Natural Weather

Weather that is seen and felt: wind on craft and smoke, clouds that dim the sun, rain and snow, lightning and thunder, fog and dust storms, and a launch go / no go with a forecast.

For Kerbal Space Program 1.12.x. Needs Keystone, a separate download (on SpaceDock): this mod does not load without it.

Three other mods each add one thing, and none is needed: Natural Light (the light under cloud; rain, fog and dust veiling the distance), Volumetric Explosions (smoke goes with the wind) and HarmonyKSP (the wind moves craft).

What it does

• Wind with gusts, on craft, parachutes and smoke.
• Weather on every world with air, the same at a given place and time, so it can be forecast: Kerbin's fair days, showers and storms, Duna's dust storms, Eve's deck of cloud, Jool's winds.
• Clouds, rain and snow, fog and haze, and lightning that can strike a craft.
• Launch weather: a go / no go for the pad and a three-hour forecast.
• A real city's weather at the space centre, if you type one in.

Install

Copy the NaturalWeather folder from the download into your KSP's GameData, beside Keystone.

Settings

In the Keystone window: the keystone button on the game's toolbar, or Alt-K (Option-K on a Mac).

Good to know

• The clouds are being remade and have faults: a fair day's are too alike, and far cloud can be drawn over near smoke. Rain that looks real and wet ground are still to come.
• Where another mod already puts wind into the game's aerodynamics (Kerbal Weather Project, Advanced Atmosphere Tools), that one wins.
• A city's weather goes online: the city's name is sent to Open-Meteo to fetch its weather, every quarter of an hour. With the box empty nothing is sent. Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).

Works on

Windows 11 (Direct3D 11 and OpenGL) and Mac: tried. Linux: never run.

More: the long description (everything in full, and what was tried on each system) and the rest of the wiki.

Licence

CC BY 4.0: use it, change it and pass it on as you like, as long as you credit Ishiaki and link back here.