Earth - Tryout

[cordanilus]

I'm trying out something which looks good but there's a catch.
I may not know enough to complete this package but I'm going to try anyway.
( Moderators, if this is in the wrong place, you have my permsision to move it. )

I know Rob is making his own (most likely better) for his project but I'm making one (Possibly for release) for videos.  The model will be used in (my install) BC though.

Here's some pics for now, I have tried out a few things and it looks impressive but can use a lot of resources on BC. It's only 8640 polys but making them in layers makes for a big "_vox".  about 40 mb so it means long to load the first time.  Even on my dual-core pc.

I would like to have the Earth Ship placed in a system and have the clouds layer as a seperate ship and placed in the exact same spot.  I have done this as the planet using my model and texture but that cuts out the glow altogether.  I don't have enough skills for that and I don't know how to rotate things anyway.  Also, I've tried to use the blinkers with a texture of an atmosphere I made but, found a strange thing.

If it doesn't work, it'll be just used for videos.
It may take a while to complete this since I have to learn more about scripting.  But that's another story, lol.

[RCgothic]

just an FYI, atmospheres are nowhere near that thick on real planets, though i understand it may be necessary for game mechanics.

Diameter of the earth is 12.7k kilometres. Atmospheric effects become noticeable at 120km. the thickness of the atmosphere is therefore 1/50 the thickness of the planet.

[Blackrook32]

Very daring concept, Cordanilus!

IMO, the planet models in Bridge Commander needed to be upgraded.

[cordanilus]

just an FYI, atmospheres are nowhere near that thick on real planets

I just made it that way so it can be seen easily.  That glow is a blinker, turning your ship makes the blinker offset as shown in the last picture.  So blinkers are out.

Before, I tried a second layer (modeled) for the clouds and another layer for the atmosphere as you see in the first pics.

Gonna keep trying out different things anyway.

[RCgothic]

Cool. The first pics do look really impressive.

[Glenn]

Impressive indeed, nice start cordanilus.  8)

[cordanilus]

Oh yes.  Bren just reminded me of something.
The idea of using the blinker for an atmosphere, was his idea from a thread over at BCS.

I thought that I'd give it a try but unfortunately, the strange effect that I noticed was that the blinker does not stay in the middle at all times.  On picture 4, at a certain distance and angle, the picture looks great.  On picture 5, the view is much closer and at an angle but you see the result, the glow is offset from the planet. The blinker seems not to stay put and as a result, I can't use it.

It was a brilliant idea I must admit, too bad it doesn't work.  I'm going to have to find another way to simulate an atmosphere.

Update:
I have the Earth model ingame, it has the atmosphere effect, moving clouds and lights glowing on the dark side.  All that is left to do is to figure out, how to simulate an atmosphere on the planet.

[RCgothic]

Might not be necessary? The atmosphere is so thin as to be almost invisible.

[JimmyB76]

RC is correct...  the atmosphere on a planet is almost like an egg-shell...

[RCgothic]

3/4 of the atmosphere is within 12km of the surface, or 0.1% of the diameter of the planet. This would be effectively invisible.

Atmospheric effects become apparent at 120km, or 1% of the diameter of the planet. still pretty much invisible.

[startrekw_george]

you almost don't need an atmospheric effect with that kind of texturing! it depends on how well it is, i dont think it should stand out that much, maybe just have it add a blueish hue around the planet's surface.

[cordanilus]

Okay, I'll leave out the atmosphere for now.

I'm making a video of what the planet looks like and will post a link up here when it's finished.
It'll probably be a video of a few projects I'm currently working on.  My own projects and that of under SBP07.

Should be interesting.

[moed]

Looks excellent, very detailed.

Great work.

[Bren]

As I understand it, Cordanilus was using the fat atmosphere in his screens for experimentation purposes. The final effect would be very subtle, given further development.

It may still be possible with another method, I need to look into something first, but I'm very busy with college at the moment.

[Shinzon]

I quite like it, as it was previously said, a little work on the atmosphere should help, but it looks promising.

[SaBrE]

Looks lovely so far. So is this like a "station" you can put on a level in game or does it actually replace the stock planet?

[cordanilus]

This will be in a system.  It doesn't replace the stock planet.  It was the only way to keep the glows on the planet ship.  I can make certain parts transparent or translucent but I can add glows to stock planets...must be the programming of the game itself that disables the glows.

[JamesTiberiusKirk]

Me likey. I should post more often in the future  :?...

[cordanilus]

Update:

Yup, I have the Earth in a custom system.  It has glows and you can see the lights on the dark side and the clouds rotate.

I'll probably throw in a moon, a starbase and a probably a couple of drydocks to make it a complete system.

Now, I'm going to need a couple of Beta Testers.  I'll be back in about 5 days so I'll choose then.

I'm looking for a dynamic bunch...
1 High-End PC (Dual-Core Pentium or AMD)
1 Medium-End PC (Single Core P4, Socket 423 or 478...or AMD, Socket A 462 or 754)
1 Low-End PC (P3 - Socket 370 or AMD Socket A 462)

I just want to test this beast in those settings to see how it fares and will need at least one of them not to be running KM 1.0 or 0.9

Anyhoo, that's all for now.

P.S.
Here's a quick pic.

[serverandenforcer]

You do realise that you have the maps reversed on the sphere don't you?