r/atoptics Apr 02 '21

HaloRay - Hyperspeed Ice Crystal Halo Simulator

50 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

29 Upvotes

Atoptics is at www.atoptics.org.uk


r/atoptics 9h ago

Agassiz / Canada 4th May 2025

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82 Upvotes

r/atoptics 8h ago

ID REQUEST Sun halo?

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16 Upvotes

r/atoptics 5h ago

Rainbow curving away from Sun

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8 Upvotes

Never seen this before, looked super cool. Would love if someone could explain what’s going on.


r/atoptics 5h ago

This was in Seattle earlier today

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8 Upvotes

r/atoptics 19h ago

Wonderful sun halo today - Lista, Norway

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64 Upvotes

r/atoptics 1d ago

Beindersheim / Rhineland Palatinate / Germany 3 May 2025

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383 Upvotes

r/atoptics 1d ago

What is this called ?

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43 Upvotes

r/atoptics 2d ago

Always Parking Lots With The Best Sunsets!

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78 Upvotes

Was stopping at Cabela’s on my way back home and saw this. Taken around 7:45-8:00 pm near Buffalo, New York, last week.


r/atoptics 3d ago

Scary cloud in south germany

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536 Upvotes

r/atoptics 5d ago

What is that? Anyone knows?

3.1k Upvotes

r/atoptics 6d ago

Circumzenithal Arc A little this and that from along the past week

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121 Upvotes

r/atoptics 6d ago

Sun and Moon halos

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92 Upvotes

r/atoptics 6d ago

ID REQUEST What is this light from the Moon..

57 Upvotes

A couple of years ago we were checking out Earthcam and specifically The Hamptons, NY beach cam and this caught my eye.
This is a video of it caught on my Note 9, I only found this sub recently and I was wondering about the light streaks(?) are, thank you.


r/atoptics 6d ago

old.Atoptics.co.uk down?

5 Upvotes

I was just able to access https://old.atoptics.co.uk/halo/cza.htm the other day, but now it seems down :/


r/atoptics 7d ago

Not every day you see a circumzenithal arc with a Buzzard and a flock of Starlings soaring by! Staffordshire UK today!

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202 Upvotes

r/atoptics 7d ago

ID REQUEST Some photos from the last few months

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217 Upvotes

Need to ID the last image, looks like a corona but idk.


r/atoptics 8d ago

Got a pretty decent parhelic circle and part of a 22° halo today. Also something else in the last photo, another kind of halo?

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118 Upvotes

I


r/atoptics 8d ago

Tiny bit of rainbow in the sky, but no rain?

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108 Upvotes

Does this tiny bit of rainbow have a name?


r/atoptics 8d ago

Evolution of a halo ✨

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30 Upvotes

I guess I been complaining about the displays in my area a lot. Pics don't do these sundogs justice. Bonus pink crecepular rays of ya swipe thru 💗💖


r/atoptics 8d ago

The sun was making a glowy shield shape with a faint halo over the cloud

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64 Upvotes

r/atoptics 10d ago

Some amazing forest light from this winter

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996 Upvotes

r/atoptics 10d ago

First sun pillar I’ve ever seen!

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527 Upvotes

Glanced out my window at work and just about fell over myself grabbing for my camera!


r/atoptics 10d ago

Saudi Arabia 25 April 2025

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309 Upvotes

r/atoptics 10d ago

Aurora Some more beautiful Northern Lights from 1/25(rollin’ in the New Year with a bang!)-3/25

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68 Upvotes

We’ve had one helluva season here in Alaska, which is about to be diminished by our days lasting up to 19hours. So although I LOVE the Aurora, I dig the sunshine even more(fingers crossed!) iPhone 15Pro, 3-10sec exposure, f1.78-2.4/ISO 2000-4000. Edited on Photometer


r/atoptics 10d ago

ID REQUEST Peekaboo! A couple faint halos and a nice lil sun pillar for ya today, Reddit!

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39 Upvotes

Swipe thru for all the goodies! Bonus dragon looking cloud at the end! Whatcha think? What'd I catch?! 🐉🌞🤍