Celestia Forums

The saturn shadow cast on the rings doesn't look right, it should be much longer. Is there a way to make the shadow longer?

The shadow is correct. It's summer in Saturn's southern hemisphere at the moment, so the planet is tilted quite steeply away from the Sun, and sunlight can get past the southern hemisphere of Saturn to illuminate the outer edge of the rings.
Try going to the Sun, then tracking Saturn and zooming in on it - from the Sun, you'll be able see the far edge of the rings beyond Saturn's southern hemisphere. This shows you that sunlight is able to get to that part of the rings.

Grant

Speaking of ring shadows... Is it possible to make the shadow of a planet onto it's rings smoother, and less "blocky" around the edges...? Saturn's shadow looks very pixelated around the edges to me...

Yep, granthutchison is right. I forgotten about the ring tilts. In the back of my mind I must've thought Celestia forgotten to include Saturn's ring tilts during its seasons.

JackHiggins wrote:Speaking of ring shadows... Is it possible to make the shadow of a planet onto it's rings smoother, and less "blocky" around the edges...? Saturn's shadow looks very pixelated around the edges to me...

Yes it's possible. In the "Renderer::init()" function change the :
shadowTex = CreateProceduralTexture(256, 256, ...

with

shadowTex = CreateProceduralTexture(1024, 1024, ...

Then all eclipse and ring shadow textures will be 16 times more precise !

I've never try beyond 1024 but it should work (depending on your graphic card of course).

Kendrix,

Er.. Don't have a compiler, so can't actually change the code myself... I don't suppose you'd send me on an exe with that change made, would you?!!

Thanks!

JackHiggins wrote:Kendrix,

Er.. Don't have a compiler, so can't actually change the code myself... :( I don't suppose you'd send me on an exe with that change made, would you?!! :)

Thanks!

It's allright I can send you my version but I have made some other modifications...

CTRL + C switch the distance unit for all displays instead of copy the URL, you have a new option in the view menu : Choose constellation to render (to render only one constellation and see how it looks like from another star it's quite fun)
I have aded a progress bar in the eclipse finder dialog box.
My default FOV is 30 instead of 45 (you can easily change that with your starting script)
The rings are made of 1000 sections instead of 100...

I think that's all...

Do you still want my version ?

Kendrix

That actually sounds better than what I was expecting!
a) I could never copy URL's before, so now Ctrl + C will actually do something for me
b) I like progress bars for things like the eclipse finder, when you have no idea how long it's going to take
c) I was going to ask about rings having 1000 sections also, but thought it might sound a bit pushy...!

Send it on so (zip it if you can too please) thanks!

Ok The exe is in your mailbox now

Ok that looks SOOO much better than the standard version!!

I was actually more impressed by the 1000 section rings than I was by the better shadows (although they look great too) they stay completely round even when you're inside a ring following Pan around, etc.

The Ctrl + C feature is another great thing that I had never thought of before! One small feature request though- if you could get it to display radii as well, it'd have all the things that the "Go to" box has, as well as LT delay.

These features should definitely be in 1.3.2pre's!

Kendrix or Jack,

can somewhere upload this 'exe' on the web or send a mail? This mods sound to good I must have it.

Thanks
Jens

jim wrote:Kendrix or Jack,

can somewhere upload this 'exe' on the web or send a mail? This mods sound to good I must have it. :D

Thanks
Jens

It's ok I've send it to you...

I've also uploaded it to http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackcelesti ... lestia.zip for anyone else who wants it.

Thank you for the new exe. Before, I could only see Saturn's shadow on the rings. Now I can also see the shadows of the rings on the planet. My card is:



But it is slow on my system with a 1.1 GHz AMD Athlon, 256mb memory, using 64 for the video and with WinXP. It would be nice if the numbers for the rings and shadows could be set in a place like celestia.cfg so we could experiment with what works best on our systems.

Brendan

The ring shadows you're seeing are not the pixel shader one.

It is a code replacement that Chris have done but deactivated since it doesn't draw the exact real thing.

I've activated it for a friend of mine...

Funny- I couldn't get any ring shadows like Brendan... Must get a better graphics card...

Cheers for making the 'exe' available Kendrix, and to Jack for making it available on his site.
I'm mad on Saturn at the moment, and I've gotta take a look at this!

JackHiggins wrote:Funny- I couldn't get any ring shadows like Brendan... Must get a better graphics card...

Ok, time to tense you. Here's what I see:

I can see them changing throughout the Saturn year. They look extreme because of how Saturn is tilted with respect to the sun now. Can someone post a picture of the pixel shader rings?
The picture is posted at http://www.rit.edu/~bjr5096/celestia/saturn.html

Brendan

Brendan wrote:Can someone post a picture of the pixel shader rings?
The picture is posted at http://www.rit.edu/~bjr5096/celestia/saturn.html

Brendan

I've send you a screenshot with Pixel Shaders so you can post it.

Kendrix wrote:

Brendan wrote:Can someone post a picture of the pixel shader rings?
The picture is posted at http://www.rit.edu/~bjr5096/celestia/saturn.html

Brendan

I've send you a screenshot with Pixel Shaders so you can post it.

Thank you. I have posted the picture you sent me. The pixel shader shadows look better.

Brendan