Planetary Atmospheric Scattering
Atmospheric scattering is a complex process that occurs when sunlight interacts with particles in a planetary atmosphere, resulting in visually striking phenomena such as the blue sky and colorful sunsets.
Atmospheric scattering is complicated. It involves intricate light interactions with various particles and gases within a planet’s atmosphere, and the light transport equation in a participating medium applied to the atmosphere is very difficult to solve. Therefore, many promises have been made in earlier works to render atmospheric phenomena such as sunsets, sky colors, and aerial perspectives in real-time. Eric Bruneton and Fabrice Neyret’s approach aims to overcome these challenges by employing precomputed atmospheric scattering techniques. The method significantly reduces the computational demands commonly associated with atmospheric rendering using precomputed look-up tables for key components like transmittance, single scattering, multiple scattering, and ground irradiance.
