All planets have a temperature that I believe to be an 'average'.
I was wondering if it is in anyway possible to implement some sort of calculation that would only work while on the surface, to give us an idea of the local temperature.
I just thouth of a possible major complication of my request, especially on Terra worlds, where local temperatures can change drastically from place to place. The Poles are always much colder, the deserts have huge temperature diferences from day to night, the tropics are usually warmer. There are also nuances to take into consideration, like proximity to major bodies of water changing the overall average variation of temperature for example.
The more I think about it, the more I feel like it would be impossible to model all of this into some kind of equation when we decide to explore a procedural world
On the other hand, Moons and desert planets should be quite simple, as the only changes would be on the shaded/iluminated areas.
You're right - full modeling of climate is very complex. SE doesn't do calculation of local temperatures, only an approximation to it in the surface generation shader (to obtain polar caps). In my plans - make temperature depend on latitude, elevation, day time and year time. This reqires custom colorong of surface in render time to simulate snow coverage in winter and seasonal change in vegetation color.
Slightly off-topic, I would also like to ask if it will be possible to have on our instruments array, when we are on the surface of a planet, some way to know exactly how high we are in relation to see level, because as it is, we only have the relative altitude to the ground below our feet
And the pressure shouldn't it also be altitude dependent? We can still have the basic pressure "at see level" just the way it is now, but when we are exploring the surface we should notice it droping when we climb a mountain or when we are flying in our plane (that would also force a ceiling for airplanes to fly due to lack of sustentation)