Celestia Forums

I've made a nice little add-on for Celestia that simulates a volcanic plume on Io;

Also for your convinience, a real-life image;


Just put this code into an .ssc file, no downloads required.


Changing the radius alters the size of the plume.

Very good
works well too

I find that " Radius 0.00000000190"
works well (looks a more realistic size)
doesnt look at thought its hundreds of miles into space

nice find SumO

Hey, cool. is there a possibility to change the color, so that someone could do the same thing with the sun? Also, the plume dissapears behind IO when i want to bring it in front of it, but this is a problem on Celestia, right?

I've realised that the screenshot isn't completely accurate, since a eruption on the dark side wouldn't be visible, of course... But the plume moves to the sunlit side over time. The plume isn't visible from above, only when it is sillhoetted against space - which is actually more realistic.

I'd like to see more comet options (color, shape) since it comet tails could be used for a lot of things... Look at Rassilion's pulsar (somewhere in the site in his signature), which uses comet tails to simulate the pulsar jets.

Can anyone tell me where in the solarsys.ssc file should I add the code? I tried modifying the solarsys.ssc file as shown below but I see no plumes. Thanks.
"Io" "Sol/Jupiter"
{
Texture "io.jpg"
# Texture "io2k.dds"
Radius 1821

CustomOrbit "io"
EllipticalOrbit
{
Epoch 2443000.00038375
Period 1.769138
SemiMajorAxis 421600
Eccentricity 0.0041
Inclination 0.040
AscendingNode 312.981
LongOfPericenter 97.735
MeanLongitude 106.724
}


Albedo 0.1
}

Albedo 0.61
}

"Volcanic Plume" "Sol/Jupiter/Io"
{
Class "comet"
Radius 0.00000001
Mesh "asteroid.cms"

EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 1.769125
SemiMajorAxis 1821
Eccentricity 0.0
MeanAnomaly 0.5
}

Albedo 0.1
}

i personly have not done the valcano but it is a comet class so just copy the code to the end of the solarsys. ssc file

from the code you posted you have too many (albedo's ) remove one of them
--albedo 0.1--

Thanks for the albedo comment. Regarding the plume on Io it will only work on Celestia version 1.2.5, not on 1.2.4, the reason being that version 1.2.5(beta) allows visualization of comet tails in the rendering option whereas 1.2.4 doesn't.
Regards.

Is there any possibility to widen the volcanic plume?
It should widen up and then return on the surface, but I believe that this could be impossible. The plume widening (and making it a bit shorter, as suggested by Darkmiss) could improve a lot its beauty.

Andrea

If I find a good, free, easy-to-use 3D modelling application, I might create my own custom plume to more accurately mirror the real-life thing. Any suggestions?

Sum0,

The standard joke is that any time you ask for 3 good qualities, you can get your choice of any two of them, but not all 3 at once

However, you might want to investigate Blender.
http://www.blender3d.org/

Well, I suppose the first two are OK...