- Cruise altitude 2.6 -> 2.0 (just above cloud ceiling y=1.5,
gives the 'just above the clouds' airliner feel)
- Expose __currentSunAlt (radians) from animate() so the
renderer can tell night from day without misreading
realDayProgress (which mixes pre-dawn + post-sunset hours)
- Replace (1 - uDayProgress) star gate by smoothstep over uSunAlt:
nightFactor = 1 when sun is well below horizon, 0 when above
- Widen sky band so stars are visible from the horizon upward
(cockpit-perspective frame is mostly below rd.y=0.3)
- Cloud ceiling lowered from y=1.8 to y=1.5 (thinner deck)
- Cruise raised from y=2.0 to y=2.6 (clear margin above clouds)
- Dive endpoint raised from y=0.9 to y=1.2 (skims top, never deep)
- Dive exponent 5 -> 8 (much rarer dives)
- Early-out and ceiling bounds updated to match new y=1.5
- Cruise altitude lowered to y=2.0 (just above cloud top at y=1.8)
- Look direction nearly level (rd.y ~ -0.05 at horizon line)
- Stars rendered as 3D hash-grid sphere, only above horizon and
only when uDayProgress < 1 (i.e. at night). Subtle sin twinkle
keeps them from looking like static dither.
Camera altitude is now driven by pow(sin,5) so the view stays at
y=2.6 most of the time and only briefly dips to y=0.9 to skim the
top of the cloud deck. Marching also skips the empty gap between
camera and cloud ceiling when looking down from above.
Reduce raymarch iterations from 28 to 18 and fBm octaves from
4 to 3 (with step size 0.55->0.85 to preserve cloud coverage).
Per-pixel cost drops by ~55% while visual density stays similar.
Raymarches a horizontal cloud layer (28 steps, 4-octave 3D fBm).
Camera path is sinusoidal in altitude so the view dips into the
cloud deck at intervals for a 'fly through the edges' feel.
Density threshold from weather: sunny -> sparse, stormy -> overcast.
Renderer is selected via CONFIG.renderer ('clouds2d' or 'clouds3d').
Richard Zink