Celestia Forums

I have asked this before, but why not?
like, making the galaxy things into clouds, and sticking them into planet atmospheres, or making a few layers on saturn and other GG's to make them more real!
oooor, somehow implement clouds like in MS Flight Sim 2004/X:

http://www.flightsim.com/notams03/fs040509/piper2.jpg

like possibly, in the next Celestia release???

I await a decent response!

It would be nice, but remember that the focus of Celestia is astronomy, not terrain rendering. There will be improvements that make planets look better at small scales, such as the applying the new atmospheric scattering effect to all objects within a planetary atmosphere. But getting clouds to look good at local as well as global scales (and everything in between) is a huge amount of work, and would steal resources from efforts more directly to Celestia's focus on astronomical visualization.

Understand that a huge amount of work would be required to implement good cloud rendering, and that it's an even harder problem in Celestia than in a flight simulator because the camera can be in deep space or on the surface of Earth or anywhere in between. If someone is willing to devote a lot of time to this project, I invite them to collaborate with the rest of the developers.

--Chris

avpruler wrote:...

http://www.flightsim.com/notams03/fs040509/piper2.jpg

...

Indeed nice clouds!

yes, i see what your saying, and still though, im not talkiing immediately(though that would be nice), I mean in the next few releases, no hurry, it was just a suggestion, plus along with that, it would give room for improved nebula and galaxies!
also 3d terrain, but like I said, no hurry, maybe in celestia 2.1.0 lol!

Chris etal:

I have recently posted under 'education' that I AM currently working on an application that will 'translate' 2-D texture images into 3-D models. The end result will work for producing landscapes, gaseous nebulae, and galaxies. I hope to have it finished some time this summer. Upon completion, I will, of course, submit the source to your project here.

I will need some info on how to do this. Also, it would be nice if I had a copy of the cmod structures that you have developed. You could e-mail them if there are 'issues'.

thanks

AZ_Cowboy wrote:Chris etal:

I have recently posted under 'education' that I AM currently working on an application that will 'translate' 2-D texture images into 3-D models. The end result will work for producing landscapes, gaseous nebulae, and galaxies. I hope to have it finished some time this summer. Upon completion, I will, of course, submit the source to your project here.

I will need some info on how to do this. Also, it would be nice if I had a copy of the cmod structures that you have developed. You could e-mail them if there are 'issues'.

thanks

Whatever you are planning, any core applications e.g. to galaxies and other DSOs should be based uniquely on the data that the professional DSO catalogs (like the revised NGC/IC 2006) provide! This also implies that any code you plan to include here should tackle 10000+ of DSO objects at once and of course, use advanced culling techniques, to be fast enough. /Individual/ DSO renderings (requiring human interactions), will always remain add-ons.

Moreover, one main reason why we have not yet tackled a manifest 3D rendering of DSOs is the POOR scientific knowledge about the 3 dimensional shapes. This applies particularly to diffuse nebulae where a 3D rendering implies ~100% /artistic phantasy/.

Finally, a main design principle of Celestia is that we essentially model the Universe according to naked eye vision (allowing at best some additional light amplification, say). This means that those completely exaggerated colors one can see on popularized galaxy imaging is NOT what is desired for the core distribution. People having looked through even large telescopes know very well how pale the coloration of DSOs tends to appear to the human eye.

Of course, such restrictions do not apply to "educational" ventures, like Frank's Celestia-ED or similar.

Bye Fridger

Fridger:

This is, of course, my intent. I appreciate the information and references that you have provided here. I can also appreciate the size of the task for which I have volunteered. Any help, suggestions, comments, etc. are more than welcome in my house.

The proposed algorythms for terrain are completely different from the one for galactic assembly. The nebula algorythm; the most difficult one, will be based on those papers you had referenced earlier by C. Morrisett. His work seems to point in a logical direction, in my opinion.

Since you seem to be part of this core group, perhaps you could also help me with the cmod structures that I had hoped to attain. ??

AZ_Cowboy wrote:Fridger:

...
Since you seem to be part of this core group, perhaps you could also help me with the cmod structures that I had hoped to attain. ??

Yes, since close to 5 years, I am a member of the Celestia dev team. I am also a co-author of Celestia (cf. About Celestia...). Professionally, I am a senior scientist in theoretical particle physics with research emphasis on astro-particle physics, particle cosmology etc.

So I guess, I know what I am talking about in this domain...

That's why I am VERY sceptical towards your plans.

Bye Fridger

AZ_Cowboy wrote:Chris etal:

I have recently posted under 'education' that I AM currently working on an application that will 'translate' 2-D texture images into 3-D models...

Anything to show yet?

t00fri wrote:
Finally, a main design principle of Celestia is that we essentially model the Universe according to naked eye vision (allowing at best some additional light amplification, say). This means that those completely exaggerated colors one can see on popularized galaxy imaging is NOT what is desired for the core distribution. People having looked through even large telescopes know very well how pale the coloration of DSOs tends to appear to the human eye.

Personally, I believe in designing for the "possible" future of a multi-(selectable)-wavelength mode in Celestia. It would be nice if there was some tag in a stc, ssc, dsc file that we could have so that addons would show based on the wavelengths selected...in the future that is.

Ask again in June. This is not a simple task and I do have a real job...

buggs_moran wrote:

t00fri wrote:
Finally, a main design principle of Celestia is that we essentially model the Universe according to naked eye vision (allowing at best some additional light amplification, say). This means that those completely exaggerated colors one can see on popularized galaxy imaging is NOT what is desired for the core distribution. People having looked through even large telescopes know very well how pale the coloration of DSOs tends to appear to the human eye.

Personally, I believe in designing for the "possible" future of a multi-(selectable)-wavelength mode in Celestia. It would be nice if there was some tag in a stc, ssc, dsc file that we could have so that addons would show based on the wavelengths selected...in the future that is.

Buggs,

in the past I have written so much in favour of a multi wavelength mode in Celestia and wavelength filters etc...
I was actually my original idea, if I correctly remember.

But for one reason or another we never got into it. Nevertheless, what is important is that Celestia remains internally consistent as to its design structure.

Bye Fridger