Methods and systems for providing dynamic weather simulation in a computer
gaming environment are disclosed. Weather may be user-specified, computer
simulated, or based on periodic updates of real-world weather conditions.
To dynamically simulate weather while conserving computer resources, a
weather simulation manager may periodically alter temperature and dew
point values and determine whether to render or dissipate clouds based on
the current temperature and dew point values. Weather may be morphed back
to real-world weather as updated weather is retrieved from a database
over the Internet. The weather simulation manager may simulate weather
independently for each of a plurality of geographic cells, thus allowing
different weather to appear in different directions during game play.
Cloud dissipation may be based on increasing a transparency value of
sprites located at the outer edges of each cloud, and gradually working
towards the center of the cloud until the cloud has disappeared
completely.