It’s a term from gaming which, in the broadest sense, means how they paint the sky to make it look authentic. Imagine being inside a cardboard box - the sides are painted to look like rolling mountains and hills, and the top face is painted to look like a cloudy sky, and if it’s done well, all of these should connect up and give the impression that you’re lookint at a real sky.
Yes, and depending on the engine, the skybox can even be spherical and/or “infinite”. Without a skybox, many engines will draw geometry over the previous frame, resulting in a dizzying non-refreshing background (that often gets psychedelic due to repeated color effects).
More games should use real skyboxes like this. Makes me wonder why they don’t.
Usually they look sorta out of place, earlier source games for example.
What’s a skybox?
It’s a term from gaming which, in the broadest sense, means how they paint the sky to make it look authentic. Imagine being inside a cardboard box - the sides are painted to look like rolling mountains and hills, and the top face is painted to look like a cloudy sky, and if it’s done well, all of these should connect up and give the impression that you’re lookint at a real sky.
Yes, and depending on the engine, the skybox can even be spherical and/or “infinite”. Without a skybox, many engines will draw geometry over the previous frame, resulting in a dizzying non-refreshing background (that often gets psychedelic due to repeated color effects).
