

Animated texture was pretty much the only way I could think of to get past the fast that particle rain goes through everything- and I like watching it, not being *in* it.

Now that would be something. If there was someway to keep particles from going thru walls and roofs.

That wouid be a fantastic development, if some one could come up with a way to do that.

Hummm. I have a shower that uses particles for the water. Now admittedly, in that usage the creator knows the exact distance between the shower head and the drain. But they were somehow able to confine the particle effects to the shower stall, so the water spray started at the shower head and ended at an invisible disc at the drain level. So there is SOME way to limit how far particle water effects go! It might require the ability to set a precise distance from the raincloud to the point where the rain should 'evaporate', or perhaps specifying an altitude per cloud below which the rain would not descend. Then the clouds directly over my castle could be set to stop their effects just above the roof, while others all around the castle could go all the way to the ground.