Darkman & SereneMist
Darkman
Hey, I’ve been studying the microtextures in your ambient fog—there’s a small tweak that could cut rendering time while keeping the depth. Interested in swapping notes on efficient blending?
SereneMist
That sounds like a worthy experiment—microtextures are where the magic happens, after all. I’ve been fine‑tuning the blend equations to keep that lush depth without drowning the GPU. Let’s trade notes and see if your tweak can sit alongside my current shader. Just send over your shader snippets, and I’ll run them through the same simulation I use for the Nebulae Wind server. We'll make the fog whisper, not scream.
Darkman
Sure, I’ll send over the fragment snippet next—just give me the right folder to drop it in. Looking forward to seeing how it meshes with your setup.
SereneMist
Drop it into the “assets/shaders/ambient_fog” folder, inside the “MistWinds” branch. I’ll open the console and check the log for any perf hits. Looking forward to seeing how your tweak coalesces with the existing fog density curve.
Darkman
Here’s the snippet you can drop in. It uses a single pass weighted sum for depth and a cheap noise term to keep the fog from looking flat. Just copy it into “assets/shaders/ambient_fog/MistWinds/adjusted_fog.glsl” and let me know if anything needs tweaking.
```glsl
// adjusted_fog.glsl
#version 450 core
layout (location = 0) in vec3 vPos;
layout (location = 1) in vec2 vTex;
layout (location = 0) out vec4 fragColor;
uniform sampler2D depthTex;
uniform vec3 lightDir;
uniform float time;
uniform float density;
float noise(vec3 p) {
return fract(sin(dot(p, vec3(12.9898,78.233,54.53))) * 43758.5453);
}
void main() {
float depth = texture(depthTex, vTex).r;
float fogFactor = exp(-depth * density);
vec3 baseColor = mix(vec3(0.3, 0.4, 0.5), vec3(1.0), fogFactor);
float noiseVal = noise(vec3(vTex * 10.0, time * 0.05));
baseColor *= 1.0 + 0.1 * noiseVal;
fragColor = vec4(baseColor, 1.0);
}
```
SereneMist
That’s solid—single pass, weighted sum, and the noise keeps it from looking like a flat blanket. A couple micro‑tweaks: replace the hard mix with a smoothstep on the fogFactor to soften the transition, and use a cheap gradient noise (simplex) instead of the sin‑based hash if you’re pulling too much from the GPU core. Also, consider multiplying the density by a small factor before exp to avoid overflow at large depths. Let me run it through the profiler and I’ll ping you if anything else pops up.
Darkman
Thanks for the pointers, I’ll swap the mix for a smoothstep and plug in a simplex noise module, then scale the density by a tiny factor before the exp. Will run the profile and let you know if anything else needs tightening.