The Solar System is all mine!

[PlutonianEmpire]

Mwahahahahahahahaaahh!!!!

Anyhoo, I made some changes to the solarsys.ssc in the data folder, which I think would be cool if it was included into the default solarsys.ssc that comes with Celestia when one installs the program.

Mercury is unchanged.

For venus, it currently comes in with its looking like this:


In the ssc, i changed the atmosphere color to (hopefully) reflect the real life venus a bit more, so it (the atmosphere) now appears dark orange. (no screenshot)

Earth: Currently, it comes in looking like this.


I switched it to have a different cloudmap, and a different nightmap (one that has the auroras in it), and i got rid of the ugly "pollution" (the grey or brown haze and clouds) so that it would appear a bit more like it does in real life. Notice the increased contrast between clouds and sea. I also changed the atmosphere and haze colors so that it appears less "polluted", and increased the height of the atmosphere from 60 to 62 & lowered the cloud layer to 6.2.

Yes, the name was changed as well (don't ask).

It sure looks better, doesn't it? To me, it seems a lot more... natural.

Mars is fine, although you could make the haze color more reddish. And a good "dust storm" cloud map would be cool.

Jupiter is fine, save for the absence of a faint ring

For saturn, uranus, and neptune, i got rid of the haze(s) entirely, because it looked like i was looking at space probe pics of them. (you know that bluish haze that appears at the edges of the planets in the pics? those are optical effects caused by the camera and other equipment, i believe)

I gave pluto and charon more "realistic" textures, and also gave Pluto a thin atmosphere with a few clouds.

of course, the textures would all come in 1k and 2k packages, as always, and people could download bigger textures from the motherlode by themselves.

[eburacum45]

For saturn, uranus, and neptune, i got rid of the haze(s) entirely, because it looked like i was looking at space probe pics of them. (you know that bluish haze that appears at the edges of the planets in the pics? those are optical effects caused by the camera and other equipment, i believe)

Actually, I think the blue colour is caused by Rayleigh scattering in the atmosphere and is real-
but compared to the diameter of the planets the haze is probably very thin.

[PlutonianEmpire]

I see.

Another thing i noticed about the earth was that the cloudspeed, 65, is way too fast. i'm thinking that it should be somewhere between like 25 or 35. at 65, and i advance the timerate, it looks like the clouds are going over a hundred miles an hour or more. When was the last time you saw a storm cloud speeding at 120 miles an hour?

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I must admit, I like the look of "Tiamat" . Does seem a bit more realistic.

[t00fri]

...
I gave pluto and charon more "realistic" textures,
...

That's a joke, is'nt it? My (default) Pluto texture includes the most realistic knowledge of mankind about Pluto and Charon.
There are simply no better imaging data about these bodies.

Bye Fridger

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

...
I gave pluto and charon more "realistic" textures,
...

That's a joke, is'nt it? My (default) Pluto texture includes the most realistic knowledge of mankind about Pluto and Charon.
There are simply no better imaging data about these bodies.

Bye Fridger

You'll note he put "realistic" in quotes - that implies that he realises that we can't actually produce textures that really are more realistic than what we know. He probably means "more aesthetically pleasing", or something based off the realistic textures but more detailed (as opposed to just blurry dark and bright patches covering the planet).

[t00fri]

...
I gave pluto and charon more "realistic" textures,
...

That's a joke, is'nt it? My (default) Pluto texture includes the most realistic knowledge of mankind about Pluto and Charon.
There are simply no better imaging data about these bodies.

Bye Fridger

You'll note he put "realistic" in quotes - that implies that he realises that we can't actually produce textures that really are more realistic than what we know. He probably means "more aesthetically pleasing", or something based off the realistic textures but more detailed (as opposed to just blurry dark and bright patches covering the planet).

Yes, I noted the quotes but interpreted them as indicating a joke. Too bad

[PlutonianEmpire]

...
I gave pluto and charon more "realistic" textures,
...

That's a joke, is'nt it? My (default) Pluto texture includes the most realistic knowledge of mankind about Pluto and Charon.
There are simply no better imaging data about these bodies.

Bye Fridger

You'll note he put "realistic" in quotes - that implies that he realises that we can't actually produce textures that really are more realistic than what we know. He probably means "more aesthetically pleasing", or something based off the realistic textures but more detailed (as opposed to just blurry dark and bright patches covering the planet).

