Celestia Forums

Well I was tinkering around with an all new Northern Summer cloudmap that is at 8k in its original form. I decided to test something and I was quite blown away by the results.
I converted it to an 8k.dds texture and loaded into Celestia. As it turns out it looks like Celestia can in fact use 8k cloupmaps and they are being rendered at a higher resolution than a 4k. I have pictures to prove it. So here they are. They are in thumb-nails here but just click them for the bigger view. You can see the difference in detail even in the thumb-nails. So have a look into the Hurricane’s eye and see for yourself.



I don't if it is driver, software, or hardware related. But we have always been told that an 8k.dss cloudmap/texture would be resized on the fly by Celestia down to 4k because Celestia just didn't support and 8k cloudmap. Well something has changed because a GeForce Ti 4xxx series card with 128mb of VRAM can do it now. This is really going to change a few things. For one, my original 4k Northern Summer cloudmap is out the door in favor of the newer and better 8k version. I will release a 4k version as well but those of you that have the power and video memory should try to use the 8k. As can also be seen in the larger images as well as the thumb-nail shots is that hyper-realistic clouds can be achieved for Celestia. Now we just need Chris to get the cloud drop shadows going and things should really start to get interesting.

Don. Edwards

BTW,
The new 8k cloudmap is nearly 100% completed and all in one nights work.

Sweet. Not that I use Celestia or anything - it makes my computer freeze and crash occasionally - but it's always nice to have a variety of hi-res cloud maps to map onto a planet.

Yeah Don, Ever since the last pre release there have been some weird goings on.

One minute 8k rings work next minute they dont.
Now 8k clouds work when we are told they wouldnt.

That's strange... I've been making and using 8k cloudmaps for ages, even with Celestia 1.2.5 - the only requirement for them to work (AFAIK) was that they be DDS with an alpha component. If I'd known that people were having trouble with them, I'd have said something... *shrug*

Cheers,
Paul

Sorry, bad joke removed

Anyway, it looks great Don.

Paul,
8k cloudmaps are not officially supported and they never were in the past. Celestia was programmed to reduce any 8k cloudmap to 4k. Chris has stated this many, many times. This has been the rule for some time and almost everyone new it was a waste of time to even load an 8k cloudmap because you were just using up VRAM that could be used for something else. When you normally plug in and 8k cloudmap as I said it gets resized to 4k. But mine does not for some reason and I think I have found out why.
When I first started creating the Northern Summer cloudmap, every time I loaded a new version into Celestia it would of course move ahead of the Earth as it moved. This had one very negative effect. I wound up seeing hurricanes over areas that they shouldn't. So I turned the cloud speed to 00. This in effect shuts down the cloud movement. Now I now some of you will say that’s dumb or I don't want to do that and that’s your choice as it was mine to lock them in place. What this has done I believe is allow the cloud layer to become a static layer and hence can now be rendered at a higher resolution.
Now I tested this theory and found that it definitely has some truth to it. I turned the cloud speed back up to 60 as is per normal and Earth suddenly looks like a gasgiant as the clouds go striped. I then reduced the cloud speed to 10 and found that parts of the clouds were rendered and other parts were blurred into stripes. I then set the speed back to 00 and everything went back to normal. So it definitely has something to do with the way Celestia is buffering the data of the cloudmap for its motion that is limiting the ability to truly use a good 8k cloudmap texture in motion. Of course the ultimate test would be to find a 16k cloudmap but I, as everyone else knows that there isn’t one. At least as far as I know. If there was it could be plugged in to test the theory. If it rendered properly then we would no for sure.
Now when I release the Northern Summer cloudmap everyone can set there cloud speed to what they like but if they want to see a true 8k cloudmap texture and see the clouds were they are supposed to be placed they will in all likelihood need to disable Earth's cloud rotation. It a very small price to pay in the end. So everyone will have two choices. Use the 4k lower resolution cloudmap and rotate the clouds as always and have hurricanes in the middle of the Sahara desert or simply set the cloud speed to 00 and have great looking high resolution clouds at 8k although they will be static.
I was hoping Chris would chime in hear and maybe confirm what I suspect is going on hear. As I have attempted to use 8k clouds in older builds of Celestia in the past and they just looked like 4k clouds. I have been able to repeat the process to make these working high-res 8k clouds three times now and each has worked when they were not supposed to. It could also be because I used DXT5 for the .dds conversion but I can't be sure about that in any rate.
If anyone more familiar with the inner workings of Celestia has any ideas as to why this is working please chime in. I not complaining but I would like to know if my theory is right about the cloudmap going static is the reason.

