Cloud



Clouds are large transparent blocks that serve a mainly aesthetic purpose.

Appearance
Clouds appear as large white structures, whose appearance will vary, depending on the graphics settings used.

On Fancy graphics, clouds appear as about four block tall semi-transparent prisms. At night they turn a shade of blue and become more transparent. Their smallest horizontal dimensions are 12&times;12 blocks wide. They are similar in appearance to real life stratocumulus clouds.

With Fast graphics, clouds take on the appearance of opaque planes. They have no daytime/nighttime rotation. Their smallest horizontal dimensions are 8&times;8 blocks wide. Fast clouds in Pocket Edition are also opaque, but remain in 3D.



Clouds will always float westward and at a height of y:127; in this way, they can be used by the Player to determine direction and altitude, respectively. They are not interactive in any form, and will clip through all structures, including mountains and player-made creations. Unlike in real life, clouds themselves will not produce precipitation, meaning it will continue to rain or snow even above the cloud layer.



Clouds are not procedurally generated. With a resource pack, the color of clouds can be changed to anything, meaning you could have pink clouds if you so desired. The file can be resized to any size, meaning it would be possible to have a different cloud pattern each day.

Trivia

 * If you switch between fast graphics and fancy graphics, clouds will be in a different place than they were before.
 * Clouds are a client-side feature. On an SMP server, the position of clouds is subjective to each individual user, and are not generated server-side.
 * Clouds are only transparent from above or inside, not from below – except that the sun and the moon are visible through the clouds from below, even if there's a solid object above the clouds in the way, e.g. a cave or house ceiling.
 * In the console edition, clouds have "sections" of 3 blocks by 3 blocks, that form the same pattern of clouds in the PC.