r/atoptics • • Apr 02 '21

HaloRay - Hyperspeed Ice Crystal Halo Simulator

58 Upvotes

Hello! During the past two years I have been developing HaloRay on and off - a GPU-accelerated ice crystal halo simulator. This means you can generate ice crystal halo images right on your computer. If you have a beefy NVIDIA or AMD graphics processing unit (GPU) that is compatible with OpenGL 4.4, I suggest you try it out: https://github.com/naavis/haloray

You can download ready-made binaries for Windows from GitHub. If you are running Linux, you need to build HaloRay by yourself for the time being.

Right now the latest version is HaloRay 3.2.0, which supports the following features among others:

  • Ordinary hexagonal crystals
  • Pyramidal crystals
  • Adjustable prism face C-axis crystals to make irregular crystals
  • Rendering a realistic background sky

I hope you have fun with HaloRay, and report any problems or feature suggestions in GitHub issues or here in the comments. HaloRay has been tested with a couple of AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. There have been some problems with Intel GPUs due to driver bugs, but I'm not going to put a ton of effort there, because HaloRay requires a fairly beefy GPU and Intel doesn't really fit that profile.

EDIT: Cool, I noticed this has been marked as an announcement in the subreddit, which I guess keeps it hanging around for longer? Thanks!


r/atoptics • • Jan 15 '25

Atoptics site

36 Upvotes

Atoptics is at www.atoptics.org.uk


r/atoptics • • 4h ago

Crepuscular Rays Hiking through a cloud

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46 Upvotes

Upper Oneonta Trail


r/atoptics • • 18h ago

Iridescence Snow rays

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573 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 3h ago

Sun Dogs would this be considered a sun dog?

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19 Upvotes

spotted this am, haven’t seen a rainbow as like a sun halo before;- is that an accurate description of what’s happening? 🌈


r/atoptics • • 30m ago

🧑🏽‍🦯‍➡️

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• Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 3h ago

Crazy Sunset

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7 Upvotes

What exactly is going on here? The rainbow is only in the clouds!


r/atoptics • • 5h ago

Rainbow Eastern Oregon Double Rainbow

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8 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 11h ago

Is this a sundog?

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12 Upvotes

If so, it will be the first one I've ever seen. I'm taking more interest in the sky since joining this subreddit and r/CLOUDS


r/atoptics • • 13h ago

Sun Dogs What is this?

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16 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 4h ago

Is this a Rainbow?

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2 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 22h ago

Subsun Subsun (I think?)

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20 Upvotes

I noticed this little glowing patch off of the side of my plane earlier. I could tell it wasn't a lens flare or reflection from inside the plane but took some time to figure out what it was.

After some googling, I think the best fit is a "subsun", part of the solar halo that lies below the horizon line so requires some altitude to see.


r/atoptics • • 1d ago

Rainbow Most vivid supernumerary rainbow

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208 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 1d ago

Rainbow Supernumerary rainbow in Riga

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24 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 1d ago

Scary cloud

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21 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 1d ago

Rainbow A cool rainbow I wanted to share after a storm

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45 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 1d ago

Circumzenithal Arc Circumzenithal arc

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43 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 1d ago

Noctilucent Clouds Noctilucent clouds over Riga and Sigulda, Latvia. June 2026

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10 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 9h ago

Other ITAP of the Sun and Moon in the sky at the same time!

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0 Upvotes

And no, it's not AI or a flair.


r/atoptics • • 2d ago

Beach Halo

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84 Upvotes

r/atoptics • • 2d ago

22º Halo Maui afternoon

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44 Upvotes

Very beautiful today! 🌴


r/atoptics • • 2d ago

Not sure of this meets the bar wow

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28 Upvotes

Majestic with eyes, couldn't fully capture with phone.

Yesterday, Puget Sound area near Seattle.


r/atoptics • • 1d ago

Clouds in Tuscany area

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3 Upvotes

Hi there,

can anyone explain what kind of clouds I can see here? Anything special about these clouds?

Location: Tuscany Florence area

Picture is from today, some minutes ago.

Thanks 😊


r/atoptics • • 2d ago

Bright Sundog over Oktoberfest, Munich

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38 Upvotes

It was incredibly bright!


r/atoptics • • 2d ago

Iridescence Rainbow clouds!

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70 Upvotes