Don. Edwards

Here are two examples of what I was talking about when I said stripping.



Don. Edwards

Thanks Mr. Edwards,

I've tested your theory and found that it definitely breaks the old celestia limits.

I?ve tested setting the "CloudSpeed 0" on various systems ("GF2MX/GF4-4200/FX5900" 32-128MB DDR ) all with the 52.16 drivers.

its amazing that even the Old GF2MX with only 32MB can load a 4k/8k cloud texture as a static texture insted of layer.

great ,

Hi Don,

Thanks for the info, I got your 4k dds clouds working! (they had been sitting on my HD without ever having worked) They look beautyful on my GeForce 2 with 32 MB and with your 8k earth. I had the same stripes that you showed when trying 4k clouds with speed >0.

Buzz

Has anyone tried virtual textures at 0 speed yet? Any chance they work then too?

I think I might be able to break the cloudmap into at least four tiles and see if if it will work.

I also found something else very interesting but I am still experimenting so I am not going to raise hopes to high.

We are still at present limited to an 8k cloudmap untill someone can find a larger one somewhere.

Don. Edwards wrote:Well I was tinkering around with an all new Northern Summer cloudmap that is at 8k in its original form. I decided to test something and I was quite blown away by the results.
I converted it to an 8k.dds texture and loaded into Celestia. As it turns out it looks like Celestia can in fact use 8k cloupmaps and they are being rendered at a higher resolution than a 4k. Don. Edwards

Hello Don, I'm using your wonderful New-Northern-Summer-Clouds_8kDDS.dds from a while, but now a teacher asked me if I could add a Coriolis Law example to my Earth Tour.
For this I need another Tropical storm, South of Equator, obviously inverted in rotation.
Well, I'm trying from a couple days to modify your .dds texture, using the ways I found in this forum, with PSCS2, The Gimp, XnView, Infanview, but even if now I have the storm in the right position and correctly rotating, I'm unable to eliminate the gaps among the basic texture and the additions.
I know that I'm absolutely ignorant on layers, alpha chennels and so on, but this means that I'm wasting a lot of time for what is probably easy to be done, knowing the how to.
Well, could you please give me the simplest possible way, using the softwares I have, to select one of the Northern storms, rotate it vertically (to invert its rotation) and copy it in a position between Madagascar and Mascarene Islands (Mauritius.Reunion), to show how rotation invertes between North and South storms.
Or, if this is of less trouble for you, could you make this change for me?

Whatever will be your decision, even if you cannot do anything, thank you for your time, Don.
Bye

Andrea

Andrea,

Wow, you resurrected a very old thread. You could have just private messaged me. No matter. What you are looking for is on Earth Central in the name of the Northern Winter Southern Summer cloudmap. It has the tropical storms in the right locations for that time of year. Namely Typhoons and Cyclones rotating clockwise do to the Coriolis Effect you are speaking of. The textures start at 8k and go down.

I use real images of these storms, of course. In this texture you can see a row of cyclones lined up in the Indian Ocean and a typhoon off the east coast of Australia.

I hope this helps and is what you are looking for.
You can get it here.
http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... ral_4.html

Don. Edwards

Don. Edwards wrote:Andrea, Wow, you resurrected a very old thread. You could have just private messaged me. No matter. What you are looking for is on Earth Central in the name of the Northern Winter Southern Summer cloudmap. It has the tropical storms in the right locations for that time of year. Namely Typhoons and Cyclones rotating clockwise do to the Coriolis Effect you are speaking of. The textures start at 8k and go down.I use real images of these storms, of course. In this texture you can see a row of cyclones lined up in the Indian Ocean and a typhoon off the east coast of Australia. I hope this helps and is what you are looking for.You can get it here.
http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... ral_4.html
Don. Edwards

Hello Don, first of all thanks a lot for your very quick reply, appreciated.
But there is a problem:all cloud textures from that page are not available for downloading, and in donedwards Motherlode/creators page the Southern_Summer clouds images are missing.
Where can I find that texture?
Thank you for your help.
Bye

Andrea

Andrea,

Well this is my second attempt to answer your post. You don't have to go through all that work. I have a Southern Summer-Northern Winter cloudmap texture that shows what you are trying to do. I had no idea the links at Earth Central were not working. I will fix them as soon as possible.

