Modder control over fog.

[mecha-moonboy]

I have been trying to take beautiful screenshots of some cave mods, and I need to be in fly mode with noclip in order to get fog so that I can see the size and shape of caves. Otherwise, the illumination from generated blocks is flat and not very appealing. I cannot achieve the effect of fog in survival.

It would be excellent if there were methods/properties that allowed modders control over fog color and strength. This would also allow more creativity for biome colors and themes, themes at different y levels, and overall, more control over the feel of the game.

With fog in noclip fly mode (not ideal color or strength, but I take what I can get):

Without fog, what it would look like in survival:

[FossFanatic]

This issue has also been bugging me when trying to work on the fog in the Nether. The Nether fog is always black, instead of being dependant on the biome.

[Desour]

Related (duplicate?): #8142

[FossFanatic]

No, not at all.

This issue is about fog always being black underground when in survival mode, while the other is about there being no way for a server to override a client's view range and full range view.

[lhofhansl]

I think we should fix this via the sky api. It already has fog-tint and sky color settings.
We can add both fog color and fog distance (and fog start while we're at it) to it.

[lhofhansl]

@sfan5 Following up on the discussion on IRC:

• fine to use the sky api
• we'll allow setting the fog distance, fog color, and fog start ( range [0-1) )
• if the server sets a fog distance the following needs to happen:
  The client needs to disable range_all (and disabling fog?)
  The client can still set a smaller viewing_range than what the server request (since that is a performance thing).
  The client also needs to send this the server-set distance as its wanted range to avoid sending unnecessary blocks.

[lhofhansl]

I'll do a PR as soon as I find some time.