Implementing a Dynamic Weather Engine

[skywalker22]

Right now, the game lacks a true "dynamic weather engine." Whenever we select a specific weather preset, it applies uniformly across the entire map. The wind speed, direction, and cloud coverage are exactly the same everywhere, acting more like a visual backdrop than a living atmosphere. For a next-generation combat simulator, having synchronized static weather across the whole theater drastically limits mission immersion and tactical variety. I would highly appreciate it if you could consider implementing a dynamic weather system in future updates, featuring:

• Regional weather variations: Different cloud cover, rain, or clear skies in different parts of the map during the same mission.

• Moving weather fronts: Weather conditions that change gradually over time as the mission progresses.

• Localized wind and turbulence: Wind patterns influenced by terrain (mountains, coastlines) rather than a single global setting.

A dynamic atmosphere would completely transform tactical mission planning, navigation, and the overall realism of the Korean theater.

 

 

[Aapje]

One option is to precalculate the weather in various regions and at certain times. That should mean pretty much no performance loss and the ability to run a rather heavy forecasting tool. It would also make the weather consistent if you play on the same historic day, which has a lot of benefits. For example, the weather data can be modified afterwards based on other sources like written records from soldiers about the weather they had. There is historic weather data from the Koreans, although it is limited to just temperatures:

https://thekwe.org/topics/weather/weather.htm

There is also modelled historic data for the entire world.: 

https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.20thC_ReanV3.html

The big advantage of using that latter model is that a weather model developed for it, can easily then be applied to other regions and other times, since the data is available for the entire world, and for the whole 20th century. It also has way richer data.

Instead of precalculating the weather, another option is to make a simple model that runs alongside the game and provides a real-time simulation, but this is probably the inferior option. Although I can see a use case for a simply dynamic system to calculate micro-weather stuff, like rising air and rain on the mountain sides.

Having a better weather model seems like it could be a huge value-add for the game. It might be an idea for 1CGS to reach out to a meteorology department at a university and see whether it would be possible to collaborate. It seems like developing such a weather system could be a nice challenge for a student of meteorology.

Edited July 2 by Aapje