Yes, I noted the quotes but interpreted them as indicating a joke. Too bad

Lol. Here's a screenshot of what i was talking about



Note, at the time the screenshot was taken, this texture was the limit of knowledge texture. i've since made it the regular texture, and moved the terraformed pluto thingy to a separate folder.

[t00fri]

what's the dark rectangular area on Pluto? An alien landing area?

More seriously, Pluto's surface (that we know has orange-brown) dark surface features could well look roughly like you displayed it above. I suppose you took my brown patterns as a basis and filled the "inbetwens" with ice/snow stuff...

Bye Fridger

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Yeah, that brown square does stand out somewhat. I suppose one could argue that it's a fault-bounded lowland area that has been filled with dark material, and it just happens that the faults are all orthogonal to eachother . But that's a very unlikely configuration, you wouldn't really get a rectangular block of ground dropped downwards like that if those were 'normal fault' pairs (i.e. horst/graben structures).

I don't think you'd have that blue haze in the atmosphere too, Pluto's atmosphere is like Triton's I think - very very thin indeed. you wouldn't get that kind of scattering in it I don't think. You might see a very thin haze layer above the limb though, but only if you're really close (or have a very narrow angle view).

[PlutonianEmpire]

Yeah, i noticed that brown area....

what's the dark rectangular area on Pluto? An alien landing area?

More seriously, Pluto's surface (that we know has orange-brown) dark surface features could well look roughly like you displayed it above. I suppose you took my brown patterns as a basis and filled the "inbetwens" with ice/snow stuff...

Bye Fridger

Actually, I took the pluto-lok texture and the original B&W map of pluto (the one where three large bright patches make a third of the planet look like picture of mickey mouse) and meshed those together. After that, I took various textures from rassilon's globular cluster generator texture package and meshed them together in a second window, and then meshed the two separate meshes into one big one.

[t00fri]

Yeah, i noticed that brown area....

what's the dark rectangular area on Pluto? An alien landing area?
...

Must be this new, vast Holiday Inn recreation complex . Can you spot the access road on the rhs of the rectangular region??

Bye Fridger

[PlutonianEmpire]

I was looking at the home planet again, and the ocean colors kept getting to me, so I took a map of earth, chose a shade of blue that had absolutely no red OR green values in the RGB thingy, and choose 2 different shades of blue, filled out the water, and saved two separate maps, one with a dark-looking shade of blue and another with a lighter shade of blue, and took two screenshots, one for each shade of blue. Here are thumbnails, side by side:



(yes, i realize it's colder than mars in one of the pics, i forgot to return the albedo to normal after using the snowball earth maps)

Which planet seems more realistic, the one with lighter blue oceans, or darker blue?

IMO, I choose the one with the lighter blue oceans, because it seems to resemble some of the earth pics I've seen, and perhaps even real life...

[fsgregs]

Dear PlutonianEmpire:

Which cloud layer are you using?

FrankG

[PlutonianEmpire]

Dear PlutonianEmpire:

Which cloud layer are you using?

FrankG

Umm.... What do you mean?

[julesstoop]

Hi Plutonian,

The clouded Venus atmosphere actually reflects about 90% of incoming light and is consequently by no means orange. It's actually very close to white. The orange hued Venus pictures we've become accustomed t,o are images reconstructed from radar measurements. The choice for orange in those images was an arbitrary one.

[PlutonianEmpire]

Hi Plutonian,

The clouded Venus atmosphere actually reflects about 90% of incoming light and is consequently by no means orange. It's actually very close to white. The orange hued Venus pictures we've become accustomed t,o are images reconstructed from radar measurements. The choice for orange in those images was an arbitrary one.

So, looking up from the surface of venus, we'd see a very-close-to-white sky?

[fsgregs]

Sorry, I meant the cloudmap used on Tiamat. It looks nice and full.

Frank

[PlutonianEmpire]

Sorry, I meant the cloudmap used on Tiamat. It looks nice and full.

Frank

Oh yeah, that. Thanks. Actually, I'm using an earth cloud map for northern-hemisphere winter, but I flipped it so that it was southern-hemisphere winter, so that the clouds that are supposed to be behind south america are where they're supposed to be: behind south america. (assuming you set a cloud speed of zero.)

Here's what I mean by "flipping the clouds so they're behind south america, where they're supposed to be":

[julesstoop]

So, looking up from the surface of venus, we'd see a very-close-to-white sky?

I'm not sure about that one, but your very first picture suggests that your Venus cloudmap looks orange when viewed from above (or are we looking at the surface with clouds switched off)