Celestia Forums

BobHegwood wrote:Something going on with Neptune in 1.5 Pre5...

Just applied for Bug-Tracker account, but thought you might like to
hear about it now.

Going to Neptune's North Pole, I see a weird hex-shaped dark area.
Does NOT go away, and is NOT the texture. Has something to do
with how the planet is rendered. Just FYI.

As soon as I get a bug-tracker account verification, I'll log it in.

Thanks, Brain-Dead

(Moved from the 'Post Bugs Here' topic)

I'm going to respond to this on the tracker. I'm sure that this odd hexagon was present in in 1.5.0pre4 as well. What you're seeing is the shadow of Neptune's rings. They're probably unrealistically dark; the opacity of the Neptune's rings should be reduced, since I don't think that they're normally even visible to the eye (except maybe at high phase angles?)

The other part of the problem is that ring shadows don't look right with ambient light enabled in render paths other than OpenGL 2.0. I don't plan on spending my time fixing this.

--Chris

chris wrote:(Moved from the 'Post Bugs Here' topic)

I'm going to respond to this on the tracker. I'm sure that this odd hexagon was present in in 1.5.0pre4 as well. What you're seeing is the shadow of Neptune's rings. They're probably unrealistically dark; the opacity of the Neptune's rings should be reduced, since I don't think that they're normally even visible to the eye (except maybe at high phase angles?)

The other part of the problem is that ring shadows don't look right with ambient light enabled in render paths other than OpenGL 2.0. I don't plan on spending my time fixing this.

--Chris

After some experimentation, I found that if I use any rendering
path OTHER than OpenGL Vertex, the problem goes away. I did
NOT have this problem in 1.5 Pre4 though. I can guarantee you
that much. As I posted in the bug-tracker, it now seems as if I
I CAN use the OpenGL 2.0 render path (as you intended
from the start anyway) so, please accept my thanks for your
responses, and close the bug report. I'm very happy with the
new version.

Thanks again, Brain-Dead