so I would like to know if it is possible to vary the intensity of the shadow of the cockpit structures in order to have different effects depending on the cloud cover and the height of the sun.
The deepness of the shadows is driven by the balance of ambient and diffuse light and that should be computed automatically by ALS dependent on sun angle, cloud cover above you and haze.
Since the interior of an aircraft might be illuminated by factors which the renderer can't know (residual light from instruments and MFDs for instance, a translucent gas bag above in the case of airships, plasma glow in the case of spacecraft...) there's also a channel where you can specify the desired RGB values yourself and select a (possibly different) irradiance map.
- Code: Select all
<residual-ambience-r type="float">0.0</residual-ambience-r>
<residual-ambience-g type="float">0.0</residual-ambience-g>
<residual-ambience-b type="float">0.0</residual-ambience-b>
<ra-irradiance-map-type type="int">0</ra-irradiance-map-type>
<ra-irradiance-map-strength type="float">0.0</ra-irradiance-map-strength>
These properties are used 'as is' without any assumption by the renderer, so whatever light changes you put into this channel you have to manage yourself.
The Shuttle also has a custom shader where the whole ambient light in the cabin is computed externally when outside the atmosphere to take care of the mixture of blue Earthlight, white sunlight and black space. This can completely by-pass the normal effect, but I don't recommend doing it for aircraft, neither will I provide support for this one - if you want to go that road, you're on your own.