Here are direct links to the newest cloudmaps I have for Earth.

Northern Summer-Southern Winter

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _8kDDS.zip

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _4kDDS.zip

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _4kPNG.zip

Southern Summer-Northern Winter

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _8kDDS.zip

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _4kDDS.zip

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _4kPNG.zip

You will find what you are looking for in the Southern Summer cloudmap. You will find several Cyclones spanning the Indian Ocean. These were taken directly from real satellite imagery. They should demonstrate the Coriolis Effect quite well for you.

Don. Edwards

But we are in Northern Spring/Southern Autumn,so it doesn??t matter what cloudmap you choose,right?

Don. Edwards wrote:Andrea,

Well this is my second attempt to answer your post. You don't have to go through all that work. I have a Southern Summer-Northern Winter cloudmap texture that shows what you are trying to do. I had no idea the links at Earth Central were not working. I will fix them as soon as possible.

Here are direct links to the newest cloudmaps I have for Earth.

Northern Summer-Southern Winter

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _8kDDS.zip

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _4kDDS.zip

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _4kPNG.zip

Southern Summer-Northern Winter

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _8kDDS.zip

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _4kDDS.zip

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/New_Eart ... _4kPNG.zip

You will find what you are looking for in the Southern Summer cloudmap. You will find several Cyclones spanning the Indian Ocean. These were taken directly from real satellite imagery. They should demonstrate the Coriolis Effect quite well for you.

Don. Edwards

Well it does really. You don?€™t want tropical storms in the wrong places at the wrong time of year.
A Southern Autumn/Northern Spring cloudmap would be closer to Northern Winter and the Northern Summer cloudmap can be used for Northern Autumn. We get tropical storms well into November every year so using the Northern Summer cloudmap from say June to November would work. And then flip to the Northern Winter cloudmap from December to May. I do plan to make an intermediate cloudmap for autumn. BlueMarble?€™s original Cloudmap, that mine are all based on is very close to falling into late spring very early summer before the tropics heat up. So that one is already covered.
I really need to get these things together. It never seems I have enough time to devote to all this. So many things keep taking me away from working on my textures. Hopefully I will see a speed increase when working on them with the newer computer. One can hope at least.

Oh and by the way, in my response to you in your PM to me, I failed to mention that I only use 8k cloudmaps for doing beauty shots inside Celestia. For day to day use so to speak I use 4k cloudmaps and normally they are in rotation mode. Again I only lock the cloudmap and go to 8k when doing screen captures so the clouds don't look bad. And if you think 8k clouds are bad try using a 16k VT cloudmap. Now that will really kill your card. Well it does mine anyway.

Don. Edwards

Don. Edwards wrote:Andrea, Well this is my second attempt to answer your post. You don't have to go through all that work. I have a Southern Summer-Northern Winter cloudmap texture that shows what you are trying to do. I had no idea the links at Earth Central were not working. I will fix them as soon as possible. You will find what you are looking for in the Southern Summer cloudmap. You will find several Cyclones spanning the Indian Ocean. These were taken directly from real satellite imagery. They should demonstrate the Coriolis Effect quite well for you.
Don. Edwards

Thanks a lot for the trouble, Don.
I'm aware that your cloud maps reflect the TRUE seasonal situation, I mean that in Northern hemisphere the storms appear during its summer, as in its summer in Southern hemisphere.
But I would like to put "fictiously", only for educational purposes, in the same cloud map a Northern and a Southern storm, so to move from one to the other in one second, showing their different rotation.
This is the reson for my Sat Apr 01, 2006 3:31 pm request, a suggestion on how to make the little addition I need.
Thank you again.
Bye

Andrea

Andrea,

I think I understand what you are trying to do. Not an easy thing. But the cloudmap dose a good job of showing off the effect.



Of course I think you are looking for something more dramatic. Good luck with what you are doing.

Don. Edwards

Don. Edwards wrote:Andrea, I think I understand what you are trying to do. Not an easy thing. But the cloudmap dose a good job of showing off the effect. Of course I think you are looking for something more dramatic. Good luck with what you are doing.
Don. Edwards

Thank you, Don, I'll give a try.
Bye

Andrea