New addon in the work

[Cham]

Since an interesting experiment I made this morning, I'm developping a new addon with sprites based models.

Three stars are located inside the NGC 404 galaxy (see the stellar distribution that I published there : viewtopic.php?f=23&t=16626). These stars aren't part of the stellar distribution that I published, so both addons are independant of each other.

Here's a preview of the stars inside that galaxy, distributed in a region of a few light years. They are part of a large "primordial" nebula (not shown yet).

capt0.jpg

For the moment, they are G1 stars, and I don't know yet which kind of stars they should be (any suggestion ? Spectral class, size, ...).

There's an accretion disk, jets and a gaz bubble around each one of them, like this (click on the picts to get a larger view) :

test1.jpg

test5.jpg

The frame rate may be a bit slow in Celestia, depending on the view. Adding the large "primordial" nebula will certainly have a large impact on frame rate. So I'm not sure I'll keep it in the final addon.

I'll probably release a test (beta) version tonight or tomorrow.

[Cham]

I'm back home, and the addon is already almost finished. I'll try adding the "primordial" nebula.
Three previews :

protoA.jpg

protoB.jpg

ProtoC.jpg

[Cham]

Here's a beta version for you to test. Tell me what you think...

http://fsgregs.startlogic.com/Public_Fi ... NGC404.zip (4.8MB zip file)

The three stars are named "St proto A", "St proto B" and "St proto C".

[selden]

They look great! And I get a reasonable performance looking at them on my laptop.

[Fenerit]

Very fast on my (old) system. Beautiful. I've seen pointsize are centesimals: do you have tried with lesser values? It is faster even with more points (to map the reduced areas)?

proto_c.jpg

[jogad]

Hi,

I have a problem with this addon:
This is St Proto A at different distances

I can see only points but no glow at all

ProtoASnap1.jpg

ProtoASnap2.jpg

protoASnap3.jpg

[Cham]

You need to use the OpenGL 2 render path for the sprites. Try control-V several times until you get the proper rendering path.
Or maybe your video card is too old, or need a driver update ?

Sprites are pretty standard, now.

[Cham]

I think that opengl 2 doen't work on ATI cards.

On my old Mac G5 with an ATI card (now defunct), sprites were working. I believe you need a driver update.

Today, even with AMD (ATI) cards, sprites are a standard technique.

[jogad]

Oh, sorry
Stupid me! The open GL2 was not active.

The addon works as expected, with beautiful colors, and with no impact on the framerate

Very nice

[Cham]

I edited the shell model for the third system (St proto C). The nebula was too blurry. I strongly suggest that you use this new version instead (details are less blurry) :

shell22_sprites.cmod.zip

Just replace the old file by this one. It's the same model except that I reduced the individual sprite size to 75% (and increased the global opacity a bit). Here's a comparison of both models :

Previous version

old.jpg

New version

new.jpg