Celestia Forums

Hey Everyone,
I got the sameple textures from the BlueMarble Next Gen site and rescaled them for Celestia and loaded the October version for a look see. Here is what we can expect form them in there raw untouched form.








All I can say is WOW! a big improvment over the old ones in terms of color. When the full size versions become available I migth add just a little of my water coloring, but just a hint. These pictures look just like the recently released images form the Mercury probes recent flyby. I guess I am really going to busy with these for a while.

Don. Edwards

Very cool, can't wait.

I agree with you, Don, this version is a good improvement. It's worth working on. Perhaps worth of a long overdue revision of the Comahue and other pieces of Argentina. I always liked your textures.

Guillermo

Yep, those first test look pretty cool, it's true the colors seems to be better.
You are planing to do all 12 maps?

It was a nice surprise to read about the "next generation" imagery. And now we have an even greater need for time-dependent textures!

Where is this Next Gen Blue Marble site at? I have been to the old site already. Is this Next Gen site the same as the Blue Marble site?

cartrite

I would think the old site and new site will merge on the 13th. But don't quote me on it. If you want to the sample textures you can get them at the BlueMarble Next Generaton site http://www.iac.ethz.ch/staff/stockli/bmng/

Hope that helps, it goes into allot of detail of how the textures were made.

ElChristo,

Depending on how hard it will be I do plan on doing all 12 of the monthly textures. It will easy for me to release 16k and lower resolution textures rather fast. The bigger ones will take more time and probably won't be modified much. At this point the only thing I would consider doing is merging my ocean layer and blending just enough so that the shallow water is a little better represented and so the oceans have just the hint of detail. I may throw a sample of this together tonight if 1. I don't get called into work, 2. If something else doesn't come up. My sister in-law went in for knee surgery today so I may have to help out some there. Actually things have been changing around here for me and thats why I seem to be away from the forum more often. Unfortunatly I don't see this changing in the future for the better. Maybe better for me, but not for the Celestia forum. So check back here later for more info and picturres.

Don.

Don. Edwards wrote:...My sister in-law went in for knee surgery today so I may have to help out some there. Actually things have been changing around here for me and thats why I seem to be away from the forum more often...

Hey Don., there is strictly no hurry and your family is really much important!!
so... take it easy...

Hey,
No hurry here either. I'm sorry to here about your sister in law. Hope everything works out.

When I saw the post I tried to get a look for myself to see what was going on. The Blue Marble site looked the same so i thought I'd ask to see if I was going to the right site. I'm going to check the link above right now. Thank You.

cartrite

Don,do you think the 64 k version will need a 256 MB video card?

Don. Edwards wrote:Hey Everyone,
I got the sameple textures from the BlueMarble Next Gen site and rescaled them for Celestia and loaded the October version for a look see. Here is what we can expect form them in there raw untouched form.








All I can say is WOW! a big improvment over the old ones in terms of color. When the full size versions become available I migth add just a little of my water coloring, but just a hint. These pictures look just like the recently released images form the Mercury probes recent flyby. I guess I am really going to busy with these for a while.

Don. Edwards

Do the oceans REALLY appear THAT dark from space? I kinda find that hard to believe...

I don't see why they (the oceans) shouldn't be that dark. After all the surface at the bottom is basalt which wouldn't be reflecting much light, right? Could be wrong though. And the edges are much brighter just like the atmosphere, if that makes sense.

Did anyone ever come up with good ways to work with the full resolution files. I mean I consider my computer quite capable of handling heavy duty design work, and that includes being able to do things in photoshop that would have crashed computers that I had to use on the job. But when I opened up one of the full res files I think it took 5-10 minutes. Scrolling was a nightmare. I tried using the 'Large File Format' (.psb) that helped a little, but in the end I cut it into little strips and just opened whichever one I felt like sampling from. Anyone have any different solutions, better ones?

B_McKinley wrote:I don't see why they (the oceans) shouldn't be that dark. After all the surface at the bottom is basalt which wouldn't be reflecting much light, right?

The bottom of the ocean is way to deep for sunlight to reach that far down in the water, so there's no way for the light to reflect off the ocean bedrock at all, as far as i know.

