Sky

The sky's the limit

Ways to draw the elements of the sky or distant objects that looks stationary even as the player move. They can be combined so one can have a skybox for stars and skyscene for the ships that fly around a space station the player walk around in.

Clouds

When the player can jump in a plane and take to the sky the clouds can no longer be part of a skydome or box.

A sky scene is similar to a skybox but a whole scene is used a rendered centered on the player. It can be used to show distant movable things such as rotating planets in the distance or spaceships that fly by outside a space station.

Skybox

A skybox is a box centered on the camera where each side has a texture of that represent the view of the distant world in that direction. So the upside show the sky and the side ones show the distant mountains. The down one it not normally seen in a game with terrain but the skybox but it can be seen in a space simulator. More then one skybox can be used if some of them are transparent. For example a distant ones with stars and another one with the moon. The moon skybox can then slowly rotate to make the moon move. Skyboxes are often used to show content that do not animate.

Skybox DirectX
Skybox

Skydome

Put a half sphere (dome) centered above the camera. Use a texture on it, modify the vertex colors or a combination of both. By changing the vertex colors it is possible to model dusk and dawn.