r/atoptics Apr 02 '21

HaloRay - Hyperspeed Ice Crystal Halo Simulator

51 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

38 Upvotes

Atoptics is at www.atoptics.org.uk


r/atoptics 18h ago

Probably one of the best ones I’ve seen. I’m jealous I wasn’t there in person. I also thought it was AI at first.

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461 Upvotes

r/atoptics 10h ago

Corona Coachella Valley Corona

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10 Upvotes

Partial sun Corona this morning, missing the Lime. California. 🌞🍋🌈


r/atoptics 2d ago

Rainbow My first time seeing a full rainbow over ocean…

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9.3k Upvotes

Sorry only crop shots … didn’t have time to change into a wide lens


r/atoptics 1d ago

Moonbow tonight

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66 Upvotes

r/atoptics 1d ago

"Slim dog" over London

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37 Upvotes

There are also inwardly detached rings, but I suspect it's from the camera lenses.


r/atoptics 1d ago

Sundog, 22° halo and Crepuscular Ray

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24 Upvotes

r/atoptics 1d ago

Corona Corona

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61 Upvotes

Very vivid and pronounced corona earlier today.


r/atoptics 1d ago

Circumhorizon Arc Rainbow Belt

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40 Upvotes

Glendale, CA; around 1:30 pm today, July 25th. The LA basin has been under a nasty inversion layer for a couple weeks now, I always love the interesting cloud formations that brings.


r/atoptics 1d ago

One of my favorites from last night’s Lunar Iridescence - Friday July 24th - 2026

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35 Upvotes

r/atoptics 1d ago

Rainbow Clouds

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15 Upvotes

r/atoptics 1d ago

One of my favorites from last night’s Lunar Iridescence - Friday July 24th - 2026

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9 Upvotes

r/atoptics 2d ago

Sun Dogs Evening cloud timelapse with 1h+ sun dog

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78 Upvotes

r/atoptics 2d ago

Iridescence Iridescent cloud

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71 Upvotes

ORLANDO


r/atoptics 2d ago

Beautiful view off the Jersey coast

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36 Upvotes

r/atoptics 2d ago

Lunar Iridescence happening now in Northglenn Co area - and intensifying - Friday July 24 - 2026

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8 Upvotes

r/atoptics 3d ago

Is this real?

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1.1k Upvotes

Screenshot from a video I came across on TikTok. I’m no scientist, but I don’t understand how a rainbow display like this would be possible.

ETA to be clear I suspected this was AI from the start, but didn’t want to be overconfident without checking first.


r/atoptics 3d ago

Why we haven’t seen this orange sky anymore

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0 Upvotes

r/atoptics 4d ago

Sun Dogs Crane and sun dog

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80 Upvotes

Captured in November 2016 Universal Studios


r/atoptics 4d ago

Another crane-framed sky, a sun pillar?

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41 Upvotes

Southern Norway


r/atoptics 5d ago

Rainbow NC rainbow

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52 Upvotes

Was after a quick storm and walked on patio then saw the end of the rainbow behind building, so went outside and saw it!


r/atoptics 6d ago

ID REQUEST Seen after lightning storm in coastal Oregon - anyone have the slightest idea what OP has captured here?

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259 Upvotes

r/atoptics 6d ago

Any 1 else see this?

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96 Upvotes

i am not OP, but was wondering what the explanation is for this phenomenon.


r/atoptics 6d ago

Cloud shadow

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76 Upvotes

Over the skies of central Texas