Celestia Forums

Would it be a good idea to bumpmap earth too?

Yeah, but do you know how much power that would take?

I was expecting it had something to do with that :D

It's still optional, so why not? The ultimate solution would of course be a true mesh and a shadowmap.

Actually, it is possible to use a bump map for Earth . . . There are some good ones available here:

http://gw.marketingden.com/planets/earth.html

I honestly haven't experimented with them . . . Also, Celestia can't handle both a gloss map (for specular reflections from the oceans) and a bump map simultanously. I will fix this very soon.

--Chris

it could just be a 'Render > View Options...' Option. so people who do have powerfull computer could run it with bumps.

tho i doubt my comp could handle it. [/u]

Why would it require a powerful computer to run bump maps? Any decent video card (Geforce/Radeon) can run bump mapping with ease. At least emboss, dot 3, or environmental. Pixel/vertex shaders are available only for the Radeon 8500 and Geforce 3/4's, and those are already powerful cards as it is.

Ok I've tried gloss map and bump map simultanously on 1.2.1 and works ... hmmm ... not so good on my TNT2 ... so this is for those Ati x500 and Geforce (not) MX's. well if u guyz can take a short criticism : The lens Flare really could use LOTS of work ... I've compared a real picture of Earth and Sun and one from Celestia (I think this is too much, but this is what u'r after , right ?) and the problems are light from sun is far much brighter in reality (about 100x) the halo effect on atmosphere planets are in fact much more visible in reality then in Celestia (just TRY to see the clouds from the dark side of the planet when the sun is on the oposite side), and another thing : all the stars should apear as dots not bricks ...
that's it for criticism now for the praise
It's got a LOT of potential ... I've never seen so much ambition in one project so BIG ... the simulation of space is a very BIG thing(I've try it so I know) the scale is absolutly fantastic ... the feeling is wonderfull is like having a private universe at home(with some coding u can do realy nice things like alien invasion and so on)... I would like to help u guyz but I don't know how (maybe I tiny little spec of a glimpse of a code? something like: weather patterns ?if anyone is interested seriously u can give me a mail to c4xp@msn.com)
Keep up the very good work...

Sammy wrote:Why would it require a powerful computer to run bump maps? Any decent video card (Geforce/Radeon) can run bump mapping with ease. At least emboss, dot 3, or environmental. Pixel/vertex shaders are available only for the Radeon 8500 and Geforce 3/4's, and those are already powerful cards as it is.

Not true. GF2 MX's can easily do Pixel shaders.

Sorry, but Geforce2 MX's do NOT support pixel shaders. As stated previously, only Geforce3/4 and Radeon 8500 support this feature.

The GeForce2 doesn't support DirectX 8 pixel shaders, but it does support the register combiner extension in OpenGL, which is all that Celestia cares about. You'll find that for any GeForce card, the pixel shaders option in the render menu is available. Celestia uses pixel shaders for bump mapping and gloss mapping (mask for specular highlights on the Earth's oceans.)

--Chris

I have a GeForce2 Pro, and Celestia gives me the option of both pixel and vertex shading. Pixel shading just seems to make the image brighter, vertex shading brutally murders my graphics card tho :O/

I have a GeForce2 MX and WITH Pixel Shaders it looks MUCH better and... how'd you say, MORE REAL than without, so i think it does do something when i switch them on

Just got the latest issue of my gaming magazine...

Displacement Mapping is a new technology, propably in the Radeon 9000,

actually changing the surface of an object with something like a bump map...

you could only use the old bump maps, and the surface would be plastic...

*shudder*

imagine, a moon with real craters that you could fly into...

*shudders more*

Just as an example :-)

Big version:
http://www.3d-center.de/images/2002/03-25_pic1.jpg[/url]

Yes, I do have Pixel Shaders on with my GF2 MX.

Sirius wrote:

Just as an example

Big version:
http://www.3d-center.de/images/2002/03-25_pic1.jpg[/url]

I am pretty certain chris is working on something like this...If this could be done with little to no lag...hmmm the possibilities!

I am sure that the detail won't be as good as whats shown there...but just a little is better than naught

Chris, you should work on the earth bumps. It would make this even more interesting.

I have been trying to add bumps to earth and it seems that the dds and a bumpmap is too much for my GeForce 2 with 32MB. It does work in combination with the earth.png. The moon does work with the dds and bumps and looks great, but mars does not work, while its dds and bumpmap are of equal size or smaller! Are the mars files bigger unpacked than the moon's, or is something else the reason for this not to work?

Buzz wrote:I have been trying to add bumps to earth and it seems that the dds and a bumpmap is too much for my GeForce 2 with 32MB. It does work in combination with the earth.png. The moon does work with the dds and bumps and looks great, but mars does not work, while its dds and bumpmap are of equal size or smaller! Are the mars files bigger unpacked than the moon's, or is something else the reason for this not to work?

I get very beautiful bumpmapped highres 8k results as follows:

I take the 8k BlueMarble earth, take the 10k bumpmap available on
http://gw.marketingden.com/planets/planets.html, scale it cubically down to 8k. Next I bumpmap the 8k earth.tif with this 8k bumpmap in GIMP (Filters/Bumpmap with a depth of 20) and save the result as a *.tga file. This I then convert into a DXT1c format.

The effect is just incredible and brilliantly sharp and the whole thing works perfectly with my 32MB GeForce 2 GTS...

Fridger