just a simple small nifskoped animation slowly oscillating the sky mesh to give a subtle flickering effect. It has still a couple problems:

- there may be some noticeable warping/reset of the animation, especially during weather transitions or rotating player point of view fast.

- it is timescale related, so a different mesh version would be required depending on how timescale is set, current animation speed settings are optimized for a timescale about 10, it could be done easily if needed just decreasing the animation speed accordingly.

From some testing with Fritz we too think sky_night_01.nif is not used since Bloodmoon and the only difference is sky_night_02.NIF used .dds textures while sky_night_01.NIF used .tga

I like your new sky_clouds_01.nif very much, I think instead of changing each weather timescale in Morrowind.ini, you could try setting

Timescale Clouds=1, it worked well for me at timescale 10

I think clouds at night are little bit over-bright. I'm not sure, if that is because of my ini setting or not?

Examples:

http://i.minus.com/iRr951egzUkZi.png

http://i.minus.com/ifwLLZy4QXZTZ.png

My weather ini setting:

[Weather]EnvReduceColor=255,255,255,255LerpCloseColor=037,046,048,255BumpFadeColor=230,239,255,255AlphaReduce=0.35Minimum Time Between Environmental Sounds=1.0Maximum Time Between Environmental Sounds=10.0Sun Glare Fader Max=0.5Sun Glare Fader Angle Max=30.0Sun Glare Fader Color=222,095,039Timescale Clouds=0Precip Gravity=575Hours Between Weather Changes=20Rain Ripples=1Rain Ripple Radius=1024Rain Ripples Per Drop=1Rain Ripple Scale=0.3Rain Ripple Speed=1.0Fog Depth Change Speed=3Sunrise Time=6Sunset Time=18Sunrise Duration=2Sunset Duration=2Sky Pre-Sunrise Time=.5Sky Post-Sunrise Time=1Sky Pre-Sunset Time=1.5Sky Post-Sunset Time=.5Ambient Pre-Sunrise Time=.5Ambient Post-Sunrise Time=2Ambient Pre-Sunset Time=1Ambient Post-Sunset Time=1.25Fog Pre-Sunrise Time=.5Fog Post-Sunrise Time=1Fog Pre-Sunset Time=2Fog Post-Sunset Time=1Sun Pre-Sunrise Time=0Sun Post-Sunrise Time=0Sun Pre-Sunset Time=1Sun Post-Sunset Time=1.25Stars Post-Sunset Start=1Stars Pre-Sunrise Finish=2Stars Fading Duration=2Snow Ripples=0Snow Ripple Radius=1024Snow Ripples Per Flake=1Snow Ripple Scale=0.3Snow Ripple Speed=1.0Snow Gravity Scale=0.1Snow High Kill=700Snow Low Kill=150[Weather Clear]Sky Sunrise Color=117,141,164Sky Day Color=075,135,215Sky Sunset Color=129,056,070Sky Night Color=000,000,010Fog Sunrise Color=255,189,157Fog Day Color=173,178,186Fog Sunset Color=255,189,157Fog Night Color=0001,002,003Ambient Sunrise Color=047,066,096Ambient Day Color=137,140,160Ambient Sunset Color=068,075,096Ambient Night Color=0017,019,021Sun Sunrise Color=242,159,119Sun Day Color=255,252,238Sun Sunset Color=255,114,079Sun Night Color=019,005,016Sun Disc Sunset Color=255,189,157Transition Delta=.015Land Fog Day Depth=.34Land Fog Night Depth=.34Clouds Maximum Percent=1.0Wind Speed=.1Cloud Speed=0.50Glare View=1Cloud Texture=Tx_Sky_Clear.tgaAmbient Loop Sound ID=plx_WA_clear[Weather Cloudy]Sky Sunrise Color=126,158,173Sky Day Color=87,130,215Sky Sunset Color=128,042,058Sky Night Color=000,000,010Fog Sunrise Color=255,207,149Fog Day Color=153,158,166Fog Sunset Color=255,155,106Fog Night Color=009,010,011Ambient Sunrise Color=066,074,087Ambient Day Color=137,145,160Ambient Sunset Color=071,080,092Ambient Night Color=006,009,016Sun Sunrise Color=241,177,099Sun Day Color=255,236,221Sun Sunset Color=255,089,000Sun Night Color=014,005,011Sun Disc Sunset Color=255,202,179Transition Delta=.015Land Fog Day Depth=.72Land Fog Night Depth=.72Clouds Maximum Percent=1.0Wind Speed=.2Cloud Speed=0.75Glare View=1Cloud Texture=Tx_Sky_Cloudy.tgaAmbient Loop Sound ID=plx_WA_cloudy

At cloudy day it https://www.flickr.com/photos/97504688@N03/13947388507/in/photostream/. There I have problem with horizon. There is almost no grading or perespective in rendering the clouds texture (it looks like sky texture is rendered perpendicular/plumb to camera/player) I think V3 https://www.flickr.com/photos/97504688@N03/13547276565/.