But criticism aside, this is a great work!

PlutonianEmpire,

Photo from the Messenger spacecraft.

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/images/flyby_images/twins_lg.jpg

...and video...
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/images/flyby_images/mdis_depart_anot.mpeg

One thing I do note in the video, the specular seems much yellower than it seems to be in Celestia.

Kolano wrote:PlutonianEmpire,

Photo from the Messenger spacecraft.

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/images/flyby_images/twins_lg.jpg

...and video...
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/images/flyby_images/mdis_depart_anot.mpeg

One thing I do note in the video, the specular seems much yellower than it seems to be in Celestia.

WOW! You got me there!

And thanks for the video! I'm DEFINITELY gonna use that for reference when I'm working on Earth.

And I also noted the yelowish specular....

Kolano wrote:One thing I do note in the video, the specular seems much yellower than it seems to be in Celestia.

That's because the default specular color setting in Celestia is wrong.

The actual color of sunglint varies from warm-gray to orangish, depending on how much atmosphere the reflected light passes through before reaching the observer. It never appears blue:
http://modis-atmos.gsfc.nasa.gov/IMAGES ... rgb143.jpg

That image and many more are available here:
http://modis-atmos.gsfc.nasa.gov/IMAGES/index.html

(MODIS imagery at this level has gone through processing to minimize the visual effects of atmospheric attenuation and scattering.)

Astronauts report the sun appears the color of an arc lamp when viewed in space. But observers on Earth never see it that color because shorter wavelength blue light gets scattered out by the atmosphere. The more atmosphere light passes through the more shorter wavelength light gets scattered out. That is why sunsets are yellow-orange-red.

By the time sunglint has passed back out through the atmosphere a noticable amount of the shorter wavelength light has been scattered out, too.

Depending on your ocean color in Celestia you'll need to increase the amount of red and decrease the amount of blue in your specular reflection color setting.

Lone

Hey,
I finaly got to playing with the sample textures some more. I have found a few glitches that i hope won't make it into the realease versions. What i found is that there is a dark outline of the continental sheves all around the contenents. They are several shades darker than the outer oceans. nothing that can't be fixed but a glitch none the less. So in the following shots you can see the darker coastlines vary clearly. The difference is helped a little with a 50% blend of my ocean layer. It deffenitely helps lighten up some of the lakes and shorelines that are a tad dark. Of course there will be room for inprovement when the real textures hit today. So here are the pictures for comparison. The top and third image are the textures untouched while the second and bottom have my ocean layer. Just click the thumbnail for the full size image.










You might also notice that i adjusted the spec color to a more grey tone.

As for the question of the color of Earth oceans. From far orbit they look almost black, But in close orbit they look lighter because of the scattering effect of the atmosphere. This topic has been discused and beaten with a stick many times. I think the new images from the Mercury probe will finaly lay it all to rest. Well that takes care of the playing with the sample textuers. Next up the real things I hope.

Don. Edwards

Don.,

If it's not too much work, do you think you can release also the original datas to keep as a reference?

Do you mean the raw textures untouched, yes i can do that. I have already downloaded all 13 of the 21000x11500 textures. These will be strickly for testbeds until i am granted access to the 500km imagery from NASA. You have to email them to get the links for the big stuff. Its going to probably take me a few days to get all 13 downloaded. I say 13 because there are the 12 seasonal textures and 1 new bumpmap. It doesn't look like we are getting any new clouds at this time though. So present cloudmaps will have to do. But the good news is a have a somewhat working 16k VT version of my Summer cloudmap almost ready for release. With all this new stuff I am going to have to have Earth Central updated. I have a few people that are interested in doing it. Hopefully I can also find some decent storage off shatters net so these new works won't tax the server. I am not sure if anyone noticed but just after the release of HD 28185 the server was having some slowdowns. I am sure it was my fault. I will keep everyone posted on developments as they happen.

Don. Edwards

Hello Don,

Are you sure of that ?

Don. Edwards wrote:until i am granted access to the 500km imagery from NASA.

I would prefer 500 m

I'm waiting for your textures impatiently
Thanks for your work

Jdou