I am just wondering how in 3d games, how do they do the sky? Is is a giant box around the level with the sky texture on it? Has anyone developed a real-time 3d weather engine with 3d clouds and lightning, etc.? - Moe -

It is a giant box indeed. They''re reffered to as skyboxes and you can find discussions about them it the Message Board just by searching for "skybox." The Search is the rightmost word just below the "New Post" and "Reply to Post" buttons ABOVE.
. The easiest way to create them are as a "cube" and using a 3D modeling & rendering program. Just create your scene, place a camera where you want to view from, and take a 90-degree by 90-degree snaphot in front, behind, left, right, above, and below the camera''s position [be sure to save them in 256 by 256 resolution. You can then bring them into you project as flat shaded textures on a cube around your world.
. As for dynamically changing weather, I waven''t seen it in a game yet [perhaps it is done in Bungie''s Halo.] I think it might be a bit too complex for todays desktop computers. About the only thing I''ve ever seen done is having clouds move and lighting changes for sunset / sunrise. It would be cool to finally see actual dynamic weather, so keep on it! You might be the first!

I think for dynamically changing weather, it could be neat that the game takes the time from your system clock and will scale the sun position according to what time it is where u are. I think that could be kind of neat.

Halo does look very promising in the graphics respect. I really like the water effects that they have done. I don''t believe that they have dynamically changing weather.

I think that dynamically chaning weather according to the action in the game could be real neat. Just imagine as you get into some serious gunplay, the sun gets slowly blotted out and the lighting starts to flash. That could be cool!!

- Me -

ps - thanks for telling me that it is just a giant box. thats what i thought it was, but i wasn''t sure. I think it will be some time before i get to do dynamic weather (as i am only a newbie!)