Also clouds don't have bulk. It's more like 2D pattern. Also even when texture resolution is pretty high (4096x4096), there are still noticeable artefacts (like jpg compression). Is it possible to render sky farther from the player? This http://i1.minus.com/ibdkcffW6qN6xL.png shows what I mean (this is how it is looks http://i5.minus.com/iWDpa3OY3BwBo.png the curves).

Beside of this it's wonderful. Textures are something new and fits to Morrowind perfectly. Visually perfect, technically it need a little bit work but I think it's not impossible=) Or maybe it is only for me, because of conflict with some other textures/meshes?

I'm not sure why your clouds look so bright at night, my INI settings are pretty similar to yours and mine don't look nearly as bright. For reference, the "fog night color" should be what's affecting how bright the clouds render at night, iirc I usually have mine set to 000,000,000.

Also, those v3 screenshots are broken, you aren't even using the v3 sky mesh in those shots. I've tried tweaking the sky's horizon distortion but the way it is now looks the best out of the various ways I had the UV mapped. For reference, try looking at it with the clear sky texture, in the horizon, some of the cloud formations will look tiny, but then will take up most of the sky when they move forward.

Texture resolution is a tough issue. While my skies might seem really big, they're actually almost the same level of pixel detail as the unmodded 256x256 skies in the game. My goal in mapping a 4096x4096 texture across the entire sky was to have a texture that would never repeat itself onscreen. The problem with this is to have more detail than what's in the vanilla game, I'd have to quadruple the texture resolution to 8192x8192, a resolution that would be hard on most people's graphics cards, increase the download size significantly, and give me a massive workload which would be somewhat overwhelming. As the Morrowind engine works now, I am limited to working with a single texture per weathertype UVmapped across one mesh object. This means no dynamic horizon clouding, no cloud layers, nothing you'd see in a more recent game.

As for compression artifacts, I'll do my best in cleaning up any and all artifacts that people point out before release. After I actually release the mod, I may want to focus on other things but I also may be willing to make a .1 update for small fixes. I'd prefer not having to in favor of sorting out the majority of issues in the beta though. There is no reason why issues can't be brought up right now rather than in the future, especially since the majority of the content I'll be including in the release is already available.

When I get around to doing some more work on this, which hopefully will be soon, I'll try to work out why the clouds are so bright at night. Thanks for pointing that out.

Some updates today. I uploaded a couple of textures I'd been working on.

There's a new "tx_stars.dds" in the beta folder. http://imgur.com/a/RpYZX. It's a painted starfield I made with some custom brushes as well as repainted versions of Morrowind's original nebulae. The starfield in particular should look a lot nicer than the previous version. I'll probably include the previous night sky texture as an optional in the official release, but for now I just replaced the one in the folder with the new one.

I added a "remastered" version of Morrowind's original "cloudy" sky texture. There are some http://imgur.com/hO7hkwo,JHRYnFL,veu39DS. This is a pretty experimental texture but I put a lot of work into it. A lot of people seem to love a great deal of Morrowind's original skies so I decided to clean up one of it's more iconic textures. The new one's RGB is mostly bright white, and the clouds themselves are defined via alpha. This method provides cleaner looking clouds that especially look nicer at night time. I also did some cleaning and repainting to a lot of the texture manually to get rid of a lot of nasty jpg artifacts. The horizons are also distorted to map better onto my skydome mesh.

Other than that, I'm working on porting AoF's skies to my framework. I got the cloudy sky texture mostly ported, though there were a lot of ugly jpg artifacts in the texture and it's been a challenge cleaning them up. I'm also trying to remake the alpha and the best I've got is a version that makes the clouds look http://imgur.com/09rs9g7. Hopefully I'll have a proper alpha soon though. The other textures shouldn't be as difficult to port, there's some housework I've gotta do, fixing some seams and artificats, but I should be able to get the whole thing ported over pretty nicely.

What's stopping me from release? In theory, I could release the baseline for this today. However, my intentions for V.IV are mostly to showcase and provide a new framework for making sky textures for Morrowind. Combined with MGE XE's features, this framework will push the game's capacity for rendering skies to it's limits. Version V will be intended for OpenMw, and will be taking advantage of the new possibilities it will bring.

It should also be noted I am rebranding this as "Skies V.IV" instead of "SWG's Skies". This is to encourage others to use my framework and loosen the ties of my own name to the mod, in my opinion giving it a much cleaner image. This is no way supposed to be self-depreciative, but however is a way for me to better communicate my own goals for this mod.

Most of the framework and actual content for this is finished. I hope I've explained what's holding the release back clearly. Questions, comments, and especially feedback are much appreciated.

EDIT: Re-wrote OP. Added newest versions of the rainy, overcast, ashstorm, and blight textures to the folder. These should fix some of the issues people noted.

I love that sky - it draws my eye to the horizon and makes the world look big - the second and third images I wasn't sure if they were dawn or evening but still look magic to me

The worst scares I've ever had in Morrowind is when I've been staring up at the night sky totally entranced at this alien but beautiful world I'm in and suddenly a Nix Hound leaps out at me - I think your V.IV skies are going to get me killed